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City of Heroes anniversary letter features fun facts, videos
City of Heroes devs are ramping up the PR push to celebrate the eighth anniversary of the game this week. The latest missive comes courtesy of executive producer Brian Clayton, who drops a few fun facts as well as a brief address to the game's faithful. Some of the more interesting numbers include 43 million characters created, 500,000 accounts at level 50, 300,000 super groups, and "over 15,000 costume pieces which can be used to create over 10 trecedillion (10^42) costumes." Head past the break for the full text of Clayton's letter as well as a couple of before-and-after videos. [Source: Paragon Studios press release]
City of Heroes producer letter details Freedom transition, Fall Player Summit
City of Heroes Freedom has been going strong for some time now, and Paragon Studios seems understandably pleased with the game's F2P transition. In the latest producer's letter on the official City of Heroes site, executive producer Brian Clayton states that "the Freedom initiative and Issue 21: Convergence have significantly increased our active player base and our revenues, and have invigorated our game with amazing new content including monthly Signature Stories, weekly items in the Paragon Market, Paragon Rewards, a kickin' Halloween event, and plenty more!" Clayton also speaks about the Fall Player Summit the studio held on November 19th. During the gathering, the team took the time to listen to players about what they liked and disliked about Freedom so far. In addition, artist extraordinaire David Nakayama hosted a Create a Costume Set panel, in which he worked collaboratively with players to create the Retro Sci-Fi costume set, which will be introduced to the game sometime next year. For the full letter, just click on over to the City of Heroes official site.
Brian Clayton on the City of Heroes Freedom launch
City of Heroes has launched its free-to-play hybrid model at long last, and all that remains for players to do is enjoy all of the options that City of Heroes Freedom provides. Well, and possibly wonder what the game's development schedule will look like from here on out, maybe ask a few questions about the pricing in the store, debate which player options have the most value, and so forth. Come to think of it, there are a lot of things to still be done. We had the opportunity to ask a few questions of executive producer Brian Clayton about what's going on behind the scenes of City of Heroes Freedom. Jump on past the break for a postmortem of the launch, discussions of what's to come in the store from here on out, and more information about what VIPs can expect from future updates.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Meet the PAX press
Compared to the other two City of Heroes events that I took part in at PAX East, the meet and greet almost seems like an afterthought from a news standpoint. And it's fair to say that no new information could be teased from the development team, mostly because they were far too busy laughing and chatting with fans. Not that any of the fans seemed too keen on asking big questions anyhow. It was, all in all, a big chance for everyone to relax, talk about what the state of the game was, and be pestered by me in the form of Mr. Not-So-Mild-Mannered Reporter. And it was a fun time, with a lot of different opinions and a very relaxed atmosphere. However much of an afterthought it might have been from the perspective of hard news, it was a great time for the fans, and that's what the column is really all about, right? So check on past the break for some of the highlights from the evening, not to mention my global handle. (Because people asked there and I blanked under pressure. Plus there wasn't room on the nametag.)
NCsoft and Paragon Studios announce HeroCon 2009 for October
Paragon Studios and NCsoft today announced that HeroCon has been expanded to a two-day convention and will be taking place on 24th- 25th October. This year's event, which is taking place in San Jose, California, is the 2nd HeroCon and offers a chance for fans of City of Heroes to meet up and share their passion for the game. As if you needed anything else to tempt you into attending, the tickets cost $79.99 and there's even a goody bag which includes a special con t-shirt and an exclusive in-game item.The event promises pre-con activities on the Friday night as well as developer panel discussions, live mission event and contests, social events with the development team and there's even a rather posh-sounding banquet dinner with live entertainment and an awards ceremony. As usual Matt "Positron" Miller and Paragon Studios head, Brian Clayton, will be doing a community address as well as the usual round of interesting announcements – hopefully including something about the Going Rogue expansion.For more information on the event and where to stay, check out the official site.
Super Boosters and beyond in City of Heroes
Massively recently had the chance to talk with City of Heroes executive producer Brian Clayton and Lead Designer Matt Miller about a multitude of CoX topics. One of the points we covered was the downloadable optional content, such as the recent Cyborg Pack.Massively: The recent changes in the studio, the additional bandwidth you were talking about: would you connect those to the changes you've made in pricing, with the additional purchaseable content? Or is that more a direct result of NC NorCal coming into its own? Brian Clayton: It's a little bit of both, to be perfectly honest. We certainly have huge plans, plans that go over the next five to ten years, for the City of Heroes franchise. So we certainly need to ramp up for that. But we also feel that by providing the Super Booster packs and things like that, it's a win-win in that it helps grow the studio internally to provide more things for our community, but it also helps us to justify those costs and build for the future. I think that's certainly a part of it, but there are larger initiatives again that we can't fully go into detail about, for the future of the franchise.
A new era for PvP in City of Heroes
Massively recently had the chance to talk with City of Heroes executive producer Brian Clayton and Lead Designer Matt Miller about a multitude of CoX topics. It was clear to us that some major PvP changes were afoot, so we picked up the topic and ran with it.Massively: So the 'multi build' feature sounds incredible for PvP, and it sounds like you're going to be doing some PvP rebalancing, which I know can get into fiddly details, but can you talk generally about what sort of rebalancing you guys are doing for PvP combat? Matt Miller: We're basically trying to balance it out and make it a lot more fun, not make it so one-sided where certain archetypes and certain powersets completely dominate the PvP game.
