I don't like advertising.
Posted: January 6, 2011 Filed under: General Stuffs 24 Comments »ok, a disclaimer first of all, since it’s my experience this can become a very hot topic very quickly, and people feel they need to defend themselves. I AM NOT SAYING YOU SHOULD NOT ADVERTISE OR ACCEPT MONEY FROM ADVERTISING. If that’s how you feed yourself and the people you support, and keep a roof over your head, I’m not about to say that you should give up that security, I know all too well it’s shit being broke, and I know that there are people in my family even who rely on income from marketing stuff. I’m not about to tell my sister and her boyfriend that their unborn kid would be better off if it’s dad were to quit his job and find something else to do.
Flame(war)-retardant deployed, so let’s get started:
I will say it again, I don’t like advertising. and if you are being honest, the odds are you probably don’t like advertising either, if you could get by comfortably without it, I’m sure you would.
But it’s generally accepted, and hard to refute, that in so many professions these days, if you want to get by, it’s a necessary thing. surely people don’t mind ads if it means they get something they life for free or cheaper right?
honestly, I think that may be the case; that by not accepting Advertising revenue I am causing myself serious financial harm when there is no alternative.
HOWEVER, I don’t like advertising, and as such, I’m at least going to try and get by without it myself. If I can’t, fine. but at least the result will be I tried my best to avoid exposing myself and my audience to something less than ideal, instead of resigning myself to conventional wisdom right away when I’m not comfortable with it.
So, what have I got against advertising?
So the first reason I (and most people) don’t like advertising is pretty obvious, it’s obstructive, and obtrusive. I don’t like adverts breaking up my tv shows, I don’t like product placement changing how a director composes a scene, I don’t like waiting an extra half hour to watch a DVD because someone insists they show me all the other DVDs I should get, and I don’t like seeing adverts around the page of the game I’m playing.
the second reason, which is my main reason for disliking advertising, is how it often influences people, their attitudes and by extension their behaviour. This, for some reason that boggles my mind, is a controversial point. a lot of people I talk about this with, DO NOT BELIEVE ADVERTISING HAS ANY INFLUENCE ON ATTITUDES OR BEHAVIOUR. To anyone who still holds this belief, take a look at the marketing budget for say, ANYTHING AT ALL. people pay a fucking lot for advertising, and they can afford the research to check that their money is being well spent, you market something right, more people buy it.
I’m not saying all advertising is brainwashing people (whilst I think some comes very close to trying) but I do often wonder where to draw the line between some advertising techniques, and techniques specifically for conditioning behaviour. (that is, programming people to do what you want).
truth is, I am actually ok with a lot (if not the majority) of advertising on this count, most people are not actually evil, and since the folks who make adverts and marketing plans tend to be people, the dont-be-evil seeps through. but I cant choose what adverts appear beside my games (and even if I could, see point 1, I’d rather have the space clear), so even if I don’t mind most of the ads, there’s still a chance that I am profiting from displaying something I would consider harmful.
But I’m a business myself, SURELY I have to advertise my work?
My reservations about accepting money from advertising are not one-way, I am also very careful about how I advertise my own work, for a while now, when I post a game online somewhere, I mention it on my blog, maybe my deviantArt journal, and my twitter account. I am telling only people who have already expressed an interest in my work, and I feel if my work is good enough, they may tell their friends. in this way, ONLY my work is the influencing factor, I have not attempted to sway a persons attitudes before they experience my work.
This, any professional indie will tell you, is insane.
and they are right, my business plan is ‘have a really good game, and get lucky’. to be honest, in that respect, I have been very lucky indeed, but to RELY on that? yes, I’m probably mad.
but how I conduct myself on this issue is very important to me, and it took a lot of soul searching just to realise I was actually ok emailing a link of the Lottie’s Dungeon preview to games sites and blogs, since the preview is in fact part of the game, and what customers are buying. and games sites and blogs WANT to hear about upcoming games after all. so once I feel the game is a little less rough around the edges, I’ll share with those guys, and leave it up to them if they want to share the information with their own audience.
So, to summarize…
I think in an ideal world there would not be advertising. so I’m going to try and see if I can get by without advertising. since I think if we want to make our world better, we should behave as we would expect our ideal selves to behave. Naivety is is something we are entitled to until proven wrong.
