BandwidthCamp

Neil Postlethwaite is part of the team making Enemy Territory: QUAKE WARS and posted a quick note about their new In-Game Ads system and why they are going this route to help cover development costs.

To help cover this level of on-going support without passing the costs on to the gamer, ETQW will feature appropriate advertisements in select locations of our levels. The ads aren’t intrusive and you won’t have to interact with them; they’ll just be part of the normal environment. In fact, there are some places it’s quite odd not to have an advertisement - the sides of container trucks, for example. Great care is being taken to ensure that all our ads are appropriate for the game world and we have absolute approval rights in this area. If it’s not appropriate or it’s distracting, it won’t go in.

The company providing the ad system does not and will not store any personal information or data that otherwise can be used to identify you. All they track is if and how long you look at the advertisements.

The last part of what Neil said is important to communicate with your community. Perception is reality for most people, and especial after Google bought AdScape Media and filed for their latest patent. Some of the crazy ideas I hear going around the web and what in-games ads can and can’t do it frightening to say the least. If you are going to start using in-games ads, then people need to start making sure everyone is on the same page. whether they are your employees, stakeholders or your community.