CS-Nation

Covering the future of Counter-Strike
advertisements coming to cs
CS-Nation: Additionally, are there plans to introduce ads into the single player world of Half-Life 2? Or will this be a trial run for the program, and future endeavors hinge on how well the advertising goes over in CS1.6?
Doug Lombardi: Right now, we’re just testing things with CS 1.6.
CS-Nation: Similar to the question above, are plans in the works for possibly adding in-game advertising to Counter-Strike: Source in the future?

(Question un-answered)

CS-Nation: Do you feel the CS community is ready for this? From my experience, it seems a number of the community wouldn't mind a chance to provide a little more feedback before changes are implemented, especially when it comes to any version of Counter-Strike.

(Question un-answered)

CS-Nation: Any change to the basic Counter-Strike formula tends to send shock waves and produce what can best be described as "community riots" that reach far and wide. I've experienced this first hand as a former mod at Steampowered and a staff member at CS-Nation, just as I'm sure most every Valve staff member has experienced via emails. How is Valve prepared to address these sorts of concerns? Will the ads remain if the community collectively voices their displeasure to the ads, or will you keep them in no matter what? Essentially, will there ever be a point where you go "alright guys, this isn't going to work" and you pull the plug?
Doug Lombardi: Community feedback will be an important input in to how judge the success of advertising in our games, when we do it and when we don’t, and how we implement advertising in games. Initially, when ads move into a space where they haven’t existed before, like onto a Web site that hasn’t previously advertised, they are pretty noticeable for a while. But as long as the ads don’t interfere with the use of the site (like those annoying ones which sit on top of the content you’re trying to read) they quickly become part of the accepted experience.
CS-Nation: How exactly will these advertisements be implemented? Can you cite any specific areas in maps where a player can expect to see an ad?
Doug Lombardi: The current plan is to put ads in a few different places. There will be some ads posted on walls in the game world, an ad on the scoreboard screen, and one in the letterboxed area of Spectator mode.
CS-Nation: How are you going to address concerns that the inclusion of ads are a form of spyware? This allegation has already run rampant with games like Battlefield 2142, a game that also features in-game advertising.
Doug Lombardi: Valve places tremendous value in its customer relationships. We wouldn’t ship anything to customers that we would not run ourselves.
CS-Nation: Beyond the advertisements, are there any other immediate plans for upcoming updates for either CS1.6, CS:CZ, or CS: Source?
Doug Lombardi: We just introduced the new dynamic pricing system to CS: Source, and we’re watching how that test plays out before we decide to extend it. Meanwhile, we’re working on some changes to the weapons in CS: Source (pistols, specifically) based on what we’ve learned from the pricing experiment. We’re also working on some new voice chat features which will eventually apply to both versions of the game. We’ll talk more about those things later.
CS-Nation would like to extend a special thanks to Doug Lombardi of Valve Software for taking the time to offer CS-Nation this exclusive and to answer our questions.

    

  

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