To clarify I AM NOT SAYING if you earn money through advertising, or spend it on advertising, that your behaviour is in any way wrong, you are probably doing the smartest thing in fact, and I won’t try and impose my risky lifestyle on you. If I figure out a way for everyone to eat and be happy without advertising though, I’ll let you know 🙂
Nicely put. I was wondering why you said you wouldn’t accept money from the ads, but you’ve explained your reasoning well and I’m inclined to agree with you.
I surf the net with an adblocker for a reason, I find ads annoying, and intrusive. The flashy ones are the third worst. The noisy ones are the second worst. The absolute worst are the ones which expand across your monitor when you mouse even goes NEAR them.
So yeah, if you can get by without relying on ad revenue, I support your decision. If you can’t, well you tried, I wouldn’t hold that against you either.
Good to finally read your thoughts about your stance on advertising. I also enjoyed all the illustrations (especially the mock webpage covered in ads!)
I do feel misgivings about the Flash games I have with pre-game ads on them. A lot of my games have been sponsored without actual pre-game ads as part of the deal but whether I have explicit ads on my games or not the whole sponsorship racket is basically advertising for the portals. Those portal logos and links on my game are ads.
It sometimes seems the entire internet is one crazed ad fueled beast!
Flash games were my introduction to professional game development and I haven’t figured out a way yet to support myself that isn’t in some way influenced by ad money (whether direct or not.) I do hope to have some more mobile games for sale someday so that there won’t be ads in them but as you mentioned above you can then run into qualms about how to promote yourself and your games. I do understand the spirit of your approach to how you advertise your own work. I feel much the same way regarding that part of it.
Well continued good luck to you in your ad-free endeavors!
You submitted your game to kongregate already. You would accept a cash prize from them but you refuse the money they’re giving you for advertising? This is absurd. First off, if you really dislike it so much you should not have submitted your game to a website that makes 100% of its revenue from advertising. Second off, the cash prize is going to also be money that comes from *gasp* advertising. Third off, by submitting your game you have already helped them advertise more shit. Them paying you for this doesn’t change the fact that you’ve already contributed towards it. Plus, if you don’t take the money… it’ll either just sit there, or help fund a site that, once again, makes the majority (if not all) of its money from advertising.
I guess basically what I’m saying is that taking the money is not promoting advertisements, the money was already made: you’re promoting advertisements by submitting the game in the first place.
Also I know that this post wasn’t strictly about the kongregate thing but it seems sorta on topic to me
@BmBobo yeah, it’s totally on topic so don’t worry about it 🙂
regarding the contest, I’m pretty sure it’s Unity Technologies that are forking out the prize money, if I find out otherwise I’ll get in touch with the kongregate staff to see if I can withdraw entry from the competition without withdrawing them from the website.
Regarding putting my game in places where there are adverts, I feel right now this is almost unnavoidable, if I was to not use websites supported by adverts, I wouldn’t be able to see my friends tweets, my families facebook updates, I wouldn’t be able to google for anything, watch youtube. and so on.
I don’t however feel I am exposing new people to adverts, people who follow my twitter or whatever have probably already played my games ad-free on my site, when I upload a game to kongregate, the people who see it are people who were going to kongregate anyway.
in this situation, whilst I would rather not have ads around my game, I value the feedback and having new players more, and so long as I do not profit from the ads displayed I am more comfortable.
you aren’t the first to suggest that by just letting the ad revenue pile up in kongregate’s account I am supporting their advertising. this may in fact be the case, but as I tried to make clear in my blog post, I’m not trying to stop people from advertising, I’m just saying I’m going to try and avoid doing it. maybe if I can get by without advertising and honestly believe others can do the same with no more risk than just monetising through ads, maybe then I’ll be a bit ‘anti-advertising’. but right now I’m only ‘anti-myself-advertising’
gotta get experience before I start saying what other people should and shouldn’t do in this area 🙂
@HybridMind & Skynes, thanks for the support. I really appreciate it 🙂
First off, I think you should take the money and run. But that’s just me.