Brian Clayton and Matt Miller on Power and Responsibility in City of Heroes
Right now the news is breaking about a major change to the City of Heroes issue release schedule. The Mission Architect feature is being moved to Issue 14, because overwhelming player response convinced the developers not to release the feature until it contained a key element the players wanted: the ability to include customized allies and opponents. Issue 13, now titled Power and Responsibility, will include a whole lot more cool content and reach the player base that much sooner. City of Heroes executive producer Brian Clayton and lead designer Matt Miller were extremely generous with their time yesterday and gave us a lengthy interview, in which they covered a whole host of details about the improvements coming in Issue 13, the changes to the studio, and the future of the City of Heroes franchise.Matt Miller: So the title for Issue 13, Power and Responsibility, that has a lot of meanings. We picked it very specifically to make sure that not only were we conveying the fact that we're adding more powersets and giving players more power in what they're able to choose for rewards and things like that, but then the responsibility nature takes on the day jobs, that offline character advancement system, the responsibilities your character has when you're not playing.
Brian Clayton and Matt Miller: Page 3
Alternate BuildsMassively:There's a ton of new features that you guys are putting in here to go along with the leveling pact and to make up for Architect being moved over a little bit. Can you talk about multi-builds a little bit? Is there going to be a minimum level after which the feature's going to become available? Matt Miller: Yeah, I believe it's level 10. We're going to be experimenting with it in Closed Beta and seeing where's a good point to introduce this concept. Because it is a fairly complex concept and we don't want the new players to have to deal with it right away, at level 1! It's around 10 or 15, when you pretty much know how your character's playing, and an alternate build would probably be of actual benefit to you. Basically, what it is is you get to create a new character, the same level and archetype and powersets as your other character, and you can switch between them. You get a respec that doesn't actually change your main set of powers, but you level up that character, you pick where the slots go, you pick what powers you want, you slot those with Enhancements, and that's your alternate build. Massively: So basically you create the character, and he has the archetype and he has the power selections that he has when you make the character, but then you can switch what powers you have selected over the course of your career at a specific NPC, right? Matt Miller: Yep! Base ChangesMassively: You mention that base items will be seeing a change. We're wondering if any of that is going to come through with Issue 13. There were rumors that Issue 13 would be seeing a lot of base changes, and we're wondering if any of those are going to make it through, with this change to Issue 14. Matt Miller: One of the first things coming for base changes is going to be in Issue 13, and that is a repricing for a lot of things that supergroups can purchase for their bases. We're lowering a lot of the Prestige costs on not only rooms and base plot sizes, but for items as well, to make them more affordable. We have a lot of datamining now. We know exactly what plot sizes and rooms supergroups can afford. And so we're going through and we're making sure that more supergroups can afford those cooler rooms and those cooler base items, and things like that. "...we're getting rid of the Base Salvage out of the game, because a lot of the players were getting confused with the Invention Salvage, since they both get the same kind of message." And in addition, one of the things we're doing is we're getting rid of the Base Salvage out of the game, because a lot of the players were getting confused with the Invention Salvage, since they both get the same kind of message. Players get excited when they get Invention Salvage, and then they get disappointed when they find out it was only Base Salvage, especially if they don't have a supergroup or their supergroup doesn't really need the Base Salvage any more. So what we're going to do is we're going to get rid of the Base Salvage, and just make everything that's currently craftable in the bases from salvage, craftable through that Invention Salvage as well. Massively: So is that going to make turrets and other raid items for bases easier to get? Matt Miller: Oh yeah. Absolutely. The Ongoing StoryMassively: So there are some really great ongoing story arcs in the game, including the Rikti War and the Coming Storm, and there hasn't been a ton of information previously about whether there's going to be anything like that in Issue 13. Is there going to be a strong story component in Issue 13, or is that getting moved off to Issue 14 along with the Mission Architect? Matt Miller: The real big storyline stuff is coming in Issue 15! Massively: Any hints at all about what that would be touching on? Matt Miller: It's hopefully going to tie up a lot of loose ends that we've had hanging out there for a while now, while at the same time creating a lot more. Brian Clayton: Like any good superhero story. Matt Miller: Like any good superhero story, or episode of LOST. Side switching in the future?Massively: So one last question for Brian: we know there was a marketing survey that went out to players not too long ago, and there were a number of different questions, but one that we think players really attached to was the idea of players being able to switch sides. We wanted to know if this is something that's been taken up and noticed by the folks at NC Norcal, and whether or not you think that's something from your perspective that you guys might be able to address some time down the line? Brian Clayton: We're going to be doing more and more in-depth focus groups and research, and things like that, going forward, so eventually I think this is going to become more noise for the community than it is groundbreaking news! But what I can say is that having players go from hero to villain, and villain to hero, would nicely tie together what we've already done to date with City of Heroes and City of Villains. We certainly like the concept and the idea, but we're just not ready to talk about the details yet.Massively would like to extend our sincere thanks to Brian Clayton and Matt Miller for giving up so much of their time to answer our questions! Read what Brian and Matt had to say on PvP changes, and on the Super Booster packs.
