'Spectralist' said:
Does that mean the game simply would not work if you did not have constant net access? Or perhaps it would have default ads to load if it can not access the net at any given time?
I see this one it that way: When you're first time running the game, it will run only if you'll connect it to the internet, then it download some offline adverts, and run the game. Then if you run it again , the game will start without using Wifi / net, and maybe occasionally it will be checking the adverts in internet [ maybe once in 1 month ].
Sounds plausable, but still there can be issues where I'm away from net access for "too long" (or at the wrong time) and longevity is a potential issue if you EVER take the ad server down.
There are IMHO 3 basic parties involved when we talk about games, if we ignore corporate BS.
1. The clients.
2. The producers.
3. The pirates.
Think of it like Asimov's original "threee laws of robotics".
1. Allow no harm, by action or inaction, to come to the customer.
2. Provided law #1 is not compromised to do so, allow no harm, by action or inaction, to come to the developer.
3. Provided no conflict with laws #1 and #2, screw the pirates.
IMHO the vast majority of "interesting ideas" in marketing and copyright protecting do NOT follow that order of priority, and the result is often an increase in piracy. I would always recommend applying the 3 laws of game production to any new idea - indeed, although I've never formulated it this prissily before I have always, AFAIK, applied the basic principles to my thoughts on such issues.
Apply the "load screen advertising" concept and it seems to fail, to me personally. Not as badly as, say, weirdly formatted floppy discs that "can't" be copied (at least by average honest folk), but it still fails.
It's obviously aimed at law #2 being primary - work for the Developer not the customers. It involved extra code and where there is extra code there is room for extra bugs/issues, and it involves having a server (or servers) to provide new adverts for download. Which strongly suggests that at some stage the game will simplky break, stop working, fail.
Look at the community. Look at the number of emulators out there. Being perhaps a little TOO general, but hoping tog et the point across, we don't WANT our games to stop working. We want them to keep on working day after day, month after month, year after year even after the very architecture we originally ran it on is obsolete. Having deliberately built-in obsolecense does not seem to me to be a good idea.
Of course, you could (as some developers have) provide a "patch" at the programs end-of-life to make it ad-free so that it does not require the server any more, but this is not something that customers can depend on in advance, is it? We'd probably get people trying to patch the game anyway then, not because they want to pirate it but because you are inconveniencing legitimate clients.
Also, IMHO having the revenue stream seperate from the palyers is interesting and again to the potential advantage of the dev, but it confuises who the customer is. Is it the guy playign the game, or is it the company who paid you to "air" their adverts? It seems to me it would be the advertisers, so the developer's primary aim would be not to please the playing public, but the paying advertisers. This is how series like FireFly and Bionic Woman got canned, it leads IMHO away from innovation and quality and towards dependable monotony and boredom.
Just some not-so-random thoughts, but IMHO even if you want to lump "leaches" in with "pirates" at #3, it makes sense to not only maximise your own gains but to do so without limiting the credibility of your software.