But – if you are concerned that adverts ruin the experience you intend… then that’s noble, and I admire your commitment to your art. If you can, you should spam Kong with links to ad free versions on your site. (Hell, they’re people likely enough to donate once they’re there, this may even be a revenue-positive act)
If you are concerned that adverts inflict evil upon your players, and would rather not benefit from that… then again, that’s a noble stance. But the only real way to go against that is via not being on Kong. It protects your motivations not to accept money, but given you’re on Kong for whatever reasons, you can take the money. It’ll make you want to stay, that money, when other factors will tell you to leave. That’s the flipside, and why it feels so wrong to take it despite the lack of impact it’ll actually have.
On the other hand – you can pay rent with your Kong ads. You currently struggle to pay rent. Your games are throwing money enough to live off at you. Take that money, and use it to make more games. This is my genuine advice, and if it doesn’t seem to connect to the points above then so be it. Making games is better than presenting them perfectly.
And as for advertising yourself – that’s another argument for another time. But let it be known that I’m for it.
I still don’t see how taking money generated by advertising is in any way supporting it more than putting your game there.
First, a clarification: the issue isn’t using websites that have advertisements, it’s putting up something that draws in people to look at the advertisements. The way kongregate gets viewers for those ads is by having people play the games on the website. You put your game there, it’s being used to attract attention to advertisements. The whole “these people have already seen the advertisements because they already use kongregate” distinction doesn’t mean anything because they are going to be viewing more advertisements than they would’ve because of your game. It seems to me like you’re basically saying, “There is no way for people to avoid advertisements, kongregate viewers view advertisements anyway, I’m not hurting them by attracting them to more.” That’s absurd, note that that could also be used as a justification for putting advertisements on your blog.
That’s probably not the case anyway, as I’m sure there are people linking to the kongregate version of your game. I know you don’t intend for this and your purpose is merely to get more viewers / feedback, but regardless of intent the fact is You Are Helping Advertising.
Take the money! You already gave the advertising people what they wanted, you’ve already helped them get the viewers, there is really no need to act like you’re being the better person by refusing it at this point, because honestly you’re already supporting them. 😛 Either that or be a bit more HARDCORE and don’t put your game up there.
Another small thing I noticed after posting:
“in this situation, whilst I would rather not have ads around my game, I value the feedback and having new players more, and so long as I do not profit from the ads displayed I am more comfortable.”
So getting feedback is more worthy of betrayed principles than paying rent? 😛
This seems like a reasonable position — you always have to find some balance between your principles and the world we live in, and this seems like a fine one to me. It reminds me of vegetarianism, if you’re opposed to meat-eating, all you can reasonably do is stop eating it yourself.
Personally, I don’t buy ads or sell ad space on wolfire.com because it just seems like an old-fashioned and inefficient way of doing things. The screen space on our web page and the trust and respect of our users are more valuable than whatever the advertisers could afford to pay. Similarly, to get the word out about Overgrowth, I think it has been more effective to just put out a lot of content and do things that news sites consider newsworthy than it would have been to buy ads.
From what I’ve read, ads are also quite ineffective unless you buy A LOT of them. For the most part people don’t pay attention to a single ad, but as they see ads for the same product in more and more places, their awareness and trust for the product starts to increase. Then when they go to Steam or Gamestop and see HEAVILY-ADVERTISED GAME X next to Mystery Games Y and Z, they buy game X because it subconsciously seems more legit. However, I think no indie developers (except maybe Notch or other indie-lotto-winners) have enough capital to afford a serious ad campaign, so for most of us ads might be a waste of money even if we just care about short-term profit.
Keep in mind that I’ve never actually bought ads, so I’m not speaking from a position of experience — just summarizing what I’ve read and heard from people who have.
I also have ethical trouble wrestling with the role of advertising, it’s part of the reason I’ve tilted towards making (but not yet finishing) downloadable for money games rather than browser based free ones.
Advertising spend is one of those things that can greatly distort the ‘quality wins out’ equation. I guess in some insane fantasy world most people would get their information on ‘stuff quality’ from amazing unbiased journalists rather than what a marketing man puts on the side of buses.
In the internet world where copyright’s stability has gotten shaky and most art/entertainment stuff can be replicated simply at no cost it becomes pretty hard to get back some of the intrinsic value of art & entertainment to it’s audience back to the artist. At the same time it’s really hard to do most of this stuff without doing it full time. I think it can feel like you get pulled three ways; compromise your aesthetics for your ethics (spend time getting money more ethically but less time on your game), compromise your ethics for the aesthetics or push back against the future (try and sell things the old fashioned way as it crumbles around you).
