Advertising in Video Games: Please participate in my survey

[Epona]

Thank you for all the help, guys! The survey has reached 200 answers. Those are great results and a lot of data to work with.

I can't think of a single time I have experienced advertising in games.

I probably have, but they obviously didn't do a good job.

Cept for Nuka-Cola, but I don't think that counts...

Nuka-Cola is more of a parody. But if you don't notice any ads in your games, that doesn't mean the marketers are doing poor job. Probably otherwise

Everyone saying "I don't mind ads as long as they aren't excessive" or similar. That's the attitude that will make them excessive. TV didn't always have 20 minutes of ads every hour, it got that bad because people let it get that bad.

Games have done just fine without ads and they can continue doing just fine without ads. You let them put their foot in the door and before long, loading screens will be commercial breaks and loading times will increase to increase revenue. You'll still be paying full price for games too.

The first in-game ads appeared back in 1970s. They developed with years, of course, but that's natural for a growing entertainment industry. If people are still not bothered by advertising today, that's a good sign, I think.

They weren't in most games and if they were, people would be bothered.

The problem is, when ads get to be bothersome (think TV), it's too late to stop them. Marketers don't know the word "moderation" and in fact will stick ads anywhere they can. Look around, you can't turn your head outside without seeing ads everywhere and we don't need them in video games too.

 

[ArialType]

Hello, everyone!
Sorry for the long absence. The last time I checked with the forums, my account was banned and I was called "a spam-bot" by moderator...

Anyway, I finally received news from my university after two long months of waiting. Thanks to your support, I have successfully received my master's degree!

As I wrote before, the situation with videogames changes very quickly. Two months ago Kickstarter wasn't a big deal and I didn't even bother to include it into my research. But now it has all the chances to grow into a fully functional competitive ad-free model.

As promised, I'm posting the results. 236 people from 6 different gaming websites participated in the survey. The survey itself is not available anymore, so here's a set of nice diagrams I constructed for my work. Hope they will be interesting and maybe useful to somebody.

Spoiler