The Gong Show

Kotaku recently reported that Ubisoft released a couple of hits from their catalog of games for free. Ubisoft is making money by embedding ads from McDonald’s into the games. There are lots of ad-supported games on the net today, but they’re all small flash games that are limited in complexity. This is the first I’ve heard of critically acclaimed retail games being supported by advertising alone. I had to try this out.

I downloaded a copy of Far Cry. For those unfamiliar with Far Cry, it an FPS released in 2004 that received excellent reviews across the board. It’s a pleasure to give this game a test run; I heard a lot about it when it was released.

As for the advertising, there are a few banner ads baked into the menu screen. Also, there’s one 15-second clip that plays every time the game loads and every time the level changes. The ads are unobtrusive; though I wish there was some variety to the advertising instead of just the same McDonald’s clip over-and-over again.

I think this is an exciting direction for in-game advertising. There are a lot of big titles in the game industry that could have a second life if they were given away for free, supported by in-game advertising.

Knowing the demographic of gamers (and their general contempt for in-game ads), I suspected that someone had already make a crack to remove the in-game ads. I was right. I’m sure Ubisoft/McDonald’s expected cracks like these and baked it into their agreement, but it’s unfortunate to see people already undermining this great new business model. I hope to see more releases like this in support of free gaming.