This dilemma also exists to some extent when surfing the net, do I use an adblocker so I don’t contribute to the advertising audience, while knowing that by doing so I’m harming the websites I choose to visit? In this case I’ve chosen not to block ads (bar risky flash ones) as it feels as if I would be imposing my own ethics on others which I would never want to do.
Interesting to read your thoughts on this. I’m still not entirely sure what it is that you don’t like about advertising. You spend much of the article defending against potential criticism, so as an article it’s hard to clearly find what your exact feelings are. To paraphrase, is that you don’t like it intruding on people’s artistic experiences, and that it controls what people think? It would be nice to see a bit of evidence to back the second one up – do you have any studies or statistics that illustrate exactly what it is you’re worried about, as I’m not entirely sure what it is you’re getting at.
I can see what you’re trying to do, and that by not accepting advertising revenue you are trying to set a good example – is that correct? In that case, I wonder if what you should be setting an example against is obtrusive and inappropriate advertising, rather than advertising as a whole.
Lots of people seem to see self-promotion as a “necessary evil”, but I personally don’t see it as evil at all. If it’s tasteful and appropriate, it can be beneficial both to you and to the player/consumer. I’m actually having fun working on the promotion behind my game. I enjoy doing the artwork, putting together the trailer videos, building the website, and these creative forays have led me to make changes that have benefitted my game.
Promoting the game to potential players has been very positive. I’ve enjoyed the increased recognition that should help boost the game when it goes to market (like you, this is my job, so I need to make money from it), and I’ve enjoyed the feedback I’ve got as a result. People who’ve picked up the game after I’ve contacted them about it, or who have been following my promotional streams, have enjoyed playing the game, so everyone’s happy.
Yes, there is such a thing as tasteless advertising. I am strongly opposed, for example, to promotional campaigns for politicians. Clearly stating your policies and how you can implement them is good, but the campaigns that rely primarily on the personality and PR image of the candidates is damaging to politics. Advertising that lies about the product is also clearly wrong.
But there is such a thing as tasteful promotion that leads people to find a product that they enjoy and benefit from, without damaging their experiences of other work. I guess my big question here is about why you don’t promote your own work. If you can manage your own promotion to be tasteful and appropriate, why feel uneasy about encouraging people to play your games?
Sophie, I agree with you 100% and then some more 😉 Still if I had an opportunity to make real money with advertising and not just peanuts I’d probably take it. Also, at this point, anybody not using an adblocker wants to see ads anyway, right?
Reading your post remembered Social Network and that few people in there position was that Ads are not cool and thus anything that includes them is not cool.
And they do have a point but still where Facebook is now? How it earns money? Part of it is their own powered by social info advertisements(thing that Google fears and tries to do too), partially they try to push Facebook coins on app developers to take 30% cut on those in app purchases they provide other stuff like gifts. Sadly I don’t have idea which are bigger but suspect that at the moment ads are bigger part which will probably be dwarfed by coins later.
But still my point is that everything is measured in comparison. What other monetization options do you have?
Sponsorships are in a way an advertisement too.
Buying game upfront has its own drawbacks and bonuses:
Bonus: Those who bought are involved more, sometimes willing to spend weeks trying to make game work as they already got involved by paying sum of money for it
Bad: Users don’t know what they buy, for me lately AAA games don’t deliver so I am unwilling to buy experience that often is bad without checking (there is Piracy for that though), its especially bad when games 20-30% are good and then start to degrade on quality of content. And that’s kind of a model that allows developers to get away with it.
Now third option is in game purchases and bonus content. Its not perfect again:
Good:
Users play before spending money
Not really interested or poor people can play game without paying at all(sometimes)
May be done in a good way that will enhance experience(very rare, I can’t even remember any that done it good)
Bad:
Now game design has new goal, how to include in game purchases so that you would earn money, really bad… Stands in a way of making good games as you now have two aims, make fun experience and make people pay for in game content. And these two things not go very well together usually and sometimes are in direct conflict
For example some social games use “gateing” where you can not progress in game until you pay or advertise game to your friends (so that some of them will pay or invite more people), this all feels even worse then advertisements to me…
Then there are donations, I think this way is the most positive but also very unpredictable but I am looking forward to models that will use it effectively and have some ideas myself. But so far I guess it does not really work for most of the time.
