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.
DJ Templar: Early this morning, NCsoft announced its partnership with Double Fusion to bring optional in-game advertising to City of Heroes and City of Villains. And, not surprising, this announcement has generated a lot of discussion on the official game forums, and the developers wanted an opportunity to answer some of the players' questions. So for the next hour, we're going to talk to three of the game's top decision makers about this new initiative, the reasons behind it, and what it means for the players. Live on the air tonight we have Brian Clayton, General Manager of NCsoft NorCal studio, Matt "Positron" Miller, Senior Lead Designer, and Lighthouse, Community Relations Manager. Guys, good evening, and thanks very much for joining us.
Brian: It's a pleasure to be here. We're excited to be here.
Positron: Yeah, I'm happy to be here.
Lighthouse: Yeah, thanks so much for having us on.
DJ Templar: Now Brian, it's possible that you're not as familiar to the players as some of the other "Red Names" that are involved with the game, so could you describe briefly what your role is at NCsoft?
Brian: Sure. I've actually been with the City of Heroes project since mid-2003, and worked out of the Cryptic Studios office, so coming up on five years with the City of Heroes franchise. And really, day-to-day, I'm responsible for running the studio and working closely with Matt and the other leads within the studio to ensure that City of Heroes is all it can be to our players, and just make sure that we're able to keep things sort of on-track and on-budget and hopefully provide the best MMO experience out there.
DJ Templar: Okay. And Positron, your name is actually pretty well known, but why don't you tell us a little bit about your role as the Senior Game Designer?
Positron: Yeah. So, I'm basically in charge of all of the aspects of the game that are going in: what the storylines are, what the missions are, what the new features are, what the new systems are, and making sure that everything that's in the game continues to work and that the players continue to have fun.
DJ Templar: Alright. And Lighthouse, your name pops up on the forums quite a bit, since that's part of your job as Community Relations Manager. But why don't you describe that a little bit more?
Lighthouse: Well besides keeping people informed on the message forums, we also work with our customer service team to make sure people are informed about what's going on in-game, and the changes that are happening to it, as well as taking feedback from the players and making sure that our development team is getting good feedback about all the sorts of different issues that we're talking about.
DJ Templar: Alright. And like Shecky said, throughout the day we've invited players to post questions on our web forum, and we here at The Cape certainly have a few of our own. So, without further ado, I'll hand things back to Shecky and we'll get the ball rolling.
DJ Shecky: Thank you very much, Templar. Alright, for either one of you that can answer, Positron or Brian, we know that you guys have a lot of personal identifying information on us. We know that in the past with other ad companies with opt-ins and opt-outs, there's usually some sort of private information sent back and forth. Is our private information -- our names, our addresses, phone numbers, emails, etcetera -- still going to be confidential to NCsoft, or is this going to be put out to any of the third parties, for example, Double Fusion itself for targeted advertising, spam email, etcetera?
Brian: Well across the board, in all of our NCsoft products, privacy is of top concern forus. And also, in finding a partner, that was also very important, as well. And so, Double Fusion will not know you outside of your IP address, and so that was a really big factor in trying to select the right partner for City of Heroes, and so your privacy is 100% safe with us, and that's about it.
Positron: And the IP address is used for regional advertising so we don't give you European ads when you're in America.
