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The ad space on Dtoid barely supports a handful of writers, and I'm betting none of them make $100,000 a year as many IT engineers do. There ARE free ad supported games already out on the market... and they are not of the quality of Skyrim or Uncharted and the simple reason is that those games cost millions of dollars to make. If games were all ad supported, we'd see a lot more Angry Birds clones and a lot fewer GTA4's. If gamers are good with that, then yes, your idea would work... but the reality is that while there are tons of free ad-supported games to play, pirates prefer to torrent the big expensive games... and some people don't even mind paying for them rather than playing the free games.
Same goes for movies... there is tons of free web content, but people want to see a big blockbuster movie that costs millions. TV used to have good content too... but it too is ad supported and ads on TV don't make the money they used to, which is why for every episode of a show like Touch, we get a dozens and dozens of cheap reality shows like "What dress should you wear to your ex-boyfriend's funeral"... or "hairy bikers" - that last show by the way is real (and that's what happens when media becomes ad supported). :(
Same goes for movies... there is tons of free web content, but people want to see a big blockbuster movie that costs millions. TV used to have good content too... but it too is ad supported and ads on TV don't make the money they used to, which is why for every episode of a show like Touch, we get a dozens and dozens of cheap reality shows like "What dress should you wear to your ex-boyfriend's funeral"... or "hairy bikers" - that last show by the way is real (and that's what happens when media becomes ad supported). :(
I would imagine that a huge blockbuster movie would get more hits than something like Destructoid. Even if my idea wouldn't work for a blockbuster movie though, that doesn't mean that it wouldn't work for anything. There doesn't have to be one solution for everyone. Maybe there are many solutions.
@Elsa I was on my phone earlier. So I was only able to post a short response to your comment. Now that I'm at my computer I can reply in more detail.
The quality of TV shows is subjective. You can't use examples of shows like Hairy Bikers as evidence that the quality of something goes down when it's funded through advertisements, because someone else may think that Hairy Bikers is the greatest show ever made.
I personally am not a fan of the majority of things on television, but that has nothing to do with the fact that television shows are funded through advertisements. In fact, I'm also not a fan of the majority of music, video games, or movies that exists. I'm pretty sure that that's true of most people. This is because we're all limited by time(no one can watch/listen to/play everything that comes out) and our own subjective values.
While I happen to think that Two And A Half Men is a horrible show, All In The Family is one of my favorite shows of all time. I have no idea how much it costs to make either of those shows, but I can't imagine that the reason why I like All In The Family so much more than Two And A Half Men has to do with the amount of money that went into making it. In fact, I would guess that shows are more expensive to make now, and so it probably takes more money to make Two And A Half Men than it did to make All In The Family. So not only is the quality of a show subjective, it's also not dependent on how expensive the show is to make.
It's true that a game like Skyrim would need to make a lot more money in order to be profitable than a game like Angry Birds would. This would mean that Skyrim would have to make more money off of advertisers than Angry Birds would, and, in order to do so, Skyrim would have to get a lot more downloads than what Angry Birds would have to get. This seems like a problem, because Angry Birds appeals to a much more mainstream audience than Skrim, but you also can't forget that there is currently a huge price difference between Angry Birds and Skyrim. More people fly coach than first class, but only because first class is more expensive. If Angry Birds and Skyrim were both free, who is to say that way more people wouldn't be playing Skyrim? I don't know this to be the case, but it's a possibility.
Even if it isn't the case, as I said in my previous post, maybe this idea wouldn't work for everything. Like I said, there doesn't have to be one answer.
The quality of TV shows is subjective. You can't use examples of shows like Hairy Bikers as evidence that the quality of something goes down when it's funded through advertisements, because someone else may think that Hairy Bikers is the greatest show ever made.
I personally am not a fan of the majority of things on television, but that has nothing to do with the fact that television shows are funded through advertisements. In fact, I'm also not a fan of the majority of music, video games, or movies that exists. I'm pretty sure that that's true of most people. This is because we're all limited by time(no one can watch/listen to/play everything that comes out) and our own subjective values.
While I happen to think that Two And A Half Men is a horrible show, All In The Family is one of my favorite shows of all time. I have no idea how much it costs to make either of those shows, but I can't imagine that the reason why I like All In The Family so much more than Two And A Half Men has to do with the amount of money that went into making it. In fact, I would guess that shows are more expensive to make now, and so it probably takes more money to make Two And A Half Men than it did to make All In The Family. So not only is the quality of a show subjective, it's also not dependent on how expensive the show is to make.
It's true that a game like Skyrim would need to make a lot more money in order to be profitable than a game like Angry Birds would. This would mean that Skyrim would have to make more money off of advertisers than Angry Birds would, and, in order to do so, Skyrim would have to get a lot more downloads than what Angry Birds would have to get. This seems like a problem, because Angry Birds appeals to a much more mainstream audience than Skrim, but you also can't forget that there is currently a huge price difference between Angry Birds and Skyrim. More people fly coach than first class, but only because first class is more expensive. If Angry Birds and Skyrim were both free, who is to say that way more people wouldn't be playing Skyrim? I don't know this to be the case, but it's a possibility.
Even if it isn't the case, as I said in my previous post, maybe this idea wouldn't work for everything. Like I said, there doesn't have to be one answer.
I can't help but side with Elsa on this one. You're right that people will flock to the cheaper/more accessible option, but making the ad revenue streams the ONLY revenue streams reduces the incentive for a game like Skyrim or Battlefield to get funded/developed.
Basically, if a company can spend $2,000 developing some small, bite-sized game for $3,000 of ad revenue, they're not gonna bother spending $200,000 developing the big-boy games and risk getting only $30,000 back from ad space.
*I just pulled numbers out of my ass to illustrate the point.
That said, your proposed idea DOES take piracy out of the equation. There's no money in bootlegging something that everyone's already got free access to. And it DOES reward the developer directly. Makes sense, they earned it.
So it's got merit, it just has these serious economic flaws, at least when applied to big-budget projects like Skyrim. If we can find an idea that DOES work at that level, great. But so far... we just haven't.
And unfortunately, pirates can afford to be more creative than the developers, because they simply don't have the time constraints or legal hoops to jump through. That's really the core problem, and that's what your idea is for. It's down the right road, but it causes more problems than it solves, I think.
Basically, if a company can spend $2,000 developing some small, bite-sized game for $3,000 of ad revenue, they're not gonna bother spending $200,000 developing the big-boy games and risk getting only $30,000 back from ad space.
*I just pulled numbers out of my ass to illustrate the point.
That said, your proposed idea DOES take piracy out of the equation. There's no money in bootlegging something that everyone's already got free access to. And it DOES reward the developer directly. Makes sense, they earned it.
So it's got merit, it just has these serious economic flaws, at least when applied to big-budget projects like Skyrim. If we can find an idea that DOES work at that level, great. But so far... we just haven't.
And unfortunately, pirates can afford to be more creative than the developers, because they simply don't have the time constraints or legal hoops to jump through. That's really the core problem, and that's what your idea is for. It's down the right road, but it causes more problems than it solves, I think.
I didn't say that ad revenue streams have to be the only revenue streams. In fact, I specifically said the opposite.
Money is lost on expensive projects all the time as it stands now. There are plenty of big budget movies and games that don't make back the money that was spent making them. That risk is always there. It doesn't matter what business model you're using.
Money is lost on expensive projects all the time as it stands now. There are plenty of big budget movies and games that don't make back the money that was spent making them. That risk is always there. It doesn't matter what business model you're using.