So here we are. In the end all working monetization options are a compromise where it ruins user experience in some way especially if developer is dishonest or inexperienced in deliver what is promised.
In the end if you use in game purchases, advertisements and donations well you are good to go. Advertisements that do not break games illusion and don’t irritate the user. Not obligatory in game purchases that add to the experience but are not really that necessary playing the game. Right marketing that makes it meaningful for users to donate. And if you use all them well together then you would be the most successful I guess.
Just my two cent 🙂
In my mind, making money from advertising beats other models I can think of because it’s the only one that doesn’t make it more of a pain for people to play the game. Since obscurity is probably the biggest problem indies have, I’d hate to do anything that makes even fewer people play my game. I share some of the icky feelings about advertising, but making the game easy to find and play is more important to me.
I’d at least take the money Kong owes you. You’re kind of already a part of that whole advertising system once your games are on there. You can take your games off of Kong so that you don’t have the issue in the future, but why refuse to take ad money you’ve already earned?
I really don’t see a problem with accepting money from a revenue stream that is there whether or not I participate in it.
I am not personally responsible for the ad clicks of the entire internet user base. It is up to the individual to become educated about possible purchases on their own. I am not going to turn down a resource (money) that allows me to keep doing what I am doing (game design), because there are people that fall for tasteless ads. I also believe that crappy and misleading ads don’t work, because in general people are not stupid.
Chances are though, the majority of those people clicked on the ads because they were interested in the product, and that benefits them, Kongregate and the designers of the game on Kongregate, which allows us to all keep functioning with the resource that helps us to keep making games.
I feel its pretty win/win/win overall.
As many other people here, I can’t disagree more with your opinion.
But more than everything I really can’t understand how someone can simply SKIP money that are just offered to you in a perfectly legal way.
And you really seem to not considerate that people’s mind are more and more used to react in a critical way to them; also if there is a ton of money which is spent through advertisement, it simply shows that people were interested in what was sponsorized.
Advertisers and developers are both happy by sharing revenue and so are users since they are able to enjoy the games and getting messages about things related to their hobbies.
Without advertising I wouldn’t even have heard about your works and countless other ones I’ve just had the chance to try in a promotional context.
Kongregate, as many other websites, even have some policy on banners so they don’t even feel too intrusive and in general I personally feel it’s way more immoral to use adblockers (as it is changing channel on tv during commercials) than earning money with them.
Why would anyone actually, honestly disagree with the opinion that advertisements are not cool? OF COURSE advertisements are not cool! Even marketers will tell you that. It’s why they spend so much money making them: because they need to offset the uncoolness with constant quantity! We shouldn’t have needed a movie about Facebook to tell us this!
I have trouble believing, “many other people here”, *cough* that any of you enjoy the majority of ads you encounter in your life. That there might be some exception to this rule who actually SEEKS OUT ads over standard media is possible – but improbable – and I doubt any of those people are here.
Now, advertising and art have honestly been linked for centuries. From TV to radio to print media to even painting (yes, there was product placement in the 1200s). But there’s a significant difference between advertising’s conduct in those arenas and its conduct on the web. On the web, advertisers are privy to (and often demand) FAR, FAR more detailed and concrete information about who is receiving their message, when, why, how, what income bracket they’re in, and whether or not they took out their wallet in the process. This is the only artistic medium in the world where advertisers have more power than artists. So yes, I am concerned and suspicious about web advertising, and so should everyone else.
With magazines and newspapers, advertisers buy their space and hope for the best. Mags had power because the only metric available to advertisers was the number of subscribers. On TV it’s even better! Stations have tons of power because advertisers don’t even truly know how popular a program is. The Nielsen ratings only account for 1% of only the American audience! They may as well be blindfolded and throwing darts with terrible data like that!
But on the web, ohhh on the web, there are few if any regulations, zero rules, copyright flies out the window, ethics are meaningless, self-serving double-standards are the norm, and they get to peek under your hood on top of it all. The power structure is completely reversed and they clearly love it here.
