Originally posted by Count Thiccula:

Originally posted by FelipeVinhao:

Wondering how many time people spend with their eyes locked to screen, playing or discussing this stuff in video game, if they actualy remember what family is.

Probably a similar number as those who spend most of their kids' childhoods on the road.

Exactly my point. The only difference between them is that the one on road is trying to give their kids a better life than their ever had - no matter if for a big company or on their own. And the other are kids wasting their times and parents' earnings.

Originally posted by jeslol48:

Lol, go OTR for 3-4 weeks. Count how many billboards ya don't like. When ya get home and see your family, ask yourself: "What billboards? I was too busy thinking about important stuff." It's just a game, go get a Class A w/ Haz-Mat & enjoy it.

I have a friend who just got a class A with haz-mat endorsement. (He also enjoyed playing ATS.)
He worked a year for a trucking company and then quit because of how they treated him. And he's having trouble finding a company that either isn't outright known for treating their employees terribly, or isn't lying like crazy on the job descriptions/compensation. That the last place he worked would on the surface say "never drive when you feel it's unsafe" but would absolutely give him **** if he exercised the right to that decision, and that this is normal in the trucking industry.

And that he's having trouble finding anywhere that actually has decent at-home time between stints. That was one of the big reasons he quit the last place he was at.

He also tells me that Schneider specifically "is not the worst but far from the best". That they micromanage their drivers to an irritating extent and their trucks are only very basically equipped.

Couple that with a commonly-expected 60 to 80 hour work week for the trucking industry as a whole, and to me it sounds like a pretty s****y career proposition.

Lol, just drive local & don't bother with OTR if your easily wore out.

I haven't found a single place that does local that will take somebody that doesn't have years of OTR already

Originally posted by Count Thiccula:

I haven't found a single place that does local that will take somebody that doesn't have years of OTR already

A few relatives of mine started local runs right after getting their Class A.

Originally posted by Arno:

Originally posted by vinyblaster:

Is there a setting to disable it? That would immediately invalidate any sort of controversy.

So, now that this thread has died down a bit and somebody might actually see it, here's a real breakdown of the slippery slope that some of us are worried about. Those with a TikTok attention span, feel free to show us all how super cool and above it all you are with your "tldr" replies and keep scrolling.

Not entirely. It of course remains to be seen if SCS will wind up going this route eventually, as other devs/publishers have, but there's always this potential timeline (again, "potential" for SCS but reality elsewhere). One billboard by itself most likely isn't going to tip the scales, but it's a slippery slope that if slipped down will affect everyone, whether you've disabled the ads in-game or not.

1. SCS puts one ad in the game and makes a little bit of money (but mostly doing it 'cause they think it's fun). Some people think it's "better immersion", some people don't like real-world ads in the game, but at the end of the day it's not a big deal.
   
2. The ad a) works out well from a financial standpoint, and b) doesn't break the game, so SCS remains open to expanding on the idea.
   
3. More companies solicit ad space in the game. Maybe they see this one company having success with it, maybe they just think it's neat and their marketing budget is big enough to just give it a shot. Either way, a few more ads show up, but still not that much money is changing hands so it's still no big deal.
   
4. Rinse and repeat the previous point until SCS actually is making enough money off embedded advertising that internal budgeting decisions (DLC development planning, etc.) start getting made based on the new numbers. Still not a practical problem, unless...
   
5. One day SCS makes some kind of game design/direction decision that the advertisers don't like. They threaten to pull their ads from the game; it doesn't necessarily even have to be in bad faith, the new game content may just not align with their brand.
   
6. Now SCS has a tough decision to make: do they make the changes the advertisers want, or risk losing what has now become a significant source of income?

Remember, this issue exists for everyone, even if you've disabled the billboards yourself, as long as enough players leave them up so that the advertisers feel like they're getting a fair deal. Even if you're not personally seeing the ads, you're still playing the same game, whose direction is now on some level being determined by the advertisers.

That's the fundamental difference between these "dynamic billboards" and mods that replace in-game textures with real companies. Personally I think fictitious in-game companies in games like this and GTA are fun and I prefer them, but I understand why others might like real-world branding. When you install a mod, however, you're just changing graphics in the game. What SCS is doing here is establishing a financial relationship with a third-party company to change graphics in the game.

