Hello, Just to chip into this debate, the ability to display banners while the game is loading, in my opinion, would not necessarily be attractive to advertisers or sponsors in the first place.
Looking at how commercial advertising generally works, clients request that their adverts are shown for a minimum (or optimal) amount of time, so the relevant information in regards to the advertisement (e.g. a brand name, slogan or other catchy hook) is displayed long enough for the viewer to absorb it. Secondly, online advertisers require the ability to click-through to their web site or marketing campaign. Due to the nature of how the game loads, all processing time is transferred to loading of the game, thus user interactivity is generally unresponsive (as a side problem, because of this, animated banners become an issue, too). So, mitigating problems that also come from having banners displayed at load time include that the time taken to load can vary quite wildly, and opening a web browser while the game is full-screen just to view an advertisement is something that isn't going to happen. Without these abilities, displaying a banner advert is mostly a waste, and relying on the user remembering about your product an hour later when they stop playing. That's not going to work. And also related, how many users actually read the MOTD on game servers? Maybe one or two, so that's not an attractive option either :) Lastly, to chip in on the whole "this isn't appropriate for kids" debate, kids generally are attracted to things that aren't appropriate for them - that's what kids do. Also, parental awareness about computer games is generally fairly low, and various governmental or charity campaigns largely get unnoticed by these parents. I'm sure if it was explained to parents that Counter-Strike involves killing and brutally maiming terrorists and counter-terrorists in a quick-fire civil war, things might not necessarily go down too well! And finally, to reply to Steve's comment about adding a cvar for a banner being "one line of code", I can see you're not a software developer :) -- Bart King http://www.bart666.com -- +44 781 219 5654 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve! Sent: 10 November 2006 09:35 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [hlds] HL1 banner 1. How many loading banners have you seen that would not be suitable for kids? 2. How many sprays have you seen in game that would not be suitable for kids? That's just two questions, that I feel the average reader of this mail could answer... Truly, the loading banner is very rarely (if ever) offensive. I have for one did not see any at the time that I would deem unsuitable for My children. We could go further, text chat in game can be VERY offensive, and perhaps emotionally affect kids (or adults)... Custom Sprays, Voice, Some custom maps, Oh and what about 'that HW guy is BULLYING ME' surely that's a case for court? Perhaps the time has come when Steam games should have an abuse button that can be used? That would hopefully cover Valve, in that they've done what they can about abusive user/admin/server. Once someone gets 50 unique complaints, Valve examines it themselves? There's enough control being put on us as a people, political crapness etc, we're losing real life 'features' on a daily basis, there's a better way! (Just from the 'feel' in Valve games, they aren't the type to 'give in')... I know this is kinda silly, and the banner doesn't MAKE the game, but it would be nice to see it back. Hey, if we're getting other peoples ads coming up on our banners, we should be getting paid for advertising £ :) $ ;) Maybe a NEW cvar just for the banners, that would be like 1 line of code, surely that would be easy to implement and update via steam? _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
