Some updates:

Installed both Prince of Persia and Rayman.  Fast, simple and easy.  I did need to set up an Ubi account, but that was quick and easy.  Fired up Prince of Persia.  There are some McDonald's ads in loading screens and such, they are a little annoying at times, but the ads don't seem to intrude on actual gameplay.

Most importantly, you can find the files in torrent format over at Gameupdates.org.  Much faster and allows for stopping and starting.  That's the way to go.

I tried Rayman Raving Rabids the other day, and I have to say that the advertising really kills the game for me.  When you're playing a series of minigames, and you have to sit and go through a 30-second ad spot after a 1.5min minigame, it breaks momentum.

There's a better way to do ads in games such as placing ads in the game world, and not forcing the player to take a break from the action.  I died so often in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, that if I had to go through a 30 sec ad spot after playing for 20 seconds, it would be enough for me to shelve the game and never play it again.

I think they just need to work at a better medium between the need to make ad revenue (which is on-going, whereas a sale is one-time) and the ability to keep gamer's hooked and playing.  A method that I think would be interesting would be to award players with coupons or other store incentives when reaching certain goals in a game.  That way you're rewarding, not breaking up gameplay, and encouraging patronage of the company being advertised.

Product placement would bother me a lot more, actually; it's enough to make me stop watching a movie or television show, though I don't recall seeing it in a game thus far.

Coupons sound reasonable, however.

So, I agree with you Zoomba.  Rayman was pretty much unplayable for me.  Some of the minigames were not even as long as the commercial.  That one unded up uninstalled. 

So far, Far Cry has been pretty inobtrusive, so it might not be too bad. 

If 9Dragons ever puts a McD's up, I am SO not playing!

LOL

Gid, have you been playing 9Dragons?  I downloaded it a bit ago, but never actually got around to playing.  I also tried out 2Moons, but didn't give it a go. 

What are your thoughts on 9Dragons?  Worth checking out again?

Interesting post - How is far cry in terms of the ads? I have limited bandwidth and don't want to spend the few days dowloading it if I'm gonna be bombarded with ads to the point of ruining the game....


Thanks!

Far Cry actually wasn't too bad - the Menu has a couple little borders on it with "McDonald's Dollar Menu" crap, and when you're loading a new level there's like a twenty second nonsensical thing.

All in all, it just made me want a double cheeseburger, but wasn't really annoying or in the way. If you want to give it a try, I say go for it. I haven't tried the others, but the ads in Far Cry really don't bother me at all.

It's just a bugger-all hard game . . .

FarCry has been around for ages (and still looks great and has better gameplay than a lot of FPS stories), so you can get it for cheap. Why put up with ads when you can just buy it, for ex amazon and you can probably do better.

$12 bucks is a small price to pay to enjoy one of the best shooters ever. :-/

Ad supported gaming sounds like a very interesting idea. I'd love to give one of these titles a try sometime.