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EA is looking at putting in-game ads in AAA games — 'We'll be very thoughtful as we move into that,' says CEO
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- Authors
- Jowi Morales
- Published
- May 9 2024
- Word count
- 645 words
If they were being thoughtful, they wouldn't add advertisements to games that I've already shelled out money for.
Nahh, you're thinking of it the wrong way.
They're trying to be thoughtful so you'll continue buying their ad-filled, micro transaction-laden, buggy, unfinished games that they'll turn off in 3 years when it's not profitable to keep the servers online, for as long as possible :D
How else are they going to keep making more money than last year? Gotta keep squeezing, but not too hard!
I could see it working in a cheap/f2p setting for a hyperrealistic world like GTA (not by EA, but I'm unsure if they have a proper IP for this. The battlefield/Need for Speed ads from the PS2 era clearly didn't work out for whatever reason). but, that involves building a brand as desirable as GTA first. As infpossibilityspace mentions, that's hard to do when they shut these kinds of games down at the drop of a hat these days.
Interestingly, I too thought of GTA... but as the one brand no advertiser would want to be involved with!
Can't help but think about this article from the Onion: 17 Days In Incubator Longest Time Premature Baby Will Go Without Being Exposed To Advertising
First privacy, and now our ability to not be bombarded with advertisements all the time? I'm wondering whether I should take a membership at the library again to just get into books... away from it all. I have a hard time believing our mad obsession with profit and economic growth is sustainable - but I also have a hard time imagining how our society will end up as a result.
I long for a future where our humanity is not for sale, rent, or otherwise a resource drain. I'm not even on the far side of the left(hell, in 1960s Netherlands I'd probably be considered a centrist, for comparison outside of the current neoliberal political climate) - and I know this sounds dramatic over this one article, it's mostly a feeling I get when I look at the direction things are taking.
Libraries are the best, for so many reasons.
You might as well go, your taxes are already helping support it, go get your money's worth!
My library is mostly fine, but Sadly libraries in some cities have many social and logistical issues that's an entirely different rabbit hole to dive into.
I can totally relate to this as it reflects what I've been thinking for a long time. And I suppose we are already at the precipice of seeing how sustainable it all is. With what's happening in the world right now on different fronts (war, food scarcity, a growing far-right, increasing wealth gap, climate change...) and millions of people getting increasingly unhappy and worried about the future, I can see revolt and rebellion in the not-too-distant future. Like you, I consider myself very centrist, so I'm not going to be at the vanguard, but it's becoming obvious that societies are in real danger of collapse. The knock-on effects of climate change may very well bring it all tumbling down sooner than we thought.
There's plenty of games with incredibly in-your-face ads. You could argue that Alan Wake 1 was an elaborate Duracell ad, Monster Energy is the official drink of post-apocalyptic American postal services and there was even a Burnout game with Obama election signs. Like the article says, people don't really mind when the ad is thoughtfully placed and it's understandable when that money likely went to development.
But seeing that AAA studios can already afford development and the bean counters will never actually play the game, I'm curious what their thoughtful considerations are. What are advertisers are willing to pay for subtle background placement vs a main menu banner or full loading screens. Which advertiser are willing to pay premium for exposure young and impressionable audiences? How much of the experience can be compromised before it affects overall revenue?
Judging by the almost oppressive escalation of YouTube and mobile marketing, I really hope players keep pushing back against this idea.
Their "thoughtful" insight into placing ads is going to be a simple cost benefit analysis. They are going to see how much they can get away with before it starts hurting sales revenues/profit.
I've worked in an analytics department for a large company that was making decisions about the work process and tools used by Frontline employees. A frontline position I used to do. All of the decisions that were being made were about if it will save money. Many of the decisions were directly hostile to the workflows of the frontline employee, but most in the department don't understand that, or didn't care. They saw the new method as being more cost effective, so they decided to move in that direction, even though all of the frontline employees complained about how it was a worse user experience and actively made it harder for them to do their jobs properly.
At the end of the day, if there is money to be made, that's the avenue they will go. There's no doubt in my mind they will start shoehorning more and more ads in if they stand to profit from it. It may start as a small amount. Once users get used to that, they will start adding more, little by little, because incremental changes are easier to accept than a large change.
