I'm not talking about making billboards sympathetic, i'm talking about taking the concept of advertising - which is going to be an ever more prominent feature of sim racing as it grows - and making it sympathetic to the game, rather than in your face.
Resisting and fearing change is a normal reaction. Hating advertising is also a fairly human reaction - particularly for intelligent people, so I respect what you are saying here.
However, you ALREADY drive past adverts in LFS, and advertising in LFS is entirely sympathetic to what it's trying to achieve.
We're just asking for the ability to customise it a little, a bit like you have been doing on your race skins Ian. It's nice that you can go to any server and advertise as you have been doing, but as the people paying for you to do this, we'd like to advertise too.
EDIT:
If it was possible to disable it then i'd like for that to be based on LFS' existing bandwidth detection system (like when starting a new game). I'm all for supporting 56k users on 32 car hosts - really, it's a great idea to have cars lagging all over the place, and if a bandwidth detection system lets those guys only cause serious harm to other racers on track - rather than catastrophic - that would be fine.
Dial up connections only really work up to about 15 players.
I like being the one to decide what is displayed on billboards around the track in my LFS installation. If I don't like a company or product type I like to be able to replace it with something more appealing or morally sound.
Forcing ads upon me without giving me a choice of seeing them or not will quickly drive me away from any game. Unsolicited advertising should be illegal anyway.
I'm not against product placement per se, but I sure as hell don't want it to be a server-side thing... I always hated that in the other games (ET-mods, CS-billboards and so on)... I don't want to spend hours downloading ads (maybe even of varying quality), just to find the server isn't what I was looking for and have to spend hours downloading even more ads... Should I start about HDD-space or bandwith-limits?
It would be ok for me if there is a master-server advertise, that may change every month, but would be for every server universally...
Then I guess my time in sim racing is going to be pretty short lived.
I'm not resisting or fearing change, what I don't want is ads that your operation thinks I want to see rather than what I _actually_ want to see.
And if I've painted them all to have pics of Happy Tree Friends? Even if I painted them as other companies, they'd be companies I wanted to see, not what you think I deserve to see because someone paid you to show me.
Big Big BIG difference! Logos I've added to skins are basically for 2 reasons, 1:> because it adds a bit more authenticity to a design as most race cars these days are plastered with ads, 2:> because I'm too lazy to create all my own logos as fictional companies, I've done a few, don't have the time to do everything. Plus, at no point or time have I ever been paid a penny for adding a company logo to a skin, that's a _massive_ difference to what you're proposing.
I don't ask for donations for my sites that benefit visitors more than me personally, I pay for the bandwidth, bought the hardware and share its resources for free. I could easily add some banners or whatever to them, and I have plenty of sites I could utilise for them too, but I don't agree in forcing people to see ads, so they never have and never will contain any kind of paid advertising.
You're also not paying for anything for me.. we have 5 (1 S1) team servers currently (FWIW, being paid for by one of our team members and not asking for people to chip in) and I could personally set up a few more if I wished.. so please don't think I _need_ to race on other people's servers
Regards,
Ian
PS: Sam.. I wouldn't bother.. I'm halfway through a script to hide your posts.. so you may as well save your time.
Well, you could start talking on that level, but I may as well stop you here and point out that, off the top of my head, all the billboard files in a single server are likely to consume less bandwidth/HDD than one single, low-resolution car skin.
But it should be... Simple question: Do I need it? Answer: No. Therefore, do not force it on me, and do not expect me to respond with anything other than reluctant cynicism to any suggestion that it might be useful.
Well, I think that's a bit unfair, as the way I see it, it's got everything to do with this thread.
Sam, if you say that you're against misplaced advertising, then can't you see that maybe advertising within a computer game is misplaced advertising?
And Becky, it's a little dis-heartening hearing you go on all the time about what's wrong with the games industry- that commercial interests have taken over, that it's all gone to pot etc, and then be in support of ads in LFS. That's quite hypocritical. It's a little bit sad, because I think you're great, and you do such wonderful things for LFS. But now it just seems as though you're so eager to jump on the commercial bandwagon, DIY spirit be damned.
No, we don't. It's something totally different at present. At the moment, they look like adverts. Please don't imagine for a second that this kind of trick reasoning will work. It just won't. It's totally beneath peoples dignity and intelligence that you even suggest that. Please don't.
edit: in fact, what's more below people's dignity and intelligence is the bizarre assumption that having a Logitech/AMD/Nvidia/Whatever advert plastered around some fictional track is going to somehow influence somebody's decision to buy that product. That's why this whole idea stinks. It's legitimising the idea... basically rendering human beings as mindless fools. Billboard advertising is a waste of money, a waste of effort, a waste of resources, a waste of people, and a waste of time. And potentially a waste of bandwidth.