Brian Clayton and Matt Miller: Page 2
The Leveling PactMassively: Brian, you talked about how day jobs are part of NC Norcal's idea of involving players in the game even when they're not necessarily playing, and it seems like the Leveling Pact is obviously a tie-in to that. Can you talk a little bit about that, from a philosophical perspective? Brian Clayton: I'll talk about it from a philosophical perspective and then let Matt follow up with the nuts and bolts of it. The one thing that we continue to strive for with City of Heroes is to pick areas where the MMO genre could use some innovation. We certainly have the best character creation system, and I would argue that sidekicking was very innovative, at the time when that was released. Even the further iterations, like our base creation system, were still very innovative. So we looked at another area of innovation with the Mission Architect system, and now the Leveling Pact. These are things that had been begging to be done in the MMO space for so long. Again, while sidekicking and exemplaring accommodate a number of player types, we feel that the leveling pact now accomodates another type of player. These things not only benefit City of Heroes, they push the genre forward. Matt Miller: It's definitely one of those features that came to us based on a lot of feedback we had from our players, and especially our friends who are playing the game. They came to us and said 'You know, I like playing the game, and I like the sidekicking system, but I'm getting to a point where my friends are so far outleveling me that they don't want to exemplar down and do my stuff because they've already done it before. Is there any way that we can stay more in synch?' "So we had this idea for the Leveling Pact: essentially splitting each character's XP gain directly in half and just distributing it across two characters whether they're offline or online." So we had this idea for the Leveling Pact: essentially splitting each character's XP gain directly in half and just distributing it across two characters whether they're offline or online. And we said: 'You know what? There's a system here. This is a workable system. This is really innovative, and this is taking a new step in sidekicking, making sure that you and your friend are always able to play the game together, and will always be the same level.' Massively: So basically the main character's XP gain is halved, and the other part is given to the buddy? Matt Miller: Yeah, basically both characters when they earn XP, they go through all the calculations for earning XP – how much they're supposed to get, based on their team size, what they defeated – every calculation possible in the game, and at the very end it's divided in two and each person in the pact gets their share. Massively: So the obvious question there, and Brian, this might be more to you, is from a business standpoint, this seems like it might be a dangerous ground to walk for powerleveling services. Because there's some obvious ways that this could be taken advantage of by those kinds of guys. Is that a concern for the company?Brian Clayton: Sure. I mean, it's absolutely a concern. It's a concern that we deal with today, without the system. Really, what we're trying to do is build opportunities for our players to play the games in the way they want to. We'll continue to enforce our policies, and do everything we can to mitigate powerleveling services and things like that. But more importantly, this is a feature that our customers have been asking for, and it's a feature that we want to provide them with. Arguably, you could say we're making it easier for some of these powerleveling services, but at the same time we're probably improving the grouping experience for a substantial amount of our customers. Matt Miller: There's actually less incentive now to use a powerleveling service, because now instead of paying someone to powerlevel my guy, I can actually have my friend play... and I'm not giving up my play time to some other service. I actually get to play whenever I want to on my character. And my friend gets to play whenever he wants to on his character, and we're both leveling at the same rate.New Story ArcsMassively: So for both of you: Issue 13 had already announced that you were going to do more Cimerora mission arcs, and now we hear there will be more Midnight Squad arcs too. Can you talk about where those are coming from as far as the overall story is concerned, and what you guys are hoping to get across for players on the mission content front? Matt Miller: Sure. On the overall story, we always had more story to tell in Issue 12, with both the Midnight Squad and with Cimerora. We just didn't have time to get it all in. When we hired on – we just hired on a couple of new mission writers, and we wanted to make sure that their training didn't go to waste. We wanted to make sure that they understood the systems they were going to be dealing with. And so we had a bunch of these leftover stories from Issue 12, and said 'Okay, let's get these in. Let's train you, and at the same time, get content in the game.' It's a win for us in training, and it's a win for the players in that they get some content. So that's basically what we did, and the story arcs are really fun. They give you more of the background to Cimerora, and more of the characters of the area, and more of the characters in the Midnight Squad, and more of the background on who they are. So it's a lot of cool stuff for the people who are really into the storylines. Continue to Part 3
City of Heroes and Villains united at last
NCsoft have finally taken the step of merging City of Heroes and City of Villains into one game universe. All current subscribers who only had access to either CoH or CoV will have access to all the features of both. All copies of City of Heroes or City of Villains sold at retail or online will also grant access to both sides. This isn't just a logical move, it's a preparation for future CoX IP-related revelations. According to General Manager and Executive Producer Brian Clayton, NCsoft '... have removed all restrictions that were created when City of Villains launched in order to make way for some really cool content and features we have in the pipeline. This is an evolution of the IP that lays the foundation for what's to come.'Among other things, this means that those remaining City of Heroes players who did not have CoV will finally have access to base building, which looks to be a major feature of Issue 13, as we've explored before. NCsoft intend the unified IP to open the way for more and better content, including confirmed improvements to Supergroup Bases and raids, an offline character reward system, and the Mission Maker system that was previously announced.
