Square Enix Lets You Earn Gameplay by Watching Ads

[Atmos Duality]

Eh, as long as it remains but an option, I have no grievance with it.

Though why spend time watching ads, when I can spend time creating my own games instead..

 

[Vie]

Hum, nice to see a publisher finally going out there and trying to find a modern way of monetising their games without trying to nail their customer's heads to the wall and make them pay for the privilege.

Hell, I might even use this to demo games before purchasing them.

 

[Neksar]

Eh, I wouldn't cap game time at an hour. I'd use a captcha of some sort instead for each ad.

 

[Two-A]

I think this is an incredibly stupid idea. Mostly because I hate ads. Plus I don't think the idea of streaming games is a particularly good one to begin with anyway.

I don't know, free games for ads sounds like a good thing. Even if you don't like the idea you could try it to try out a game, and if you like it you can buy it so you can play it without ads; if you don't, you stop playing and the developer still gets paid. Add that to the fact that it's 20 minutes of gameplay per minute of advertising I'd say it has a lot of potential.

 

[nothingspringstomind]

I'm willing to give this system a go, for the same reason i'm happy to watch ads before internet videos: You have to make revenue somehow, why not in a moderately unintrusive way?

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I think this is an incredibly stupid idea. Mostly because I hate ads. Plus I don't think the idea of streaming games is a particularly good one to begin with anyway.

I don't know, free games for ads sounds like a good thing. Even if you don't like the idea you could try it to try out a game, and if you like it you can buy it so you can play it without ads; if you don't, you stop playing and the developer still gets paid. Add that to the fact that it's 20 minutes of gameplay per minute of advertising I'd say it has a lot of potential.

Maybe, but if I have to endure shitty obnoxious advertisements I'd better get more than a measly 20 minutes of gameplay. I hate having ads shoved down my throat, it's for that reason I stopped watching television.

 

[Faladorian]

I think this is an incredibly stupid idea. Mostly because I hate ads. Plus I don't think the idea of streaming games is a particularly good one to begin with anyway.

I don't know, free games for ads sounds like a good thing. Even if you don't like the idea you could try it to try out a game, and if you like it you can buy it so you can play it without ads; if you don't, you stop playing and the developer still gets paid. Add that to the fact that it's 20 minutes of gameplay per minute of advertising I'd say it has a lot of potential.

Maybe, but if I have to endure shitty obnoxious advertisements I'd better get more than a measly 20 minutes of gameplay. I hate having ads shoved down my throat, it's for that reason I stopped watching television.

I'm with you on that one. I absolutely hate commercials.


I wouldn't be able to tolerate commercials in the middle of my gameplay. It'd do nothing short of enraging me. People know not to interrupt me when I'm playing a game, but being interrupted by an advertisement that's probably going to be 10 times louder than the game? Blood will flow and heads will roll.

(More likely, services will not be used. But you get the picture).

 

[dangoball]

When I read the title my first though was "The fuck?" but after reading the article, it actually sounds quite reasonable. Definitely better rate than ad based TV channels where you get 2:1 ratio of content to ads.

And some ads can actually be quite funny! We have this one for a fabric softener which has had the same formula for many year (women casually pulls it out of her handbag) and now they started to make fun of it themself (a man casually pulls hit from behind his back /out of his ass/)!

Eh, back on topic.
I have to say this looks good, and I'm gonna give it a try. Never played any Hitman, so might as well try it. Will keep an eye on how this turns out.

 

[Doom972]

I tried Hitman: Blood Money and I wasn't impressed: You can't play on full screen and you can't change any settings. Instead of going through the game's menus, you pick a level from a web-page.

I hope they'll improve on it, and once they get it to work properly, add recent games to see if this model can compete with the others.

You can go fullscreen and you can use the menus.

When I pressed Escape, it just suspended the game and the windows mouse cursur reappeared, but no menus.

 

[MrBaskerville]

Cool, does this mean that you would be able to skip through the 2-3 first hours of every game you play? That would be pretty damn awesome, since the beginning is almost always excruciatengly boring! (and sometimes borderline insulting, since mostly every game assumes that the player is stupid)

I´d never use the commercial option though, i´d rather pay since i can´t stand watching commercials. I watch them in the cinema and that´s it.

 

[Deadyawn]

It's an interesting idea. Don't know how well it will pan out and personally I'm not interested right now because A) I already have blood money and B) I don't really want to play mini ninjas (whatever that is).

Still, I think I'll keep an eye on it just in case something goes up that I want to try but can't be arsed forking money over for.