If your "realistic advertising" mod suddenly updated to say "in addition to it's normal stuff, this mod will now automatically disable all in-game weather effects because the truck companies don't like showing their trucks with water all over them", would any of you keep it installed? I realize that's kind of a silly example, but I'm just trying to make the analogy that others are putting forward actually fair; it's not just about changing in-game graphics. Or maybe the mod globally caps your speed to 65 mph because the truck companies don't want their trucks portrayed breaking traffic laws.

This is very similar to brand licensing in racing sim games, where they aren't allowed to show cosmetic damage to cars because the IP holder (e.g. the car manufacturer) doesn't like it. That's licensing, not advertising, but the concept of "external control" is the same.

thank you for writing this, seriously, people here are out of their minds

Originally posted by c4b3l0:

SCS should expend energy on migrating the nearly 25-year-old PRISM3D graphics engine to something more modern and realistic. For those who think that there is reality in this game, they must first understand the concept of reality.

Your analysis is very coherent, but in my point of view this is just another problem adopted by SCS. A way to earn money would be to improve the game and not be retouching DLC ​​textures and selling them for unusual prices. The multiplayer game only supports eight players because the PRISM3D graphics engine cannot render more than that, causing lag and crashing the game. I'm a software engineer. I've already analyzed the binary structure of this game from end to end and if the people who pay for the game knew the old and outdated stuff they pay for, they would be disgusted.[/b]

You know for a Software engineer who has analysed the binary structure of the game you really sound like a tool. Thats like saying Unreal Engine 5.0 is 25 years old and the same as the original unreal engine released in 1998.

And as for the 8 player limit that more likely related to connection issues and sync, you really think the American Truck Simulator dedicated server is rendering graphics for 8 people at once? Thats what YOUR client game is doing lol.

Originally posted by c4b3l0:

SCS should expend energy on migrating the nearly 25-year-old PRISM3D graphics engine to something more modern and realistic....

Do you even remember the graphical garbage passed for games from 25 years ago? You obviously don't if you think this games graphics are equivalent to what AAA games had 25 years ago.

Go on google and look at the graphics for Tombraider III, Asheron's Call, Everquest, Tom Clancy's Rainbox Six, Half-Life, Shogo Mobile Armor Division to just name a few. Games from 25 years ago (1998) were utter visual diarrhoea compared to this game. This was the erra Nintendo 64 was still a thing.

You obviously don't know what the hell your talking about if you think this game is using 25 year old tech without it receiving updates over the years.

Originally posted by Arno:

Originally posted by vinyblaster:

Is there a setting to disable it? That would immediately invalidate any sort of controversy.

So, now that this thread has died down a bit and somebody might actually see it, here's a real breakdown of the slippery slope that some of us are worried about. Those with a TikTok attention span, feel free to show us all how super cool and above it all you are with your "tldr" replies and keep scrolling.

Not entirely. It of course remains to be seen if SCS will wind up going this route eventually, as other devs/publishers have, but there's always this potential timeline (again, "potential" for SCS but reality elsewhere). One billboard by itself most likely isn't going to tip the scales, but it's a slippery slope that if slipped down will affect everyone, whether you've disabled the ads in-game or not.

1. SCS puts one ad in the game and makes a little bit of money (but mostly doing it 'cause they think it's fun). Some people think it's "better immersion", some people don't like real-world ads in the game, but at the end of the day it's not a big deal.
   
2. The ad a) works out well from a financial standpoint, and b) doesn't break the game, so SCS remains open to expanding on the idea.
   
3. More companies solicit ad space in the game. Maybe they see this one company having success with it, maybe they just think it's neat and their marketing budget is big enough to just give it a shot. Either way, a few more ads show up, but still not that much money is changing hands so it's still no big deal.
   
4. Rinse and repeat the previous point until SCS actually is making enough money off embedded advertising that internal budgeting decisions (DLC development planning, etc.) start getting made based on the new numbers. Still not a practical problem, unless...
   
5. One day SCS makes some kind of game design/direction decision that the advertisers don't like. They threaten to pull their ads from the game; it doesn't necessarily even have to be in bad faith, the new game content may just not align with their brand.
   
6. Now SCS has a tough decision to make: do they make the changes the advertisers want, or risk losing what has now become a significant source of income?

Remember, this issue exists for everyone, even if you've disabled the billboards yourself, as long as enough players leave them up so that the advertisers feel like they're getting a fair deal. Even if you're not personally seeing the ads, you're still playing the same game, whose direction is now on some level being determined by the advertisers.