CoX In-game Ads: The wrapup
DJ Shecky: I think this is a good spot for us to collect our thoughts, and go over and make sure that we've covered all these questions before we start to wrap things up. What about you guys?Brian: Sure.Lighthouse: Sounds good.DJ Shecky: Gentlemen, I think we were going to give everyone a thirty-second wrapup time. Is that right, Templar?DJ Templar: Yeah, that sounds about right.Brian: I'll do my best to only take thirty seconds. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to put us on the air and talk direct with the community and be able to answer their questions. One thing we did want to confirm with everybody is that this is definitely a post-Issue 12 launch. We'll do some testing in the closed and open beta of Issue 12, but our intentions are to go live sometime this summer with the in-game ads. And I just really want to thank our community for continuing to support us, and trust us. And we're doing our best to continue to grow the development and resources to better support their game and improve the game, and we're just real excited about the future of City of Heroes, and all the things we have planned. And we look forward to the next few months where we'll be able to disclose a whole lot more about those plans.Positron: I'm happy with everything we've done today. I'm glad we had an opportunity to talk with you guys, and answer these questions directly that the players have had. I'm also happy with the way this has been received on the forums. I was kind of steeling myself for today, because I was really unsure of how the majority of the community was going to react. Because we have tried to make this such a friendly addition to the game -- allowing players to opt-out if they just do not want to see any ads -- we wanted to make sure that message was clear. And it was apparent from what we saw on the boards that yes, we did make that message clear, and that yes, we are going to reinvest all of this money straight back into the game, and that a lot of players are actually in favor of this addition.Lighthouse: And I think also looking at the piece that was really well-recieved was making sure that this really is immersive and adds something to the game. At the end of the day, City of Heroes and Paragon City, and sections of the Rogue Isles, they're cities. And I think we're working hard to make this come off right, and make it a fun addition to the game that people will look back and enjoy and kind of go, "why were we so worried about that? This is kind of fun!" At least that's our hope, and we're working hard to pull that off. And as Brian said, to maintain your trust and your support in the game that you all enjoy and that we love to make.DJ Templar: Well again, I want to thank all of you guys for coming out, and I hope this went a long way to clear up some of the lingering questions there have been about today's announcement. And I expect the discussions will continue on the forums for quite a while longer.DJ Shecky: Positron, Brian, Lighthouse, thank you all very much for doing this, and doing it with us. We'd love to have you back any time that you guys want to make any sort of announcements, or if you just even want to say hi.Brian: We absolutely enjoyed it. Thank you for having us.Positron: Yes, this was awesome. Thanks.Lighthouse: And we know that people are really looking forward to Issue 12 information, but there's still a lot more things to talk about with Issue 12. And thanks again to The Cape, and DJ Shecky and DJ Templar for having us on today. - - - So there you go: a full transcript of The Cape's interview with NCsoft. As we get more information about in-game advertising -- whether directly from NCsoft, through a third party, or via Issue 12 -- we'll let you know. Until then, thanks for reading Massively. Now go out there and kick some spandex-clad butt!
NCsoft answers your questions about in-game advertising
As promised, we have a full transcript from The Cape's podcast covering in-game advertising. Be warned: at 44 minutes of speech, the transcript is huge. To make it easier to digest, we've split the transcript into 7 discrete sections. So that it's easier to follow, the DJs have their speech in black text, while Matt "Positron" Miller shines with the heroic green glow of his alt's Radiation powers. Brian Clayton -- NCsoft NorCal's Studio Manager -- is a cool blue presence, and Lighthouse isn't only a Red Name, he's got red speech. So, without further ado, here you go: the full transcript of Friday's interview.
CoX In-game Ads: Opting in for reinvestment
DJ Templar: Gotcha. One of the pastimes with some of the people on the forums has been taking the monthly fee that each person pays, the current total subscriber count that's been reported, multiply that, and say "okay, NCsoft has got (x) amount of money. Why on Earth do they need more?"Brian: So more money equals more reinvestment, right? For anybody that's taken any Business 101, you take a set percentage of what your revenue is and you reinvest it into the product. The great thing about in-game advertising is we're not just taking that percentage and putting it back into the product, we're taking the entirety of what in-game advertising generates and putting it directly back into the dev team. And that's why it's such a huge win. So of all the math that you work out, I would say that most companies probably only put 15 or so percent, but NCsoft invests well above that into all their products, and to have 100% of the in-game advertising come back into the development team is really a huge win.DJ Shecky: We'll go along that same line. First off, if we opt out, do you guys lose that ad revenue entirely?Brian: We absolutely do. But at the end of the day, it's more important for us to have our players have an experience that they enjoy and they're comfortable with. And if that means that they don't like the way that we've implemented in-game advertising, more power to them. They should feel comfortable to turn that off. And for those that are comfortable with it, like I said, it'll be a win for all of us, and we'll be able to grow the game more quickly and reinvest in the game more quickly. And I'm really not trying to make anyone feel guilty. This is their decision: we're 100% comfortable. We're not going to encourage customers to do this in-game advertising. This is just a decision that they need to make on their own. And like I said, if we do this right, I feel that we're going to bring a little more life to the city, and make the world feel a little more dynamic than it currently does.Positron: And I think that reiterates our statement on why we want to do it. Obviously, if we do this really well, and the ads are immersive and add to the gameplay experience, then people don't have that reason to turn it off, so that onus is back on us to make it work out really well for everybody involved.DJ Shecky: Excellent. And also, somewhat along the same lines, when you see