Posting Ads on Games
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Just curious if anyone has their own personal thoughts as player/staff about allowing ads for other games to be posted? I have recently had the experience of some games telling me that they don't allow ads, which struck me as unusual as almost every place I've ever played on I think has had a "Other Games/Ads" board up somewhere. Just wondering what sort of thought or reason goes into this decision. Drama potential? Seeing players as a finite resource?
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Generally speaking, swapping ads is fine. It has to be reciprocal.
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I think it can help drive activity as long as it's reciprocal. Even with stuff like MSB, I hear about new games from people I play with as often as not. Especially with how unreliable MUDstats has become (used to be my go-to for random game searching, but it just doesn't seem to update regularly enough anymore to be useful).
I've never seen it cause a problem, other than kind of annoying Guests who swoop in, post, and don't reciprocate on another game, but meh. There are bigger problems in the world.
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I think it is worthwhile to set up a sort of banner exchange thing on a wiki page somewhere, too. I know I planned to do it, if people had a little banner or logo and a blurb. I don't particularly care if anybody else does it reciprocally, but that's pretty simple and all they need to do is send the info along to a staffer with a link to a pic or logo if they have one (edit: or if they are a player on the game, they can just add it from their normal wiki login, no harm no foul).
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@TNP Yeah, I totally get reciprocal stuff. I was just a bit surprised to find "Nah we don't do ads, period" coming from staff on several reasonably healthy games I visited and was trying to figure out what possible reason there could be for it.
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I can see the point of no ads for other games. People go on and on about a game they dislike.
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@Wavert said in Posting Ads on Games:
@TNP Yeah, I totally get reciprocal stuff. I was just a bit surprised to find "Nah we don't do ads, period" coming from staff on several reasonably healthy games I visited and was trying to figure out what possible reason there could be for it.
Well when you think about it - it would almost be like a TV network showing a commercial for a show on another network. Why encourage a loss in ratings?
Personally, I welcome ads on my games coming from our own players as a way to help them recruit for other things they enjoy. It's nothing they couldn't do by word of mouth anyway. But it does always feel a bit weird when some Guest logs on to do a drive-by ad.
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I have literally never in my life responded to a driveby ad from some rando I don't know, so I'm always sort of baffled by people wanting to do them -- I join games because someone I know pimps them! Or because of something that I read on MSB that I like. >.>
That said I don't typically stop people from advertising on my games if they want, as long as it's reciprocal and they'll take my ad in return. Did have someone ask to post an ad and refuse to post mine once -- that was weird.
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I've always felt it's good to have a place for other games to advertise. Most of the time it's not even a competing genre, anyhow. There's also not a great place to hear about other MU*'s except here and advertising here comes with some... risks
The Lost Dominion has a group specifically for Advertisements (http://lostdominion.org/category/roleplay/news/advertisements/) with our 'reciprocity' ad that can be posted on the other game. We don't police it or anything but generally if we post anywhere we try to post their ad in return.
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Don't care either way. It always struck me as kind of weird that those posts tend to come from guests or throwaway PCs. If you really wanted to make people want to come to your game, wouldn't it be better to have a person familiar with both games there to answer questions/help get people connected? Drive by postings are like ads you see barfed on webpages back in the days before all the scary info collection that make the ads at least make sense most of the time.
Even when I had no life, I still preferred to try games that had SOMEONE willing to vouch for them publicly!
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@mietze said in Posting Ads on Games:
Don't care either way. It always struck me as kind of weird that those posts tend to come from guests or throwaway PCs. If you really wanted to make people want to come to your game, wouldn't it be better to have a person familiar with both games there to answer questions/help get people connected? Drive by postings are like ads you see barfed on webpages back in the days before all the scary info collection that make the ads at least make sense most of the time.
Even when I had no life, I still preferred to try games that had SOMEONE willing to vouch for them publicly!
I fully support games that don't allow ads from Guest/Throwaway accounts (char must be approved). I rarely post ads, but it's only when I've played both games, am happy with both, and would be willing to help folks from Game A acclimate to Game B and vice versa.
Because, yes, I like going places that have been vouched for. Totally makes for a better experience.
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As long as people don't try to trash the current game or actively try to advertise/convince people to leave and go to theirs (through pages, using general public channels, etc) it should be fine.
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I've never understood the vehemence against posting ads or requiring an ad trade. Sure, an ad trade is just good form. But sometimes to get word of mouth, you need people. An ad on a game, especially of the same genre, is the easiest way to get people. I get word of mouth and such but you need something going to HAVE decent word of mouth.
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I don't like people on my game reminded that there are other options out there. They are much easier to beat into submission if they are convinced that this is the only place they could reasonably expect to have funtimes, no matter how unfun those times may be.
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@Bobotron said in Posting Ads on Games:
I've never understood the vehemence against posting ads or requiring an ad trade.
Ditto. If you want to trade, go to their game, login, look for a guest-enabled Other MU* board, post to it, and call it a day. If they don't have one, maybe tell a staffer. Or delete the ad from your game. Or (my personal favorite) just don't worry about it.