That's the fundamental difference between these "dynamic billboards" and mods that replace in-game textures with real companies. Personally I think fictitious in-game companies in games like this and GTA are fun and I prefer them, but I understand why others might like real-world branding. When you install a mod, however, you're just changing graphics in the game. What SCS is doing here is establishing a financial relationship with a third-party company to change graphics in the game.

If your "realistic advertising" mod suddenly updated to say "in addition to it's normal stuff, this mod will now automatically disable all in-game weather effects because the truck companies don't like showing their trucks with water all over them", would any of you keep it installed? I realize that's kind of a silly example, but I'm just trying to make the analogy that others are putting forward actually fair; it's not just about changing in-game graphics. Or maybe the mod globally caps your speed to 65 mph because the truck companies don't want their trucks portrayed breaking traffic laws.

This is very similar to brand licensing in racing sim games, where they aren't allowed to show cosmetic damage to cars because the IP holder (e.g. the car manufacturer) doesn't like it. That's licensing, not advertising, but the concept of "external control" is the same.

While I think this is a valid concern, I'd argue that this is already a factor in this game and the billboards are far from the most significant advertising stream in game.

We already have real truck brands that directly influence SCS development decision making and we also have real life brand DLCs like Goodyear. I don't think the addition of billboard advertising dramatically changes the balance.

Originally posted by flyingfisch:

We already have real truck brands that directly influence SCS development decision making and we also have real life brand DLCs like Goodyear. I don't think the addition of billboard advertising dramatically changes the balance.

Interesting; I'd imagine it's SCS paying the money to the truck brands in that case, to be able to use their trademarked logos/licenses in the game...but that doesn't mean that SCS doesn't also want to use them badly enough that they'd still acquiesce to demands in addition to the money they're paying.

Do you have any examples of how SCS' policy has already been affected by this? Not trying to call you out; I'm genuinely curious, because as far as I know this issue is -- at the current time -- purely theoretical.

Originally posted by Arno:

I'd imagine it's SCS paying the money to the truck brands in that case, to be able to use their trademarked logos/licenses in the game...

This is correct, and the first time I learned about this, I was a bit surprised, tbh. Against my apparently flawed logic. Isn't it beneficial for big companies to have their brands in popular games and such, and that they should have paid the game / movie companies and such?

Originally posted by Bjørn:

This is correct, and the first time I learned about this, I was a bit surprised, tbh. Against my apparently flawed logic. Isn't it beneficial for big companies to have their brands in popular games and such, and that they should have paid the game / movie companies and such?

I'm not an expert in this stuff, but I guess at the end of the day it comes down to "who needs who, more?". Both parties benefit from the partnership, but it's more important to the gamers buying the game that it have real-world branding than the advertising that the truck companies get.

Makes sense to me, really. How many players of ETS2/ATS are going to wind up buying one of these trucks IRL?

You can really see it in racing sims; you can have an eye-wateringly beautiful sim game with painstakingly laser-scanned track data and years of hard work collaborating with IRL professional drivers to fine-tune your absurdly-precise vehicle and tire physics models...but many people will still instantly dismiss your game if you don't have the right words and pictures on the cars. Not saying it is or isn't justified, just that it's 100% a thing.

Ah. Trucking company ads are officially in a game about trucking. I do wonder how many people who play this game would like the 70 hour weeks and no overtime pay the average trucker gets.

Originally posted by Arno:

Originally posted by Bjørn:

This is correct, and the first time I learned about this, I was a bit surprised, tbh. Against my apparently flawed logic. Isn't it beneficial for big companies to have their brands in popular games and such, and that they should have paid the game / movie companies and such?

I'm not an expert in this stuff, but I guess at the end of the day it comes down to "who needs who, more?". Both parties benefit from the partnership, but it's more important to the gamers buying the game that it have real-world branding than the advertising that the truck companies get.

Makes sense to me, really. How many players of ETS2/ATS are going to wind up buying one of these trucks IRL? :duethappy:

You can really see it in racing sims; you can have an eye-wateringly beautiful sim game with painstakingly laser-scanned track data and years of hard work collaborating with IRL professional drivers to fine-tune your absurdly-precise vehicle and tire physics models...but many people will still instantly dismiss your game if you don't have the right words and pictures on the cars. Not saying it is or isn't justified, just that it's 100% a thing.

It does make sense, thanks (sorry I've missed this post before)