the ads -- and if you put your mouse over them -- are they going to be clickable, or is it just an ad that's just going to be there and static, or is it going to pop up a web address for you to go and visit that company's product?Positron: No, the ads are not clickable. We're only measuring impressions, which is the view time, and how much of the ad you're seeing.Lighthouse: So that ads should work just like they do now, it's a texture: you'll see it as you go flying on by, and it won't have any ... if you're teleporting, or something, and you click on an ad, it's going to act just like it would now, and not change any of your mouse functionality or anything like that.DJ Shecky: Alright. One more followup on that same sort of thought. Knowing that it's going to be a viewable item. I know myself that I've got a number of friends that have to lower the actual graphics settings, and a lot of the ads turn out rather blurry, and we can't tell what they are, etcetera. Until I got a new card, I didn't know what half the billboards said in there. Nowadays I get a good chuckle out of them. How is that going to affect everything if somebody opts in?Positron: I'm not exactly sure. Again, I can grab a programmer on that one. But I believe we do the same sort of draw distance thing, so if it's beyond a certain distance, and it's an illegible ad, then it basically doesn't count.DJ Shecky: Okay. That makes sense to me. Templar?DJ Templar: Speaking of the opting in and opting out, right now it's basically up to the player to decide whether they want to see them or not. And this actually did come up in the forum discussions today. Is there going to come a point where -- if the program is so successful -- that you're going to say, "you know what, the vast majority of players are opted in, there's really no need to have this toggle anymore, so we're just going to make this the default, and there won't be any more option."Positron: I've always been a proponent of the opt-out feature. I really strongly feel the opt-out feature needs to be there for our players to have the experience that they want. And this feature is not just for us, it's for our players, as well. They want an immersive game, we can give them ads. If they don't want advertising -- and there's a lot of players out there who just refuse to cater to advertisers -- that is what this feature is for. We don't want to lose them as a player.DJ Templar: Okay, so the opt-in feature is going to remain, regardless of how successful the program is?Brian: Yeah, that's correct. And I think Matt and I on that question were both looking at each other because we both 100% agree that this always should be an opt-in opportunity. And we're very comfortable with that from a business perspective.Lighthouse: I was going to jump on there to reiterate what Brian and Positron are saying there, that in the original statements -- if you go back and read through what we were talking about in the text stuff -- that's part of the reason why this took the time that it did, was to find the partner that would allow us to do the opt-in/opt-out solution, so that's a pretty central piece in the whole thing in making it optional. And when you hear it from them that it's not going away, you can feel good that it's not going away. Who changes the marquees in Dark Astoria? ==>>
CoX In-game Ads: The bandwidth/revenue equation
DJ Shecky: Do you guys have an idea yet of what sort of bandwidth consumption this is all going to wind up taking?Brian: So we're still running tests, but everything we've seen so far is that it's negligible. You really cannot see the difference. We've run tests on dial-up connections, we've run them on DSL connections, cable modems, and so right now, everything looks really positive, but again, that's where the opt-out comes in handy, that if -- in some rare circumstance -- there is some sort of bandwidth hit, they can opt-out, but I really do not forsee that being a problem whatsoever.DJ Shecky: Templar, I'm sure you have another question for them.DJ Templar: Yeah. If we could get back to the community-generated content for a sec, Tony V. from Infinity posted on our forums to ask about if it would be possible for you to go into some more detail about how it will be used compared to the revenue-generating content, if there is going to be like a set amount of space set aside for community content, or if it's going to vary depending upon demand from actual paid content, and whether you guys have worked on any ratios, or how that's going to work.Positron: Well, as far as I know, we haven't actually set any sort of ratios for that ... all of the community-generated stuff. We definitely want to put it in the rotation of the ads that are presented to the players, but I don't know what the ratio of what it's going to be is.Brian: And I expect actually that ratio will be changing. Depending on where our official ad pipeline is at, at times you'll see a lot more community stuff being run, and other times you'll probably see more paid for being run, but you'll always see community ads being run in some capacity.DJ Templar: Okay. Are the existing in-game ads -- the Chris Jenkins, the City of Gyros, and that sort of thing -- are those going to be going away if you're opted into the new initiative?Positron: No, they'll be put in the rotation with everything else.DJ Templar: Oh, okay. One of the questions that I've been asked a lot -- especially with regard to the community content -- is "oh my God, how much is this going to cost?" Is there going to be a different price structure for player content as opposed to corporate content, or is that a yet-to-be-determined sort of thing?Brian: So we're still working all these things out. My intention is not to charge from a community perspective for those sorts of things. But I can certainly see where people want to post anniversaries or things like that, and certainly you need a barrier to entry to do some things like that. We'll look at it, but certainly the intention here with in-game advertising is we'll make some revenue here from the advertisers, we'll put it directly into the development team to further improve the product, and all the community fun things that we have planned will just sort of be additive fun things at the end of the day.Lighthouse: And I think one other thing to mention with anything that's coming in through the community is going to go through the same review process that the regular ads are going to be going through the team here and making sure that everybody has buyoff that this is an immersive thing that looks good in the game, it's appropriate for what we want to have out there on these billboards, so it'll always fit.DJ Shecky: How often will the ads be rotating? If you zone out, and then zone back in two minutes later, are they going to be different? Or if you turn around, are you going to see a different ad? Or are two people going to look at the same billboard and see two different