Watching an ad would earn players another block of ad-free play time, called a “credit”
Farmville all over again.
Put ads in my games and I’ll stop playing your games. Simple as. Plenty of indies out there are more deserving of my time.
Please drink verification can.
15 years ago and accurate as fuck
I’m sure this has been done before. stupid web clicker city builder or whatever that if you watch advert you et more in game credits. It might not be exactly the same but surely not novel enough to be patentable, prior art. Or in this case prior twat.
Watching an ad would earn players another block of ad-free play time, called a “credit”
As a millennial, I’ve watched the rise and fall of many things. Never thought I’d see the entire fall of gaming and so soon following its rise.
Indie games are booming lately, if you think you’re witnessing the fall of gaming you’re simply looking in the wrong place.
Both can be true
and those indie companies will get bigger, become corporatized, and continue the cycle.
Just like the ones before them did, just like the ones after them will.
The good thing is that creating a game is a task a person or a small team can accomplish even with non-AAA money, and there are many people out there who want to create something. So even if some of those indies become corrupted, there will always be more people out there who want to build their vision.
And tbh, if from this moment on only crap came out, we already have decades of great games to play - i for my part would never run out of games until the day i die even if i stopped adding stuff to my library - i am sitting on ca. 37000 titles at the moment. If the average time to complete is around 20 hours, that’s around 83 years of continuous gaming, much more than my estimated remaining lifetime.
yeah, anyone can make a game. that game will probably be a slop generic asset flip game, but still technically a game.
to make a good game takes years, and money, and either knowledge or time available to be spent pursuing that knowledge…while also working an actual job to actually pay for all the bills for everyday life, in addition to what the game needs.
Yes. That’s how art works.
Most musicians, including many bands that fill stadiums and go on world tours, pay the bills with regular full-time jobs and do all of their band stuff in their spare time. It’s similar for artists, authors, etc.
A really good game takes years of hard work. It can take surprisingly little money; a small team driven by passion can be very efficient. But it does take effort. And sure, not everyone can be Tynan Sylvester or ConcernedApe or Pixel or Team Cherry; most tiny indie games aren’t genre-shaping mega hits.
But they don’t have to. There’s plenty of small games out there that are just good and that’s good enough. The idea of even just a hundred people playing one’s game and being entertained is enticing enough for thousands of developers to sink hours and hours of their spare time into.
Will there be a bazillion lame asset flips in the future? Yes, just like there have always been lame derivative bands, shitty overhyped artists, terrible indie movies, and drivel-slinging hack authors.
Just like there have always been shitty AA and AAA games, for that matter. 90% of everything is crap. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of gems hiding in between all the chaff.
(And while I’m at it: While making a game does requires a lot of knowledge, that knowledge can be acquired along the way. The original Cave Story was a one-man project and Pixel certainly didn’t start out as a professional programmer/artist/composer/screenplay author. Learning how to do all that is part of the fun for some people.)
I think it’s just the fall of the industry as we know it. I don’t think gaming is going away anytime soon. But I do think we are about to see a very different industry in a few years. It probably won’t look like it ever really has before. A massive indie space, with sparse few AAA titles.
Wealth doesn’t trickle down, but losses do. Sadly, AAA studios collapsing will affect indies’ abilities to get funding , so expect to feel some pain there too.
This is already being felt these last few years as many gaming publishers shifted to funding AI.
Capitalism knows no sentimentality.
good thing they patented this shit, it can die with them now
If Microsoft lets the patent sit idle and refuses to license it to others, it would be a very good thing for a few years. Let’s see what happens, though.
ROFL Oh hell no, that would get me to never buy a game with this feature enabled. I would wait and figure out if said feature were present.
It’s your 30th boss run. As you fuck up your sixth dodge roll in a row, the Troll picks up your character. He roars over the screams of your avatar as he crushes it’s ribs in its massive fist.
Then, as he raises you high over head, and opens wide to chomp down on your head, the actions stops. The Troll turns to the camera and smiles, showing off brilliant pearly whites. “Colgate is recommended by 9/10 dentists.”, the troll effuses over the screaming.
A text box appears.
‘To proceed, type the number of dentists Colgate is recommended by, followed by this random number “N”.’
I mean, if it just stopped at the troll saying “…9/10 dentists…” That would be pretty fucking funny
Most people would count Black mirror as a dystopian science fiction nightmare. Microslop on the other hand saw “15 million credits” and pitched it to their shareholders.
The patent system is broken. This is such a simple concept, even if a terrible one that sucks.
Yeah, I was wondering if they are trying to use USPTO incompetence to destroy the mobile gaming industry.
This is a patent application. Many applications are filed for terrible and/or fundamentally unpatentable ideas. Even by huge companies.
While ad free implies being on some sort of game pass (fuck that now as it is), I would sooner go back to board games before ever even considering a game with this included. Companies buying virtual billboards was gross enough.
Big props to M$ for patenting this so when they inevitably fuck it up, it’s off the table for others.
board games
Don’t give them any ideas for trying to make persistent ads in those too. Monopoly would ironically be the first.
me getting physical Microsoft junk mail when I try playing chess by correspondence
Why have you done this.
You’re trying to tell me the countless reskins aren’t just ads?
“to deliver last blow to the final boss, please watch these 10 minutes of ads. failure to do so will restore the boss to full health”
Oh, then wait and see if game has advertising tripe in game and make sure not to buy. Got it.
Reminder: mobile games have had ad = benefit for over a decade. However, this sounds like the reverse (get a credit = no ads or ad free time).
Roblox has had integrated ads for some time, typically diegetic ads on in game billboards. Some of these integrations go less noticed because of the parallel to the real world & they aren’t disruptive of gameplay flow.
Microsoft is welcome to try this pattern, but it’ll likely require developers to be heavily incented to do so. Given that MS just downsized, meaning they have less first parties & have rightfully angered some pockets of the game development world, I feel like their only option here is lots of money or force the loop. Forcing this loop will damage the total addressable market, unless it’s used for F2P games.
Long story, short: they may be patenting this, but they have a long, uphill battle to get this to work in any sort of paid, AAA game/product. They would need an amazing draw to pull people passed it, and a lot of their brands don’t have the draw they used to (see Halo Infinite).
Makes you wonder given the timing of announcing every tier of game pass will now include (very) limited monthly cloud gaming hours. I think I saw ultimate would include 15 h/mo. With yet unannounced pricing on how much an extra hour would cost, what if ads end up being their solution… 🤔
The shareholder will love that
Literally everyone else, though…With some of the shit people put up with nowadays in games, they would probably swallow this up too, in some capacity.