 

[Nickolai77]

So 10 mins of adverts for ten minutes of gameplay? I don't know if the advert length justifies the length of gameplay in that case. The ten minutes of ad's will feel like forever and the ten minutes of gameplay will feel like nothing. If they adjusted the advert to gameplay ratio to 1:2 then i think i will be more willing to give it a try.

But... what's to stop you getting up and doing something else whilst your adverts are playing? I could mute my laptop and play on my PS3 or read a book whilst the adverts are running- after all i know exactly how long the adverts are. Could i set up three hours of adverts for three hours of gameplay? I could use the advert time to go out and do some shopping or do some work.

 

[Da Orky Man]

So 10 mins of adverts for ten minutes of gameplay? I don't know if the advert length justifies the length of gameplay in that case. The ten minutes of ad's will feel like forever and the ten minutes of gameplay will feel like nothing. If they adjusted the advert to gameplay ratio to 1:2 then i think i will be more willing to give it a try.

But... what's to stop you getting up and doing something else whilst your adverts are playing? I could mute my laptop and play on my PS3 or read a book whilst the adverts are running- after all i know exactly how long the adverts are. Could i set up three hours of adverts for three hours of gameplay? I could use the advert time to go out and do some shopping or do some work.

It's 1 minute of ads for 20 minutes of gameplay.

 

[Nickolai77]

So 10 mins of adverts for ten minutes of gameplay? I don't know if the advert length justifies the length of gameplay in that case. The ten minutes of ad's will feel like forever and the ten minutes of gameplay will feel like nothing. If they adjusted the advert to gameplay ratio to 1:2 then i think i will be more willing to give it a try.

But... what's to stop you getting up and doing something else whilst your adverts are playing? I could mute my laptop and play on my PS3 or read a book whilst the adverts are running- after all i know exactly how long the adverts are. Could i set up three hours of adverts for three hours of gameplay? I could use the advert time to go out and do some shopping or do some work.

It's 1 minute of ads for 20 minutes of gameplay.

I've just re-watched the video on full screen and it seems you can get ten minutes of gameplay for as little as 30 seconds of adverts.

 

[VladG]

If this actually works and makes money it could be a boon for gamers. Imagine if anyone could play any game and all they had to do was watch ads. I'm not sure it will work though. Companies are only willing to pay so much for ads, and games are expensive to make. It's still one of the most interesting fiance models I have seen in a while though.

Edit: This is potentially a really big thing in gaming... and its gotten less comments then the tread on 'Everyone is drowning!' Escapist, I am disappoint.

Ads are big money, especially since a service like this can work towards targeted ads. As in stuff that actually interest you. I see no reason why it wouldn't work.

There are naturally some limitations, such as the quality of the in-game graphics and probably some other stuff that makes actually buying the game more attractive, but I've actually tried it and the streaming is flawless, no noticeable latency whatsoever (Something that OnLive had trouble with) and it's a really great way to play games that you might otherwise not want to spend money on.

I've heard there's a ISP in England that does the same thing, you get free x GB of traffic if you click on their adds.

 

[VladG]

I think this is an incredibly stupid idea. Mostly because I hate ads. Plus I don't think the idea of streaming games is a particularly good one to begin with anyway.

I don't know, free games for ads sounds like a good thing. Even if you don't like the idea you could try it to try out a game, and if you like it you can buy it so you can play it without ads; if you don't, you stop playing and the developer still gets paid. Add that to the fact that it's 20 minutes of gameplay per minute of advertising I'd say it has a lot of potential.

Maybe, but if I have to endure shitty obnoxious advertisements I'd better get more than a measly 20 minutes of gameplay. I hate having ads shoved down my throat, it's for that reason I stopped watching television.

I'm with you on that one. I absolutely hate commercials.


I wouldn't be able to tolerate commercials in the middle of my gameplay. It'd do nothing short of enraging me. People know not to interrupt me when I'm playing a game, but being interrupted by an advertisement that's probably going to be 10 times louder than the game? Blood will flow and heads will roll.

(More likely, services will not be used. But you get the picture).

You don't get interrupted. You choose when to watch ads, and it adds game time to your account. Nothing is shoved down your throat.

You can also choose to just pay for levels of the game instead of watching adds (I think a level of Hitman blood money is 50 cents). It's a great pseudo-demo service.

Ratio is pretty good too, about 1 minute of adds for 20 minutes of game time.

 

[Calibanbutcher]

Did anyone else notice it started raining frogs?
No?
Just me then...

 

[CrazyGirl17]

...I dunno, I'm not really a fan of commercials. This seems like a bit much..

 

[ThunderCavalier]

Am I the only one that read that as, "Get Blood Money free as long as you just keep hitting the replay button every minute or so while using your phone or something?"