Advertising in Mobile Games is Broken • Hacker News Board

Re: Advertising in Mobile Games is Broken

#21

Post by kevinpet » Wed, Aug 24, 2011, 12:37 AM UTC

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #19

drcube wrote: post #18

My wife stopped letting our son play Angry Birds on her phone because of the scantily clad ladies advertising "meet sexy singles in your area". When will Adblock Plus port to Android?

Sorry, but AdBlock on a game like Angry Birds IS stealing. Rovio certainly has a lot of money, but other developers aren't so lucky -- and many are barely scraping by. Try investing nearly $5000 and seven months of your life in developing a game that's being ad supported, where your income relies on ads, and then watch people joke about blocking them. It sucks, trust me.

You can argue that it's morally wrong, but it isn't stealing.

Re: Advertising in Mobile Games is Broken

#22

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 24, 2011, 12:39 AM UTC

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #19

drcube wrote: post #18

My wife stopped letting our son play Angry Birds on her phone because of the scantily clad ladies advertising "meet sexy singles in your area". When will Adblock Plus port to Android?

Sorry, but AdBlock on a game like Angry Birds IS stealing. Rovio certainly has a lot of money, but other developers aren't so lucky -- and many are barely scraping by. Try investing nearly $5000 and seven months of your life in developing a game that's being ad supported, where your income relies on ads, and then watch people joke about blocking them. It sucks, trust me.

[deleted]

Re: Advertising in Mobile Games is Broken

#23

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 24, 2011, 12:40 AM UTC

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #19

drcube wrote: post #18

My wife stopped letting our son play Angry Birds on her phone because of the scantily clad ladies advertising "meet sexy singles in your area". When will Adblock Plus port to Android?

Sorry, but AdBlock on a game like Angry Birds IS stealing. Rovio certainly has a lot of money, but other developers aren't so lucky -- and many are barely scraping by. Try investing nearly $5000 and seven months of your life in developing a game that's being ad supported, where your income relies on ads, and then watch people joke about blocking them. It sucks, trust me.

[deleted]

Re: Advertising in Mobile Games is Broken

#24

Post by chgriffin » Wed, Aug 24, 2011, 12:40 AM UTC

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #19

drcube wrote: post #18

My wife stopped letting our son play Angry Birds on her phone because of the scantily clad ladies advertising "meet sexy singles in your area". When will Adblock Plus port to Android?

Sorry, but AdBlock on a game like Angry Birds IS stealing. Rovio certainly has a lot of money, but other developers aren't so lucky -- and many are barely scraping by. Try investing nearly $5000 and seven months of your life in developing a game that's being ad supported, where your income relies on ads, and then watch people joke about blocking them. It sucks, trust me.

@somecallmetim i sympathize with your frustration. What do you think the solution is? What other ways do you monetize your games?

Re: Advertising in Mobile Games is Broken

#25

Post by svmegatron » Wed, Aug 24, 2011, 12:41 AM UTC

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #19

drcube wrote: post #18

My wife stopped letting our son play Angry Birds on her phone because of the scantily clad ladies advertising "meet sexy singles in your area". When will Adblock Plus port to Android?

Sorry, but AdBlock on a game like Angry Birds IS stealing. Rovio certainly has a lot of money, but other developers aren't so lucky -- and many are barely scraping by. Try investing nearly $5000 and seven months of your life in developing a game that's being ad supported, where your income relies on ads, and then watch people joke about blocking them. It sucks, trust me.

I don't disagree with you, but drcube's point is a serious and valid one. It also smells like an opportunity for devs and/or ad networks to provide much better targeting. Ad-supported games for kids should be able to get kid-appropriate ads if the developer or the parent so choose. I haven't done enough ad-supported game development to know if that kind of thing is currently possible, but its something I would look into if a 5 year old were using my ipod regularly.

Re: Advertising in Mobile Games is Broken

#26

Post by anonymoushn » Wed, Aug 24, 2011, 12:45 AM UTC

sukuriant wrote: post #9

melvinng wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm there are much better solutions out there, the gaming industry has always been quite good at this. Remember how we fixed pirating of games? By making levels non archievable if you are using a pirated version.

See, I thought companies reduced (you can't stop) piracy of games by making their content so awesome that people wanted to pay for the game. Examples include Valve and Blizzard's lineaup.

Actually, Blizzard is reducing piracy by requiring you to connect to their servers to play the game and sending an army of lawyers after anyone who attempts to create their own servers. Most of the content in StarCraft II disappears the moment you aren't connected to BNet, and what was left over disappears 30 days later. Diablo 3 will not work at all unless you are connected to BNet, and WoW is an MMORPG. S2 has taken a similar approach: their game does nothing unless you can connect to their servers.

I'm not sure what Valve's approach has been. Does it also involves reducing the quality of the games offered by not including LAN play?

Re: Advertising in Mobile Games is Broken

#27

Post by chgriffin » Wed, Aug 24, 2011, 12:46 AM UTC

Strange to me that people are talking about better ways to serve ads in games and apps instead of alternative revenue streams to ads. Ads suck no matter how you position them in your app.

Re: Advertising in Mobile Games is Broken

#28

Post by angryasian » Wed, Aug 24, 2011, 1:49 AM UTC

drcube wrote: post #18

My wife stopped letting our son play Angry Birds on her phone because of the scantily clad ladies advertising "meet sexy singles in your area". When will Adblock Plus port to Android?

there's several ways to do this.. i just searched ad block and several apps do what you ask, but the easiest is probably using lbe privacy guard.

Re: Advertising in Mobile Games is Broken

#29

Post by jbermudes » Wed, Aug 24, 2011, 2:26 AM UTC

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #19

drcube wrote: post #18

My wife stopped letting our son play Angry Birds on her phone because of the scantily clad ladies advertising "meet sexy singles in your area". When will Adblock Plus port to Android?

Sorry, but AdBlock on a game like Angry Birds IS stealing. Rovio certainly has a lot of money, but other developers aren't so lucky -- and many are barely scraping by. Try investing nearly $5000 and seven months of your life in developing a game that's being ad supported, where your income relies on ads, and then watch people joke about blocking them. It sucks, trust me.

How is removing something that was given to you in a package stealing? If someone gave me a free magazine, but the magazine had ads, you're saying it'd be stealing to rip those pages out?

Re: Advertising in Mobile Games is Broken

#30

Post by wccrawford » Wed, Aug 24, 2011, 3:06 AM UTC

LiveTheDream wrote: post #4

wccrawford wrote: post #2

So their only solution is to move the intrusive ads to being part of achievements, and thus cheapening them in the eyes of the players? Sorry, but in my eyes, that's actually worse.

It actually seems like a clever and constructive idea. Do you mean the achievements would be cheapened, or the offers?

Both, actually. The achievement is now seen as simply a vehicle to ram advertisements down your throat, and the offer is seen as some kind of slimy fake deal.

Or maybe you haven't seen all the ads on the net where you've 'won' a discount by punching a monkey, etc?