This is something we've been seeing in the tech on many aspects. Privacy, advertisements, monopolies(although this one also goes on outside of tech)... Sometimes I wonder whether we're setting ourselves up for a situation of such brute profit-seeking that it will eventually come crashing down, similar to how revolutions can pop up out of brutal inequality.
I'd rather not see that happen, and rather focus on improving the world step-by-step instead of more conflicts. Our history is already full enough of those as it is. But we seem to be incredibly hard of learning at times as a species. (As mentioned in another comment, I know this sounds dramatic over just advertisements in games, but the global trend... ah well you probably get what I mean.)
It's been popping up in other areas too, not just tech. Sports leagues are another big example. Way back when in hockey, there never used to be board ads or on ice ads. Other sports also didn't have on field ads. At some point they started adding those in. There used to be commercial breaks during specific breaks in play, with the occasional sponsored content in game (such as, this thing X is brought to you by....). Then they started adding picture in picture commercials during the game in between plays. Now they are starting to add ads to equipment and on jerseys. They try to justify it as "oh it's just a small change and this will help us get more revenue to pay players", but it just keeps adding up to additional incremental change year over year until it's just one giant ad.
I swear in the minds of these companies, we exist to be advertised to, nothing more.
Because to be frank, most people are only casually engaged with any given sector at any given time. Maybe there are enough game enthusiasts to push back, but those same game enthusiasts won't necessarily go up to bat when they see commercials on Netflix, or political ads in their mail (email or snail mail). Each given company has peoople employed full time to care while a single person only has so much energy to care.
That's ideally what a privacy advocate group does for the people, but they are still outnumbered as well.
I don't mind a billboard or in game product placement if it fits with the world of the game. Loading screen ads, pop-ups, and banner ads would be unacceptable to me though.
Since my first association to post-apocalyptic American postal services is fallout, are you linking monster energy to Nuka cola?
I always associated that one much more with coca cola?
Monster Energy was in Death Stranding.
Nuka cola is most definitely coca cola.. even the bottle is similar shaped to make the point. Also... I think it's riffing on the fact that Nuka cola used nuclear products as an ingredient same as coca cola used to use coke as one of its ingredients (basically one of the settings pokes at American culture... it is very much a game/setting that is set to parody/satirize the US which is why I feel the main games should stay in the US... Americana is part of its core... even if it is to point out hte horrors of it).
It will be interesting if crackers manage to remove the ads from some local games, making piracy objectively better.
I look forward to installing Ublock on Steam.
I'm interested in seeing if they're able to be 'thoughtful' at all when placing ads. The only unintrusive ways I can come up with are in-world advertising and in-game items in the way of Fortnite etc.
Having your pause menu plastered with advertisements will always be obstructive but obviously it's a possibility that people get used to them. But in my opinion that's just super cheap and ineffective (because it's almost hostile towards the player) compared to more natural ways to surface brands.
Burnout Paradise is mentioned in the article. I had that game and I remember the ads on billboards. I don't remember it being a big problem even though I really hate ads. The billboards didn't slow down the game or change the experience much.
In retrospect it actually does bother me a little just thinking about that because I'm tired of seeing ads everywhere I look. And there's no way that EA is going to come up with a way that is less annoying than having ads on billboards in a car game.
In Burnout Paradise's defense, apart from silly conceits to add stunt jumps and shortcuts all over the place, the game world is meant to be a realistic depiction of American roadways. Which, in real life, have billboards all over the place. I think putting them in the game adds verisimilitude, and it would've been a bit uncanny if they weren't there. Maybe it helps that "Find and smash all 100 billboards" is a collectable goal and it's actually fun since they're all set up as puzzles that you have to figure out. (Though none of the collectible billboards are the ones with real ads on them).
I would have been a lot more annoyed if ads were strewn all over the menus, loading screens, and between songs on the in-game radio. The approach they used is unobtrusive. Actually until now I didn't even realize the billboards in-game were for real things, they seem pretty bland and are for things I don't recognize. But I was a latecomer to the game, aka after the Obama election, so by the time I played those ads had been pulled. Maybe all the real ads were by then, leaving just placeholders? I'm not sure. I think if they had big brand logos I know I would've been more annoyed. There's definitely a gradient of acceptability.
Fun fact! Burnout Paradise contained billboards for Obama's campaign at some point. Sadly it did not return in the rerelease.