The problem all stems from a lack of information control. Programmers created ways to accumulate vast amounts of nuanced data about websites without even considering that this information could place developers and content creators as a huge disadvantage. If we want to see better, less irritating (and higher paying, heh) ads on the web, we need to start taking steps to re-hide this idiotic amount of metric data, and level the playing field a bit.
Superb article. In my view the naivity you mention is plain common sense.
If everyone took your position on advertising, the quality of it would be guaranteed. The only type of endorsement i think is valid, is for instance the enthusiasm you expressed for Unity3D because it comes from a place that is genuine.
Oh, and the “kamikaze” approach i think is wicked. Putting yourself in the hands of the universe to guide you where you have to be : that’s trust. And much less stupid than anyone believes.
Sophie should I not take the 5 dollars I made in advertising. I also got 6 dollars on wooglie. And 9 cents from gamejolt. UGHHHHHH
This is indeed a tricky subject, not necessarily because of weather or not Advertisement is good or bad, but rather because of people’s expectations of the web and the information found there. While living in the U.S I felt like I was constantly exposed to advertisement, I stopped watching television all together cause every 10min there was 5-7min of commercials. And eventually it just started to feel like greed, rather than money required for producing the material. But people expect the web to be free, and I feel it should be. However people will require a way to sustain themselves as long as an alternative business model is not found. Online News papers wanted to start charging people for their services online through subscriptions and micro-transaction. Some pulled it off, others experienced too much resistance from their user-base and had to continue filling pages with advertisement to survive.
So it almost ends up being a bit more fundamental problem in a money based economic system. Where the only way to get something for free, is to expose yourself to products for consumption.
There are several websites I go to, to learn about games. And I feel there is nothing wrong about marketing your games (within reason) If you have a good game, chances are there are loads of people out there who wants to play it. But not everyone are connected, and even though word of mouth can take you far.. just sending the information to websites people visit for the sole purpose of learning about new games should be just fine. (probably because I view this is information, rather than someone trying to push consumerism onto me) I would be very sad if I missed a great game just because I didn’t know about it. (One example: The Spirit Engine2 (wish I had known about that at a point where I could have encouraged more game development)
Personally I don’t think one should feel bad about using ad supported game portals either. There is an agreement and and understanding between the user and the website; They provide content for free, and you will get exposed to advertisement.
I would be much happier if there was an ad free alternative. Much like HBO and Showtime in the U.S. I would be happy to pay a subscription fee to Kongregate, to not see any ads.
I’ve rambled enough at this point.
You may have had some self-exploding arguments in the initial post, but it’s been feeling more like an open discussion on the subject through the comments, which I’ve enjoyed.
I think I love you.
In all seriousness however, I often posit to my pro-television friends: ‘If someone came to your door every fifteen minutes to try and sell the same junk over and over with a minor variation in salesman or product every month or so, you would be fine with it?’
Props to you and your stance, I doubt it can be easy to get by without commercial advertising. I’m going to play some of your games now. If I like them I’ll tell my friends.
Peace.
In my opinion advertising is just another method of communicating. Whatever media we use, we all have something to say or something to show. Sophie, every game you put out is an advert for your genius as a games developer and artist.
I use Google Adsense to monetise my ‘funstuff’ site. The person who gets most revenue from that is Mr Google. I’m not happy about having adverts and if anyone ever gets a micropayment scheme – such as flattr – to critical mass the adverts will go.
Hey,
Came to check whats new but looks like you have not posted in a while. I hope everything is well and your super busy working on some leet sauce game.
After releasing AstroNut 3D I kind of fell in conflict with myself rather I will make my next game free with adds or try to make a better game and see if I can somehow get people to buy it.
I am trying to break free from my “Job” 3D Artist, and just make games for a living but as it stands, It can not pay my bills.
I am totally with you, I hate ads and the beginning of a DVD ticks me off every time. THEY DISABLE THE SKIP BUTTON!. But then again its like you know that if you would just put iAds in your game it might make your life so much easier.
I am almost ready to release my next game and what I have decided so far is this. If I can, I would like to make the game free and then have links inside of it to my paid game.
Yes, its advertisement but I am far more comfortable with advertising game A inside game B than advertising product that have nothing to do with my games or games in general inside of my game.
Again, I hope everything is well with you and I hope you let all your fans know whats been happening the for the past 5 months.