Survey: 86% of Gamers Prefer Ads in Free Games Over Paying For Games

[babinro]

I'm all for ads in games if that makes them free.

If forcing Commander Sheppard to wear Nike shoes, drink Pepsi, use Remington Steel ammunition and call McDonalds his favorite shop on the Citadel meant that I could get the Mass Effect trilogy for free...bring it on!

If I need to interrupt my gameplay every 10 minutes with 3-5 commercials like on t.v. to get the free game then I'd want to have a purchase option.

It's all about how directly intrusive the ads are to the experience. I'm fine with real world products making up my game world and being referenced in dialogue as well as being part of load screens. I'm not okay with forced interruption in the flow of the game to sell me something.

 

[Callate]

500 "gamers" who were already playing freemium games? Are we talking about exclusively tablet or phone games? I mean, not to dismiss or suggest that people like that aren't "real gamers" or something, but if that's all the sample holds, it would seem pretty obvious what kind of results the study would lead to. If your "gaming" is something you do for ten minutes waiting in line or thirty minutes on a bus, you undoubtedly have different expectations of it.

Other reaction: (Insert banging head against wall here.)

So, okay. Lots of people who don't have credit cards, or are fairly paranoid about who they give that information to, and so on. I can get a game for "free"- yippee, hooray. My gaming "need" meter is filled, and I didn't have to decrease my "money" bar.

...But we would be getting so much better use of our time, most of the time, if we just paid a dollar or two up front. We would be getting games that weren't built around artificial difficulty spikes and time wasting. And more than that, we wouldn't be working on poisoning our own well. There's only so much ad revenue to go around, only so many "whales" with time to kill and money to spend who are willing to obsessively shovel hundreds of dollars into glorified minigames; and the latter seems even more likely to burn out on their own exploitation. There are only so many spaces on the top lists for the Android and Apple marketplaces. Eventually, this cycle seems bound to do the same thing the AAA market is working on doing- only it seems likely to do it much faster, given the "gold rush" mentality that seems to be surrounding the freemium market right now.

Short version: this study seems flawed, and whether it is or not, following the path it appears to point to seems self-destructive for the industry.

 

[ShakerSilver]

This is survey is a fucking joke. Sample size of 500? Only their own freemium titles were used in the survey? EA themselves being so involved with the survey? This is ridiculous. They actually believe people will take this seriously?

And to think they could instead be spending time writing another hate speech about ignorant bigots/haters/homophobes again for this year's golden poo had they not be knocked out of the contest.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

500 "gamers" who were already playing freemium games? Are we talking about exclusively tablet or phone games? I mean, not to dismiss or suggest that people like that aren't "real gamers" or something, but if that's all the sample holds, it would seem pretty obvious what kind of results the study would lead to. If your "gaming" is something you do for ten minutes waiting in line or thirty minutes on a bus, you undoubtedly have different expectations of it.

This exactly. It was a biased sample and so 500 data points technically mean nothing. In psychology research, a random sampling of 300 is considered strong enough to make generalizations of any population. But if the data came from one pool of people who already have a commonality that directly pertains to the findings, then it's a biased sample and the results wouldn't pass any peer review.

The "study" is therefore complete bunk. And you know, the way that EA acts, they're STILL going to charge an entry fee to their games. No way would they consider giving something away for free. They'll triple dip: make customers pay to download the game, make them pay for microtransactions if they want to advance in the game, and take the advertising revenue as well.


EDIT - we also don't know how many degrees of freedom this study obtained. If it was over .10, the results are in no way reliable. And did they conduct another test to see if their results could be duplicated? Again, the information released about the study doesn't answer any of these questions.

 

[MHR]

Monday Night Combat style; Advertisements wall-to-wall.

The powerups you choose are advertiser endorsements.
The arenas are advertisements.
There's a special grenade that plays and covers your screen in advertisements so you can't see or hear.

I'd buy it. Or I won't even have to!

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

1. 500 sample population.
2. Conducted on behalf of EA.
3. What gamers?
4. What ads?
5. What games?

Not enough information. Most freemium games I wouldn't pay for the misfortune of playing in the first place.

EDIT: Here you go. Registration screen in this instance just means put any old shit in there as long as it's valid.

https://filetea.me/t1sy7LRQK8URViQ8dbYxNCVQA

Will read and possibly update post.

EDIT: So 86% seems to be made up of 70% preferring free ONLINE games supported entirely by advertising and 16% who prefer freemium ONLINE games with microtransactions. It is testing only online games. The Executive Summary itself is pretty clear in its declaration of bias. And then there's this gem (which IS hinted at in the OP of this thread):

"Players of popular EA freemium titles utilizing BrandBoost technology were invited to install the Say.So app in their browsers, which passively tracked users?in-game behaviors and served invitations to complete the study questionnaire."

THE SAMPLE POPULATION IS PEOPLE WHO PLAY EA's FREEMIUM GAMES.

You cannot get less impartial than that.

 

[Grabehn]

I would care about reading this at all if it didn't have to do with EA "they prefer adds instead of paying... so let's put ADDS on the games the BUY! AND MICROTRANSACTIONS!" Yeah... That sounds like EA alright.

 

[mjharper]

In other news, pigs don't fly.

Of course people prefer free games (supported by ads) to paid games. They're free.

Similarly, most people will say 'I don't mind ads in games, so long as they're not intrusive', forgetting that when the ads are the only revenue stream, they are bound to be intrusive, because that's how the company makes its money. No company is going to put ads in a game which are completely non-intrusive, because they wouldn't make any money at all.

Imagine if the survey had asked, 'Would you be okay with the Dungeon Keeper model being the future of gaming?. Or this: 'Would you be okay with the US television model in gaming, with 18 minutes of ads in every hour?' People would obviously answer, 'No'.

The way you ask these questions determines the answer. A sample of 500 people, a survey sponsored by EA; this is just self-congratulatory nonsense. Nevertheless, it does indicate the way things are going to go in the future, because of the non-intrusive fallacy. Companies will keep asking these kinds of questions, and people will keep giving these kinds of answers.