I remember one of the Need For Speed games having like Pringles billboards and a 3rd person shooter with Pepsi vending machines
Not that I want ads in my games, but the most inobtrusive way I can think of probably would not work for some games. But any games that would have ads as part of the game world, make those ads actually ads for real products (I believe for a long time this has already been a practice in racing games).
Of course it would suck for games that want to use the ads to illustrate the world the game is in more cause they are then beholden to ads for real products that will more be catering to our world then the world the ad is in.
It's an interesting thought experiment isn't it? Let's take Dragon Age as an example. Single player fantasy RPG. What kind of advertising could thematically fit there? Nothing, unless you go really meta with something like a magical portal to our world and use that as an excuse to spam ads somewhere in the UI or in-game world. Maybe you could put some text or lightly illustrated notifications onto a notification board. But even that seems suuper scummy and in the way.
Add a weird NPC who talks about dreams of a strange world and describes various real-world products in weird ways. "I saw people holding small metal canisters, red and silver in color. They held some sort of strange brown liquid that smelled rather sweet, and they were talking which was better while smiling and laughing. I woke up wanting to taste this strange 'Coca Cola' drink, but my attempts to mix a similar concoction ended with just rather filthy water..."
...I joke, but that would actually probably be a brilliant way to add real-world advertising compared to the usual ads. It isn't intrusive, and people would probably seek out the NPC just to hear the weird and funny descriptions of modern-day conveniences from an outsider perspective.
Blatant, but humorously executed advertising like that is usually pretty fun. Immediately made me think of the "selling out" scene from Wayne's World.
That being said, it still kinda grosses me out in a video game context. I'd find it funny, but it would feel a little icky and cheap.
At risk of being labeled some anti-consumer, corporate shill (I'm not but GaMerZ (tm) gonna GaME), I'm wondering how much of this is due to the fact that making games seems less and less sustainable given the huge costs (CP2077 was 500 mil??!?!) , increased complexity to create, and the fact that nominally, games have stuck to the $60 price tag for the past 30+ years. Like unrelated to this (but sort of related), it's easy to see why AAA games are less and less "interesting" and so incredibly risk adverse.
It feels like those who love the medium, myself included, are even more disconnected from the reality of game creation. Sure, companies are horribly run, making stupid decisions like betting on fucking NFTs, overworking employees, creating toxic environments, FUCKING CORPORATE GREED , and generally have anti worker policies, but even if there are studios or one person projects that are doing everything right, the numbers seem to not make sense?
I kind of see parallels to the restaurant industry, where I and many others want all staff to have a living wage which drastically increases overhead yet there's a significant portion of the population who simply won't tolerate any increase in prices. But maybe I'm just being naive.
The AAA game publishing industry relies a lot on smoke and mirrors - not to say there aren't "good" games out there, but the industry's well-known propensity for overpromising, deceiving and using straight out falsified trailers to advertise their games is well entrenched and has been going on for so long we've kind of gotten used to it being the status quo. This marketing-oriented business model relies on the shiny and the shiny is expensive to make.
But back in the day, the amount of games entering the market every year was much, much smaller. Nowadays, thousands and thousands of developers and studios big and small are competing in a far more saturated market, and it's evident to most if not all of us that you don't need a 500 million dollar budget to make a game that's fun and compelling. 500 million dollar games will always bedazzle, but will often also disappoint. A truly fun, well designed game, though, even if made on a shoestring budget? We've spent less on it, we've derived more value, we were happy with the time we spent with it. These games may be far shorter, far uglier, far less marketable, but they're still competing against the big dogs. It has been happening regularly. That's why prices can't grow out of control. It would simply become too hard for most players to justify the expense in light of how much choice they have. At some point, people have to realize (perhaps not the children, who are so much easier to manipulate, but everyone else) that instead of buying one game that may be terrible, they can buy seven or eight for the same price.
If the big publishers can't make a game profitable without being antagonistic to their players, I respectfully suggest that they should try shrinking their budgets and focusing on attracting, retaining and most of all respecting the choices of the kinds of talent that they so often seem to be lacking - game designers, writers, people who understand fun and compelling experiences. I see videogames as art (at least in potential), and you can't make good art if you hand over the reins to the bean counters and wash your hands off the whole thing.
