Ordinarily I would commend a company coming up with another income stream to support with the costs of developing computer games (which is getting more and more expensive and is starting to approach Movie budgets!)

However, before I get the volin out for the poor software companies I must say that I totally agree with the idea that BF2142 is essentially a MOD! and therefore a reduction in price due to the advertising would have been nice

As long as the advertising does not affect my connection and cause lag I am quite relaxed about it

I don't even lose sleep about the "info gathering" - If I get ads for things I may be more interested in then so much the better - I am sure that there are loads of gadgets out there that I don't know I need yet (but don't tell the wife!!!!)

The IP address reader?

The IP address that this site just read?

THe IP address that the game had ALREADY read to allow you to play online?

That info-gathering thing is just plain out of order. There should be an option, like on MSN Plus.

And BF2142 is a great example of this. It's not a "new"game. They took BF2 and added a bit here and removed a bit there and hey presto a new game is released, which essentially is a mod.
The price we had to pay was that of a "new" commercial game.

I can understand that because of the stats-tracking they would have extra costs, but if a game like Quake Wars is able to do the same without ingame ads, you start to wonder.

Ingame ads are not really a big problem, but the fact I get the pushed upon me everywhere I go, does start to bother me.

but for the sake of your mod, I say hand pick your advertisments if any.

I dont mind ingame ads as long as the game doesnt force me to read it and doesnt break the immersion, it can stay in the background as long as it fits in with the scenery properly. (like a car on display in a casino, or billboards on a highway, maybe some guy is wearing nike shoes?) I do not expect the price to go down from $50 dollars just because of some advertisement, infact. I am glad there are ingame ads, because if there werent then games might start costing $70, $80, $90.... lets face it, game production is getting more and more expensive, and if it isnt for these ads, either game quality will suffer when the budgets get cut, or we will have to start paying more. How much did games cost when the first playstation came out? $50. How much do they cost now? $50. and I can tell you that modern games cost thousands upon thousands more dollars to make now than they did ten years ago, but we still pay the same price. You can thank ingame ads for that.

That's because they sell more games, market and sales

By having a constant source of revinue not dependant on having new people constantly buying the game, they can afford to keep a staff employeed for patches and such.

Also, with inflation always going up I would be quite happy for the cost of PC games to stay at 50 instead of going up to 60 like some Console and even PC games have done.   Also the Ingame ads keep the costs of running Ranked Servers down.

The ads in BF2142 are no biggy to me, I notice them out of the corner of my eye when actualy doing anything and mabey stop to look at them out of curiosity when im running to a new point or something.

I would have no problem with In Game ads for almost what ever in FS.   As long as they are put in right.   On Space maps they could be on some of the view screens in a side room some where.   On city maps put em on billboards.    On military base maps put some data pads laying around in misc places with something one them.

Not to mention it costs power, even 2142st century people wouldn't want to spend power when it's not necessary

<RT> Jimwalker-NL wrote:

...The commercials read: Still going strong after 257 years.
Now i don't know what creative mind thought of that, but I thought it was stupid, cheap and not immersive at all.

Not to mention rather innacurate.  Intel was founded in 1968 meaning by 2142 it'd only have been going strong for 174 years.

Yeah the signs actully say 174 years
  i found them kinda amusing but still lame  im mean bilboards don't you think by 2142 we'd have something more high tech than a wooden bilboard why not a 3-d projection bilboad.. that would be cool to see, fit in with the era and it would seem less cheap.

...The commercials read: Still going strong after 257 years.
Now i don't know what creative mind thought of that, but I thought it was stupid, cheap and not immersive at all.

Not to mention rather innacurate.  Intel was founded in 1968 meaning by 2142 it'd only have been going strong for 174 years.

If the revenue created from allowing the ads where to be reinvested into the game and therefor made it cheaper I wouldn't mind it. But as we can see now EA has not dropped their game price as a result.
Same goes for Steam, which should cut production costs (no more CD's to burn and manuals to print) and there for lower the prices.

It seems that this is the next cash cow that big Game Developers have created for themselves, which has no benefit for the consumers what so ever and is only there to create more revenue.

I only recently noticed the Intell comercials ingame. And EA promised they would fit in with the era. The commercials read: Still going strong after 257 years.
Now i don't know what creative mind thought of that, but I thought it was stupid, cheap and not immersive at all.

It will come to the point where the ads are as intrusive and annoying as the TV commercials are now. Luckyly we in Holland are not bound to the 5 minutes TV and 4 mintes commercials like the americans are, but still.

Can you imagine that they will start collecting data from your PC to ensure they can target their commercials at your taste. I.E.: You look at this site, so they start spamming you with toy lightsabers and SW books and the latest SW litho.

OOOH the horror.

Sure, some Star Wars related ads might be warranted, if they are related to the Star Wars Universe. I just prefer to have my relax time playing a game and not having my brain constantly reading little signs here and there distracting me. Because then it drains what little brain power I have at the end of the day.

Magazines and tv may do this to catch your attention, but in gaming, you have already bought the game, why would I need to buy anything else? I can just easily research what I want on the web.

My answer is NO to ads. If this seemed a little harsh or heartless at all, sorry.