ads?Positron: I'm actually not exactly sure on how that works. I can grab a programmer here in a minute -- probably in the next break -- and get you a better answer on that one. But I believe it's served per-client, so different clients will possibly see different ads, and we also ... Double Fusion makes sure that you don't see the same ad over and over and over and over again, so there will be a variety so you won't just see the same single ad on every billboard in the zone.DJ Templar: Speaking about revenue, the initial announcement states that all the all the revenue generated by ad sales in this program go towards City of Heroes development, City of Villains development, and there's been some people that say "well sure it is, it's being used for all sorts of that we have no way of knowing." So if you could, just reiterate for us where this money is going and how it's being used.Brian: I'd be happy to. So, we certainly don't want ads in our game for the sake of just having ads, right? And so it was very important that we were able to sort of work with the executive management within NCsoft to ensure that every dollar that is coming from in-game advertising be contributed directly back to the development team. And what I like about this is that this is really one of the few -- maybe the only -- opportunity for players to directly contribute to the development team's budget without actually having to open their wallet. And so, if we do everything right, and we implement things in a way that is seamless and immersive and additive to the overall feel of our current zones, then I think this is going to be a big win for the community and for the dev team, and we're going to have a lot more resources to work with, hopefully, and bring you guys cooler and more content.Positron: Yeah, I would love to do like I did with the wedding pack and be able to point out features that the advertising revenue has bought you guys. And we'll see exactly how that is going to work out in the future.DJ Templar: I think there was something on the forums about how revenue from the wedding pack helped make the VEATs a reality. Is that accurate?Positron: Accurately, what happened was we had originally scheduled them for Issue 13, but because of the wedding pack sales, we were able to fast-track them, and put some more resources into them, and get them into Issue 12. Breaking down the revenue equation ==>>
CoX In-game Ads: Selective placement, self-promotion
DJ Shecky: Somebody posted this one up on the Cape forums. Obviously there's a limited amount of places that ads can be placed in the Rogue Isles, etcetera. Are you going to be adding in more billboards? For instance, one of our DJs actually mentioned in our private chat, and I saw mentioned it out on the board, Steel Canyon you can see with a lot more billboards put in it, whereas some place like Croatoa doesn't really have space for billboards, etcetera. Is there an idea to go ahead and make more ad space?Positron: As we see how the revenues coming in from this, if we need to add more ad space, we will add billboard space, but we will only add it in logical places. It's not like you're going to be right in front of City Hall, on either side of the entrance door will be 90 foot high billboards. That's not going to happen. We may add billboards to the tram stations, because there currently is no real advertising space in the tram area, so if we're going to add stuff, it's going to be in a logical place, and it's not going to be obtrusive. The whole thing with the ads is immersive and unobtrusive.DJ Templar: As far as the ad placement goes, are we going to see ads displayed during the loading and splash screen?Brian: We have no plans to do that right now.DJ Templar: Okay. And also, kind of along the lines of placement -- and this kind of dovetails into the immersion aspect, as well -- City of Villains, the Rogue Isles, is in some places, a very dilapidated, rather dingy, darker feel, and it was designed deliberately so, so it has more of a decay going on in the environment, and some people are wondering, "well, this is also supposed to be like a dictatorial zone, this isn't really a place of freedom and expression and that sort of thing." What kind of adjustments are going to be made as far as the placement of certain ads to retain that overall feel of the Rogue Isles?Positron: So I know that Ken Morse, our Art Director, really has strong feelings on this, in that he wants the ads to match the zone that they're in. And if we need to dirty up an ad texture in order for it to match an area, that's something that we will bring to the advertiser and say, "you want to advertise, but we need to do this to your ad. Are you okay with that?" We don't want a nice big bright ad in run-down parts of Mercy. That breaks immersion, it becomes obtrusive, it goes outside the realm of what we're trying to do.DJ Templar: This is kind of an aside, but are you going to allow currency sales and gold farming companies to advertise?Positron: I have sign-off on the ads, as does Ken, as does Brian, and Ross, and I say no to any sort of real-money transaction companies right off the bat.Brian: I agree.DJ Templar: We'd asked some technical issues, and I believed it was Matt -- if I'm not mistaken -- who went to hunt down a programmer there to get some answers. And I think it was about some texture-related things, as well as how frequently or how often the ads would refresh. Were you able to get some answers on that?Positron: Yeah. Basically, the answer to the texture question was correct that I gave. It does affect the ads, so if you lower your texture quality, you will see lower quality texture on the ads, so you don't need to worry about performance hit because of that. The other question was who sees what and when, and whether players will see different ads, different players. Since it's all client-side, yes ... depending on how we're serving the ads, it is possible that players will see different ads in the same ad space on different computers. It's all being served by the Double Fusion servers, and so they just basically make sure you're seeing a fresh ad, and getting you that. And we do load the ads on zone loads, so once an ad is an ad, it's an ad for the entire time that you're in the zone. But upon rezoning -- you know, going into the mission, exiting out, reloading the zone -- it may change.Lighthouse: One thing to kind of add on that in talking with the tech guys earlier, we were talking about bandwidth issues and performance issues, anybody who's listening to what Matt was just saying might think "oh, I'm going to have to do more stuff when I'm loading in a zone." One thing to reiterate is that the textures of the ad are cached on your machine, so you're not going to have to reload them, per se, or use more bandwidth, or download them.DJ Templar: I think you said that if people are opted out, then that download does not occur, period. Is that correct?Positron: Correct.Lighthouse: Yeah.DJ Shecky: Okay. We actually got a question in here, and I'm going to paraphrase it so it makes a little bit more sense for the general public. We know that we've got a large user base, especially age-wise. Some of the older people might own their own business, etcetera. Would they be contacting you guys, or Double Fusion, if they wanted to actually opt-in their companies, their actual, physical companies, for marketing in-game.Brian: Double Fusion handles all of that, and I believe that, in the press release, their contact info is right on that press release, so they can talk to them directly and see if they can work something out with them. Quis custodiat ipsos custodes Who's keeping an eye on the content? ==>>
