Ad Supported Games

Haha! This is soooo funny..

I downloaded, installed and tested out the free version of Ghost Recon from UbiSoft, yesterday. I had troubles installing it under Linux. So, I had to resort to installing it in a Windows VM running under QEMU. After that, I copied the game out into my Linux computer and ran it under WINE.

Surprisingly, it ran fairly well on my crappy ATI graphics at up to 1024x768 resolutions with quality level set to high. With the newer ATI drivers, I might be able to actually run this in full screen.

Anyway, the game seems very interesting. It combines elements of FPS, with tactical combat and strategy. The player is given control of 3 different fire teams and can issue orders using the command map as pictured. The player can also take control of any fire team directly and play it in the FPS mode. It's quite disturbing to have to control up to 6 characters while trying to suppress the enemy with fire. Also, ammo isn't unlimited. So, targets have to be picked carefully.

The funny thing are the adverts though. I don't mind having ads, since the game was given away for free anyway. I guess that UbiSoft is conducting some sort of marketing experiment. There are many ways to suppress these ads and a quick Google will uncover quite a few of them. There are ads in the main menu, the mission menu and most annoyingly, in the command menu! Having to watch an ad before playing the mission is one thing. Having to watch it while doing a mission is quite annoying!

They are sticking these ads on every 2D rendered surface. I wonder how long it'll be before they start sticking them ads on 3D rendered objects too. Maybe each soldier on the team should have a corporate sponsor on it's back, that is only visible to other players. Maybe, we can change the mission objectives to corporate brand names. I wonder if the game companies will ever cross the line.