It's probably just natural to explore different revenue streams. Though, I'm not sure anyone's gotten rich with their in-app advertising? Even mobile games are always about the whales. So I'm not sure how viable 'good' advertising could be. There's probably not that many Super Bowl level million dollar advertising deals and they'll just end up accepting anyone to their ad platform which probably will turn it to shit unless well excecuted.
Yea, we've seen some hilariously stupid product integration like Death Stranding using Monster which could be a route games choose. I don't expect EA to come up with anything that great but I could see them adopting some sort of product ad in the chyrons of their sports games.
It's nothing more than a way to show growth at the next shareholders meeting. EA other studios of that size have tons of money but need to constantly show growth. Easiest ways to do that are to lay off their most expensive costs (people) and to "explore new revenue streams" (shitty money grabs that gamers hate).
Let's be honest, this is nothing more than finding news ways to show growth to shareholders, or "exploring new revenue streams" as they like to call it. It has nothing to do with whether they can actually afford to make games. AAA publishers have plenty of money, but whenever there's a downturn in the industry, they immediately look to either kill a studio/department (mass layoffs) or find a shitty way to squeeze more money out of gamers. I know this is just capitalism at work, but I grow tired of the arguments used to justify mega-rich people trying to make even more money.
Intentional or not, I take offense in the characterization that I'm some sort of corporate shill trying to justify "mega-rich people trying to make even more money". I specifically pointed out the shitiness of corporate practices and corporate greed. At the same time, if the big publishers are suffering, then the smaller ones are likely having a hard time. 2023 saw massive layoffs from a bunch of people in the industry and the recent closure of Arkane Austin really sucked.
My point was that you can have multiple things be be true at once : shitty corporate practices and greed, unsustainable practices in the industry as a whole, and an audience completely anchored to a decades old mindset concerning expectations and price points. Like inflation alone would make Mario 64's 1996 would cost nearly $120 today. Am I worried about EA, not really. But I am worried about studios like Supergiant and Playdead and publishers like Devolver Digital and Annapurna.
Should giant publishers take a profit cut to keep good studios around after a bomb like Redfall or to better pace out game development? Absolutely and EA corporate heads can go fuck themselves. At the same time, should "gamers" examine their entitlements , be more discerning about how they spend their money, and generally as a whole be less shitty? Absolutely and it's not happening at a scale that's meaningful. If 'gamers' spent as much time not supporting games with anti-consumer practices (e.g. just not buying them) as they did sending death threats for trivial fucking things like bad endings or other stupid shit publisher heads may realize that these practices aren't viable. However, that just doesn't seem to be the case as too many are willing to just fork over money for dumb shit like pay to win mechanics and high priced in-game cosmetics.
Well, you shouldn't be taking offence because I wasn't calling you a shill. I wasn't really talking about you at all, but rather the state of the industry. In fact, I agree mostly with you. I appreciate you were trying to pose a balanced argument that consumers also need to check what they can expect for the money. But my main point is that the system is just broken, and it's not really anything to do with rising costs. It's to do with the constant need for growth and profit.
You drew a parallel with the restaurant industry, and there again I see a broken system, even more broken. I feel sorry for some restaurants, especially the smaller, family-owned ones because rising food prices have created a difficult environment. But the situation is totally broken, from how much ingredients cost (cheaper beef at McDonalds than a salad at your local café?), to how many restaurants the public seems to need (it's not as many as there are), to the need for tipping to make the business work (complete bullshit). The whole industry needs a great reset.
The vibes on this reply. All kidding aside, thanks for the clarification. So much of what we're seeing in the gaming industry and restaurants are byproducts of the greater socioeconomic systems we've tied "progress" to. However, I will put my stake in the ground
I will not eat the DLC. I will not live in GaaS pods.
Sorry for the bad vibes! The internet is not a great place for spreading the good feels, but I hope you have a great day nonetheless!
Oh no, no bad vibes at all, I was just joking around. Hope you also have a great day and appreciate the thoughts.
Re: inflation, it's not a non-factor, but a quick search says Mario Kart 64 sold 10 million copies, and Mario Kart 8 has sold 62 million for Switch and another 8 for Wii U. To oversimplify using one data point, the growth of markets has more than offset inflation.