CoX In-game Ads: How to make 'em, where to see 'em
DJ Shecky: Alright. And as a followup to that, I had a couple of people -- namely one of our other DJs -- had come up with the thought of "is there going to be a separate little piece of software that's going to be installed for targeting the advertisements?"Brian: There is an SDK installed, but it's not gathering any personal info. It's really just there to serve the ads, to cache the ads, so that it has little to no impact on the bandwidth that's being used, and that's really all that package does.DJ Shecky: Excellent. Templar, why don't you go ahead and ask your questions.DJ Templar: Kind of in line with the data collection question, how is this being tracked in terms of ... is it literally like a billboard in real life, where someone who pays for space really doesn't have a clear idea of how many people who're seeing it, or is there going to be something in place that indicates how much traffic, like nearby traffic, a particular advertisement gets?Brian: Well certainly it's handled differently by different advertisers, and with different products. Certainly, in the MMO space, we have a few more advantages to sort-of real-time track who's viewing billboards than we do in offline packages, so we will look at how much of the ad is shown on a screen, how long it's looked at, those sorts of things. But again, that's sort of looked at as an aggregate number, not necessarily on a per-customer number.DJ Templar: Okay. Shecky, what do you have?DJ Shecky: Alright. I've seen this mentioned on just about every forum on the City of Heroes site, and on our own forums, and that's with the idea of player advertisements for player supergroups and etcetera. What's the cost going to be, and how would people go about sending you guys doing it ... how would they get their ads placed onto these billboards?Positron: So the players will be able to make their own ads and send them to us, and in the beta test we're going to be using a lot of player-generated ads that we get. And then, as we move out of beta and move into the live stuff, we'll most likely have contests where players can submit ads, so we'll definitely pick winners from that and get their stuff. And I believe on our forums is a link to the size and color limitations that we have for the advertisements.DJ Templar: Yeah, I saw that.Lighthouse: On the player submissions form, there's the details, the specifications and the ratios for the pieces that can be submitted, as well as the submission address to send them in.DJ Templar: I've been trying my best to follow the main thread on the official boards discussing this announcement, and one of the issues that's been brought up is ... if it starts with the in-game billboards, where might it go from there? And some people have mentioned the slippery slope concept that this is simply the beginning of a much greater ad presence in the game. What sort of plans are there to expand beyond using current billboards?Brian: I wish I knew the answer to that question. The truth is that we're just looking at swapping out the current ad placements -- our fictitious ad placements with real-world ads -- certainly we could look at other opportunities and find other interesting ways to make the game a little more fun through advertising, but really that's not where our heads are right now. We want to take step 1, we want to look at how this is received by the community. We want to make sure that we can make good, and that we can ensure this is immersive, and not intrusive, and I think once we have a stable platform for that, we'll open up some ideas to the community to what else they might be interested in. But right now, the model that's proven is just flat-texture billboards working in online immersive worlds, and that's where we'll start. I certainly am very open to the fact that that concern would be out there within the community, but I hope that we're continuning to build trust with the community in the fact that we're really up front with our business initiatives. When we comment about features that are going into the game they actually do make it into the game. A lot of times that may be received as not giving out enough information, but we really want to be up-front with our community, be as honest and transparent as we possibly can, and hopefully continue to win their trust and confidence in the way that we want to grow the game.Positron: I think that our players have a valid concern with where we're going to go with this, but they also should look to us to ... trust us, because we want to make the game immersive, and not exploitive. We don't want the players to be bombarded by ads every which way they turn. We want it to be a nice experience for them, not a turn-off.Brian: And I should also say that going forward, we expect that anything that we implement with advertising revenue attached to it we fully expect to be an opt-in or an opt-out situation. So players will have the ability to pick and choose what level they want to participate in with these initatives.DJ Templar: Would any game content be linked to any of the advertisements, in the sense that -- if they did opt out of seeing the ads -- they would miss out on any part of the game experience?Positron: No. We don't have any plans for that.DJ Templar: Okay. What about the zones that lack billboards? I think ... I'm pretty sure that Croatoa, for instance, doesn't have any billboards, but I could be wrong. Is that simply going to be an ad-free zone, or are there going to be some modifications made to accomodate, or how is that going to work?Positron: Initially it's going to be an ad-free zone, but we'll see how things are going, and if the players seem to like the way the ads are working, and it's not really immersion-breaking, and they're working for players, then we can start adding some billboards in logical places in the zones that don't have them.DJ Shecky: Something I saw a lot of people mentioning throughout the day today is on the opting out. There were a lot of questions about opting out, from whether you can opt out and opt in at will -- say you want to try them, then you decide you don't want them, then you decide you do want them -- are you going to be able to switch in and out with that, and when you do opt out, does it just prevent the ads from being seen, or does it stop everything from downloading to the actual game client?Brian: So the current plan right now is to let people opt-in and opt-out at will. And if you're not opted in for the in-game advertising, you'll currently see the same fictitious billboards that you currently experience in the game.Lighthouse: And I can comment further on that. I was talking with our tech lead about that and actually answered this question on our forums earlier today, in that when you opt out, it actually is bypassing all of the ... the game client is not using the Double Fusion code and technology, so ... really, and they're very conscious about bandwidth and performance usages, so from that standpoint, there wouldn't be any extra bandwidth going on, because it's not even going through that code path. Balancing CoS increases with QoS needs ==>>