Because you're either confusing the kind of advertising we're proposing with some other kind of advertising which we're not proposing, or some other such stretch. There is absolutely nothing misplaced about real-world billboards instead of fictional ones. You're just reacting to the concept of advertising in general, as a whole, en masse, as a global-capitalist-move-towards-world-domination, and you're not connecting, or are determined to avoid connecting, to reason. Basically it's a silly response to something so obviously not a silly idea.
I still think you're letting hysteria get in the way of reasoning. Becky's not charging for the software she's writing, and she's chucked plenty of cash at what's been achieved so far. Cash. Finite resource. Has to come from somewhere.
wth!? LOL! Who's tricking who into thinking what? "They only LOOK like adverts, but they're not, so they're okay"?? WTF?! LOL!
With all due respect, that's your politicized perspective and nobody's bound to agree with it. Myself included. If we did get a sponsor, it would be the sponsor's choice to invest. If they choose to invest because they believe in the product, that's their shout. That is the world we live in. And it IS the world we live in, and that's a fact.
I've fielded my improvement suggestion, anyway, and fought the corner. It's up to the Devs to decide if it's desirable and/or workable. I'm happy to leave it up to them to make the decision.. it's theirs to make, after all, and not ours
Ack, sorry Mike.. I don't know why I didn't see this earlier. I'll just clarify this point: As Becky pointed out, we love LFS. In our minds and in our improvement suggestion, there is no room for anything other than content that would be totally in-keeping with the spirit of motor racing and/or sim racing. The possibility, *in our minds* of seeking sponsorship that is not contextual simply doesn't feature. What we're proposing would *only* add to the immersion factor, by replacing fictional content with real-life counterparts and/or alternatives.
I was briefly a little frustrated with the ney-sayers in the thread, some that haven't bothered to read the content of the improvement suggestion itself, and the rest of whom are trying to leverage stupid scaremongery by trying to invoke images of pop-up pr0n and spyware ads within LFS, and all of that nonsense is wholly irrelevent to the topic.
The ACTUAL improvement suggestion doesn't do anything that automatic skin downloads themselves don't already facilitate. The only difference is that it's the server admins skinning the existing billboards instead of just the racers skinning their existing cars, and the whole point of doing that is to help servers recover the costs they incur in providing the servers through sponsorship, and to improve/enhance/add to their services. It's not remotely make-or-break, it's just a proposal to make improvements more possible.
has anybody got actual numbers on how interested marketing departments would be in advertising on billboards which are hardly visible from the drivers point of view ?
i kinda see why they would be interested in plastering a fps where you often look at the billboard at a right angle with personalised ads
but general ads which arent costumized to the user flying past his view at 200kmh at a steep angle on the edge of the screen ... im having a few doubts if thats really worth much to them
Perhaps, but the devs can not decide whether it would be desirable or workable for me. If the devs decided that unsolicited advertising was to be a part of LFS I promise to fight them tooth and nail to try and change their minds.
If real sponsors end up on a dds file in my LFS installation I don't mind because I can change them or leave them be as I see fit. But if I'm going to have shit pumped onto my screen and have no control over what appears on the billboards then I simply would abandon LFS. And I don't mean that as some kind of threat, I simply feel strongly against lowlife advertising and spam in all forms, especially when it is forced upon me.
Another reason why I would not like dynamic custom sponsors displayed upon joining a server is because I would like to see the LFS billboards become an often-skinned item in our sim. Currently the mapping of the textures are terrible and stretching ruins the artwork completely. I have proposed a system where the textures are a uniform ratio that will map cleanly to any billboard or fence. A few billboards might need slight remodeling, but the problem could be solved this simply without the need to add a higher number of textures than LFS already uses. Currently, a limited number of textures are shared between advertising surfaces of varying proportions. This saves resources (which is good) but causes inappropriate mapping, (causing very bad stretching) and makes custom billboards a less popular consideration.
I think many people are grateful for what superficial modding can be done currently in LFS, I want control over my billboards (all of them) so that I customise LFS for my own enjoyment.
Well, you do. At least in our case, we dug this idea out of the quagmigre of time as a way to improve our range of services by paying for new ideas and innovations that we cant afford to implement.
People enjoyed racing our servers because we offer something different, we put a few bells and whistles onto LFS that where not there before, all with the intention of enhancing LFS' core function - the racing.
Whilst working on the CTRA X-System i'm always asking the question: Do I need this feature, or is this just because I can? There is a fine line between implementing something that is useful and something that is annoying. It's easy to dismiss a suggestion such as this because it's core function, at the very heart of it, it's an annoyance, because we all hate advertising.
However, what it enables a big operator such as CTRA to do is a big benefit, and will go a long way to professionalising the sport without actually taking anything away from the game at all.
There are two types of project that interest me in LFS: Things that are seen as impossible; Things that will enhance the game.