Good point though but I do feel Mario Kart is a bit of an extreme example and Nintendo is wholly unique in the industry given the amazing quality and consistency of their first party games that basically sell consoles in a way Microsoft and Sony can only wish for. That said, if you look at the mainline Mario games you don't really see that kind of growth, particularly when you only look at the first launch on the original system. Here's what I saw based on the link and a bunch of unnecessary commentary on my part because I need a break from work.
Mario (NES) - 40 mil but I assume this is partially due to the fact the game was often packaged with the system
Mario 2 (NES) -7.5 mil
Mario 3 (NES) - 18 mil but goat status
Mario World (SNES) - 20.6 mil , also goat status that was bundled
Mario 64 (N64) - 12 mil but I also saw your 10 mil stat
Sunshine (GCN) - 6.3 mil
Galaxy 1 (Wii) - 13 mil
3D World (Wii U) - 5.8 mil
Odyssey (Switch) - 28 mil
Wonder (Switch) - 13.4 mil, drug fueled goat
So I do agree that there are more people playing games and factors like non-console exclusive lead to increase sales (though I don't know how much development cost goes into making an Xbox vs PC vs PS version of something) but just how much, I don't know.
This is simply a completely predictable progression of current trends, nothing new.
I argue and will continue to argue that wilful ignorance of the majority to the means on they live large portions of their lives(in this case computing technology) means that moves like this are possible and build upon each other.
In this case it is something than can be easily ignored so nothing to see here really. I struggle to think of mainstream entertainment that does not have ads, effectively ads or is not thinking of putting in ads. Trends to this effect were transparently visible for more than a decade, and not so visibly likely for more.
EA started putting in-game product placement and ads into Battlefield 2042 two years ago. They also had the foundation for in-game, location-based adverts in Battlefield 2142 back in 2006 as part of a partnership with an advertising company purchased by Microsoft. Along with the usual TOS and EULA stuff to agree to, you were also allowing EA and its advertising partners to analyze advertising information specific to your experience.
Of course EA isn't the only company that's doing it. Ubisoft is, too. And others past and present have a lot of product placement and cross-over advertising (such as themed Fortnite events and Rocket League). There's a nice little article here reviewing some examples of advertising in games.
What EA is doing is another move towards enshittification. If you haven't already, please stop buying EA products. There are other games to play that are worth your time. Talk to your friends about not buying games from companies that treat you like shit. Shame them for contributing to enshittification because these companies will treat you worse if you let them and they have a history of doing it.
COD MW2 cost < $50 million to make with $150 million in advertising. It brought in over $1 billion in sales in about 2 months. I can't really feel sorry for them, they make plenty of money, could pay their programmers more and advertisers less I think.
It better be no different than "ads" in movies where they'll just make sure that soda's brand is showing or the laptop logo is visible. I can see some fun ways to do it, like a weathered Pepsi sign in a post apocalyptic future or finding an edible Twinkie. Maybe a theater in game could be running previews for actual movies and TV sets could show commercials themed to the game. A game based in the 40's could have an old CocaCola commercial playing or just commercials in whatever the commercial style of the era was.
I think you've mixed up EA and Activision. EA's been looking for a COD-level hit for a long time.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply COD is an EA game. I meant to refer to all AAA game makers, they make plenty on games (even if COD is more on the extreme end of profits). If EA pulls it off, we will surely see ads in other games.
EA has Fifa, they shouldn't complain whatsoever.
I think FIFA is their one particular niche within the sports-gaming community (I cant really think of anyone within the gaming community who even regularly plays sports games tbqh), they haven't had a COD-level hit which is popular with the rest of the community for years, and the only one I can think of is Battlefield 3.
Add it to the list of reasons to only buy indie games
Everybody's acting outraged over this as if in-game advertising hasn't been around for decades. It hasn't been subtle either. I remember SSX3 having a ton of in-game product promotion for dnL, which was a short lived soda created by 7up as a competitor to Mountain Dew. Splinter Cell has Axe body spray billboards. Enter The Matrix had Powerade vending machines. Uncharted 3 had an unlockable Subway uniform.
Mostly though ads in videogames have been used where they were appropriate to the setting (as a billboard in a racing game or a product in the background that would make sense to be in that background). What I think people worry about is that EA's thoughtful is going to be more obtrusive).