CoX In-game Ads: Content control
DJ Templar: One of the concerns that some people have whenever advertisers have a financial stake into a particular company or a particular venture is how much control they can exercise with their wallet, basically. And some people on the forums have expressed concerns that, in a way, we would be giving some of these advertisers power over the game. That if there was some particular content that they didn't like, or if they objected to something, that they would be able to basically wield their stick and affect change in the game world. And I was just wondering how you guys would address that if advertisers did object to a particular piece of game content.Brian: No. They have no say in any of these ads. And, frankly, if they're not happy with the way something is performing, we're happy to work with them -- they are a partner in this opportunity -- but at the end of the game, the most important thing is immersion. And I think you'll just hear that over and over again, and you guys will see it once we get all this plugged into the game and you can see it for real. But in no way can they have any impact on our players' game experience, or really the overall immersion and feel of the game.Lighthouse: And I think, just to pile on with that, there is also the creative control, and what's going in to the game, because I've seen that question tied in here, as well. And I think to reiterate what Brian is saying, they're not going to be ... no advertiser is going to be saying "oh, well, you can't put Psi Blasters in, why would you ever do that?" So no worries on that side.DJ Templar: Speaking of advertisers, you did mention that -- because City of Heroes/City of Villains carries a Teen Rating by the ESRB -- certain more mature advertisers such as tobacco companies and alcohol and that sort of thing wouldn't be included. Do you have -- I know this is early days, yet -- but do you have any ideas about what sort of companies you would be especially interested in having in the game, or is that not something that you guys have really touched on yet?Positron: It's not really something that we've touched on yet. We want to see what advertisers are brought to us by Double Fusion, so that we can basically choose what's going into the game.Brian: As far as preference, I'm less worried about the preference about the actual advertisers than I am about the content that they provide us to show in the game. Again, our focus is making sure we don't break immersion, and that we really support the look and feel that we currently have going on in the game.DJ Templar: So -- and this is certainly speculation at this point -- is it conceivable to see advertisements for movies, or even for other games, for other computer games?Brian: So again, we control that content. I don't have interest, really, in promoting any games outside of the NCsoft family, but certainly we would consider movies and some of those opportunities. I can go down the list: cars, automobiles, beverages, you know, those sorts of things. We'll see what we're presented with, and I think -- when we get a good sense of the types of advertisers that are interested -- we'll be more than open in sharing with the community the options that we're looking at. And, of course, they'll see them in-game, and we'll learn sort of through who's opting in and who's opting out what's working and what's not. But like I said, I think is pretty much a situation of either you're not bothered by in-game ads, or you are. And ... I have enough confidence in Matt, and Ken, and the team here to really ensure that we're keeping to the integrity of what City of Heroes has been up to this point. And we're not going to do anything to push people from the creative perspective into opting out. This is just really a personal preference, and we're happy to allow our customers to make this decision.DJ Shecky: We know that it's going to opt-out, that we have to go in and turn off the option. Is this going to be ... I'm assuming, initially, it's going to be on a per-character basis. And if it is, is there going to be any way down the line to make it on a per-account basis.Positron: So one of the Quality of Life features that we're trying to get in for Issue 12 is to give you the ability to save all of your preferences locally, onto your hard drive, and then reload them per-character. And, of course, your opt-in/opt-out would be one of those preferences. We're trying very hard to make sure that this makes it into Issue 12, but I can't guarantee anything. So there, I gave you my little Issue 12 tidbit.Lighthouse: So I'm writing that down as "future promises we must keep."Brian: Whoops!Lighthouse: But of course Matt already has that.Lighthouse: There was a question earlier that we were talking about, during the break, about animated ads. Whether or not they were static or ... yeah.DJ Templar: Yeah, is there going to be a possiblity of having animated ads: either in the form of rotating billboards that you see nowadays, or even, say, something along the lines of a movie marquee, or something like that?Positron: So initially we're just going to do the static image ads, and the animated texture stuff is actually very difficult for us to do. Not going to say impossible, and I'm not going to say that it's worth it or not for us to do. It's something we're going to look at in the future if we need to go there. Do the developers have any final thoughts? Stay tuned ==>>
The Cape envelops in-game advertising
Yesterday, The Cape Radio -- specifically DJs Templar and Shecky -- took the time to interview Brian Clayton, the General Manager of NCsoft NorCal studio, Matt "Positron" Miller, the Senior Lead Designer for City of Heroes, and Lighthouse, City of Heroes' Community Relations Manager. While the podcast is available immediately on The Cape's web site, we'll also have a transcript of the session available for you tomorrow. To whet your interest, however, here are some important takeaways from yesterday's session:
