This Is Not a Bug but a Game Feature-Chapter 261 - 176: Playing Games? Watch Ads! (Part 2)

Chapter 261: Chapter 176: Playing Games? Watch Ads! (Part 2)

Registration does not mean being selected.

Players can prepare their own programs, without limitations on type or subject matter. After registration, there will be a preliminary selection round to finally decide the specific performances for the New Year Gala.

After entering the performance list for the New Year Gala, all players on the server can vote for their favorite programs. The performers of the top ten voted programs will receive rewards from "Grilled Chicken Gwen" and Tianba Studio.

We are now in the preliminary selection phase!

There are 10,524 registered players. This is just an event being held in Zone One alone, which shows how popular this event is.

Of course!

There is a reason for this popularity: "Grilled Chicken Gwen," in real life, has unknown connections and actually brought in sponsors for the event.

That’s right, for this ’Don’t Leave After School’ Zone One New Year Gala event, the first place will directly win a new energy car worth 300,000!

Second place will receive a 100,000 shopping card and third place a 50,000 shopping card. Even the tenth place will get a 5090 graphics card.

"Holy crap!"

Such generous rewards left Chen Ba a bit dumbfounded.

He is quite sure these rewards have little to do with Tianba Studio, aside from providing a few graphics cards, Tianba Studio didn’t spend a penny.

"These are all sponsorships that ’Grilled Chicken Gwen’ got by himself, having nothing to do with us..."

"Is he quite impressive in real life then?"

"He probably has some money, but nothing too exaggerated. As far as I know, the sources of these prizes are actually not much related to his real-life identity."

Yang Dong patiently explained: "’Grilled Chicken Gwen’ made a post in the community, detailing the entire process of securing sponsorships."

Game partner!

This identity is the biggest leverage, ’Grilled Chicken Gwen’ used this title to communicate with companies, expressing he could provide an advertising space covering 100,000-200,000 people.

That’s not a small coverage!

A car company was convinced, after further understanding, confirmed that ’Grilled Chicken Gwen’ was not lying, that he really could advertise to 100,000-200,000 people in Zone One, and gladly sponsored this event.

Additionally, several mobile games like "Piggy Chopping Trees," and "Add People on the Left, Reduce People on the Right" also came to sponsor this event.

100,000-200,000 people may not sound like much.

But you have to know that on internet streaming platforms, an advertisement exposure click generally costs around 0.3-0.9 yuan.

By calculating this cost, spending tens of thousands to sponsor this event yields an exposure similar to advertising on short video platforms.

Moreover, the conversion rate would be higher.

After all, these 100,000-200,000 people are all players of the same game, quite united. Take the car sponsor of this New Year Gala, "Big Bird Auto" as an example.

Some community players have already expressed that Big Bird is great, and they will choose Big Bird when buying cars in the future!

Isn’t this far more effective than random advertising?

And as for "Piggy Chopping Trees," players in Zone One are also quite supportive, playing it on the spot, saying if anyone doesn’t play Piggy Chopping Trees, they’ll be expelled from Zone One in the future.

"I can understand, but..."

Chen Ba can understand this kind of normal business activity, but he simply can’t envision a game advertising in another game.

Zone One holds a New Year Gala event, the host cheerfully saying: "Thank you Big Bird Auto, Piggy Chopping Trees, Daren Shuo... for supporting this event greatly!"

Damn!

’Don’t Go Home: Marbles Storm’ isn’t it supposed to be a serious game? How did it turn into an advertising platform?

"What’s the issue here?"

Yang Dong thinks it’s fine, players get benefits, advertisers receive appropriate feedback, server activity increases, ’Grilled Chicken Gwen’ secures his throne...

This is undoubtedly a four-way win!

The advertisers, players, game partner, and Tianba Studio all benefited, with no one dissatisfied because of it.

Since everyone is happy, what’s the problem with advertising in the game?

"Uh!"

Chen Ba thought about it and realized that’s indeed the case, it’s a total win.

Tianba Studio only cares about server activity levels, ’Grilled Chicken Gwen’ just wants to secure his position, benefiting players to win their hearts as much as possible.

Players only care about the benefits, having someone offer money and prizes — why not?

Advertisers just want to promote their ads, it doesn’t really matter on which platform they appear as long as they achieve the desired effect...

Thinking this way, ’Grilled Chicken Gwen’ is indeed a genius operator, orchestrating it so that everyone got a satisfactory result.

"What about other zones then?"

Chen Ba suddenly thought that ’Grilled Chicken Gwen’s’ strategy of securing sponsorships and using permissions to advertise should also be applicable to other zones, right?

"Look at this..."

Yang Dong didn’t say anything but sent Chen Ba a link to a Tianba Community post.

Chen Ba clicked on it.

’Emperor Grilled Chicken scored many sponsorships and benefits for Zone One, what are other zones doing?’

"Stop yelling, the empress of our zone is already out brokering deals for sponsorships!"

"Bunch of losers, our Zone Five has already updated so much that the game announcements have turned into advertisement carousel pages! Play the game, watch ads, then line up to claim prizes..."

"Alright, alright! Turns out what I hate is not the ads, but that the ad revenue has nothing to do with me?"

"Spot on upstairs! As long as you would get a share of the ad revenue, ads actually don’t look that bad, supporting it afterwards would be fine either..."

Abstract, absurd!

After reading this post, Chen Ba basically understood what the other zones were doing.

’Don’t Go Home: Marbles Storm’ is clearly a casual nostalgic game, yet it turned into a junk game with numerous embedded ads.

The most absurd part is, players are not only not opposed but even highly supportive of it.

The more ads a zone has, the higher player activity there is. Zones with no or few ads, the players not only get angry, but also curse their zone’s ruler calling them useless, incapable of even securing a single advertiser.

Really like a quote from players of other games in the Tianba Community: Huh?

Is this how you guys play games?

Weren’t we here to play games? How did it turn into paying to watch ads? What the heck, do you all have a penchant for masochism?

"This statement is so accurate!"

Yang Dong couldn’t stop himself from laughing: "Everyone has always hated not the ads themselves, but the fact that the ad revenue doesn’t go into their own pockets."

Take TV stations as an example.

TV stations play advertisements, earning the ad revenue, and you even have to pay a cable subscription fee every month, of course, people would hate ads.

But what if the TV station would broadcast ads, and then distribute the ad revenue evenly according to viewership/number of times?

"Then I must watch the ads!"

At some point, Wang Kun, who finally got his microphone working, laughed in the voice channel: "I can declare that ads are a million times more interesting than TV dramas and variety shows."

"Exactly, that’s the logic."

Yang Dong continued: "Inserting ads into games and having ad revenue shared by everyone. Why oppose it? Isn’t this creating income for everyone!"

Chen Ba: "..."

He chose to delegate authority to players, letting them mess around initially to save on operational costs.

After all, an online game must have dedicated personnel for operations and maintenance. With the existence of Permission Beads, there’s no harm in delegating authority to the players.

Only he never dreamed that once players got server operation permissions and qualifications, they’d play it so extravagantly...

Inserting ads?

Something that everyone should oppose demanded support, simply because the ad revenue is shared, it suddenly became friendly and endearing.

Ah, really?!

Chen Ba thought of one question, whether the ad revenue would actually be distributed to all players. What if someone is tempted by greed and withholds a portion?

"Then there’ll be a rebellion!"

Yang Dong said nonchalantly: "Players aren’t blind, benefits are tangible. If one day the benefits decrease, just wait to be overthrown from the throne."

Moreover, Tianba Studio also holds the veto power and can activate "Celestial Punishment" at the first sign of such situations.

So this issue is actually the easiest to solve because you can rebel in-game. You want to hog it all? First, ask the permission of the tens of thousands of players in the entire zone!