If it's not a challenge or it detracts from LFS, then i'm not interested in being involved.
I wouldn't have posted at all in this thread if doing so did not further my own goals to further the game and be challenged by doing so.
Thanks for actually answering my question, BR, as opposed to just throwing faeces at me like an over-excited chimp.
I totally see your point too, even though adding bells n whistles like you mention wouldn't affect a slack-arse casual racer like me all that much
True. You're right. That's simply my perspective. I'm not in advertising, so I've got nothing to lose by holding this opinion.
But I think my previous point still stands.
The difference, and I think it's a significant one, is that nobody's controlling the messages in the game space apart from Eric. (And the guys who mod these things). Eric's not being paid to advertise Castrol/ATL etc (as far as I know) so it's not really advertising, per se. Or you could make the point that it's free advertising, possibly without the brand's awareness. Paid advertising gives up prior ownership of this game space to someone who wants to push their own message, you're selling game real estate to somebody else. In the real world this is accepted practice, it's everywhere. But an entertainment (virtual) like computer games, this is a totally new domain for advertisers. Up until now, the medium's been virtually free of this kind of muscling to control messages within games. But, I can see a time when this is no longer true. It's actually already here, but so far it's quite minimal, and only in a few games that I can think of. But, it's opening up a channel, and will only get bigger from here on if people just accept that advertising within games is all well and good.
Simply saying that this is the world we live in isn't good enough as far as I'm concerned. It's more like, this is the world we have created, and are creating. Right now, nobody's controlling anything within LFS apart from the developers themselves. LFS isn't a thing where you're supposed to sit down to and start to be swayed by all the advertising thats going on. It's simply a racing game. Sponsored advertising changes this somewhat (profoundly or profanely, depending on your own perspective) and turns LFS into a racing game with a marketing agenda. Now, you're supposed to sit down (according to the advertisers and as promised by whoever's accepting money by allowing ads to be displayed) and be influenced by all the messages that you see happening around you. This is what sporting events have become over the last how many years. It's not just sport, it's a bucketload of advertising as well- actually you could say pretty truthfully that the emphasis is on the advertising, because that's where all the money's flowing and that's it's true purpose. To make money.
If LFS goes this way, then it's following a trend. You could just say this is the way it goes. But it'll be the way it goes because the dev's have made that choice. Because they've created it to be that way.
Whatever. I'm not going to lose (sleep) whether they choose one thing or another. I might even come on your server from time to time (trust me, I'll hardly notice the ads). I'm just saying that LFS will be a different thing, with a different purpose, to the one it serves now (entertaining people), if the devs go with your suggestion.
The thing is, you wont notice the enhancements if this feature was not granted, things will carry on just fine and you can continue on in blissful ignorance of what might have been possible.
I know UKCT will continue to offer a range of enhanced & managed servers, i'm confident that the features of our new system will be appreciated by most and things will carry on as they did before.
One of the key problems in arguing for this is I dont want to give away our new 'secret weapon'. I'm working on something, that's as much as I want to say.
Now with the STCC I was able to offer product placement on the billboards in the broadcast ... nobody seemed to mind, and a good time was had by all and in exchange for that we had some nice prizes to give away. The problem is, it takes a broadcast to make that possible else the banners would be unseen.
Now imagine if you will, that without committing to a league, you could find yourself in receipt of a shiny new G25 or the latest graphics card, just because you where doing your hobby, and all you had to do to get this shiny new thing was play whilst driving past a billboard with texture B instead of texture A.
Imagine also, that CTRA are able to host a managed and enhanced server for the kind of car that you enjoy driving, rather than just a few tintops.
There's a lot that is possible just by having a few quid in the pot, we're not going to ask drivers for money to race public server and if we did we'd host empty servers.
We're not going to take the race 2 play route and ask for money just to share skins.
What we'd like to do is offer you great new features, but without money we cant do it, and we are fully aware that asking you for it is going to get us no where, but ...
If we can do all of this just for 0.25 seconds of your bandwidth whilst you connect to a server, is that okay with you guys?
OMG! I watched all the STCC broadcasts, but never noticed any product placement ads on the billboards. Was any for Ford? I broke down and recently bought a Ford product, after watching all of the STCC races, against all of my opinions and thoughts on Ford. Do I have you to blame for indirectly for swaying my decision on purchasing a highly inferior product due to subliminal advertising that I do not recall seeing?
I'd watch the STCC races again to check out the adverts, but I now fear afterwards I would fall further and make the mistake of possibly purchasing a <gasp> Dell or something!
Disclaimer: All in good fun there. Though I really never noticed anything different about the product placement billboards in the STCC broadcasts. It is still of my opinion that it is a complete waste of consumer's money for all this advertising because racing or spectating, you just don't notice it (talking advertising in general, not the specific topic Becky and Sam are discussing).
