I' totally agreed with redonihunter
This type of add, quite common on mobile devices, is considered bad practice in PC games.
A PC game shows me an add window and not only do I uninstall it, I ask for a refund, and I never trust that developer again.
Before adding this type of behavior to your game, it would be best if you looked for information on how many people might be bothered by it, so that you don't get the opposite effect, that is, people deciding not to trust your content.
Even more so if it is free, it makes me think that the game is a lazy port of a mobile game or that it has malware.
On PC, unlike the mobile market, there is no concept that a free game must include adds, and if an offline game asks for an internet connection for advertising, it is usually considered something bad by many people.
I don't have data to tell you what percentage of people are going to pass on your game or give you a bad rating, but it is something that I have seen a lot in PC games and I understand that your idea is precisely to promote yourself and not get a bad reputation. .
Edit: Something that I have seen and that doesn't seem to bother people is the home page of the game, usually the menu. Include link to the developer's social networks.
It has little to do with the cost of the game. But there is this saying, if the product is free, you are the product. So in a way, this type of behaviour for a free game would be even more suspicious.
As I said, I am old fashioned. But it sounds to me like an overly complicated method of promoting your new game with your old game. If I understand correctly, you plan on releasing a previous web game as a download game and giving people playing the old game a bonus for the gameplay, if they click on your promotion link. Wich would leave a sour taste in my mouth as a player.
And o=
Since you specifically make a promotional release of the old game, why can't the advertisment be static? And why has it to give a boost. Wait a minute. If reread, the players do not even have to visit the link, they only have to view a screenshot?! I do not really understand why this has to be dynamically implemented.
Would it not be easier to just tell it outright, like, this is xyz - promotional release, with big letters in menu pointing to the new game with links and planned release and informing the players, that they can sweeten the waiting time by playing your time tested old game? What will happen with your promotional hard coded phoning home in a year, when someone starts the old game?
You could consider giving a permantent boost for playing the promo version, what with having it clustered with references of your new game. After all, this download version will get downloaded and assuming your new game still exists in three years, you might still benefit from promoting it with the old game. But you will probably not maintain your little self jury rigged phoning home and downloading files (I did mention, that I do not trust indie devs to do such things, did I ;-)
Oh, and all this obviously depends on people knowing and being interested in your old web game in the first place. Those people would probably be interested in your new game anyways. So maybe a simpler solution might do.
It's a bit of a hit or miss, but last I checked Tesla8 had over 340,000 game plays on Kongregate alone. On Kong it was tied into the old ad system, which was annoying as (expletive), so when I designed this new add system, I designed it to be as unannoying as possible.
But if you want to try it out and tell me what you think, that would be helpful:
https://www.neurowockygames.com/files/Tesla8_PC.zip
I didn't see any rules against posting links to game files (unless they contain malware) in the community rules, but If I've made a mistake, and should take it down, please let me know!
Oh, you can put ads in your game, even annoying ones. My concern is only the homebrew phoning home aspect you mentioned. Just as with AI art, there are people that will take issues with that, including downvoting your game and leaving bad comments or reviews.
Unless you have compelling reasons, maybe consider if a static promotion build would achieve your promotion goal just as well. You have a title screen and a short period between levels, more than enough time and space to put the promotion.
I get you. When I first put the game out, I did get a number of bad reviews both from the in-game ads, and from the fact that webgl is kind of... inconstant.
But I do want to be able to promote any of my games from any of my games. I guess some people will freak out.
Anyway, I put an option in the menu that let's you turn off promotions(downloading them too), and I inform the user that that option exists when they hover-over the "boost" icon. And I still give them a set 10% boost if they opt-out, as opposed to 35% for looking at it.
The scary thing about Kongregate was that there were people down-voting any new game that looked decent with about 10 accounts. I think the prize money for their monthly contests was bringing out the worst in people.
