So, I read about EA’s plans to put ads in their games.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson has said in-game advertising could become a “meaningful driver of growth” for the company’s bottom line. Speaking during the company’s latest earnings briefing, Wilson said “it’s still early on that front,” and if this is something EA does decide to push further into, the company will be “thoughtful” about it. – via Gamespot
This makes me wonder if this is what gaming will be looking like in future. Having a Burger King ad between respawning or between queues if Blizzard/Microsoft decided to go this route, too.
From what I gather, EA plans to monetize fully paid, AAA games, so not just free-to-play.
If Blizzard did this, how likely would you still play OW?
I’m talking about ads purely, not the already existing model of buying cosmetics.
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Depends on how they’re implemented I guess? Like the li’l window on the bottom right that I never pay attention to? Wouldn’t care. In-game fliers plastered all over the walls? Wouldn’t care.
Making me listen to ads… hard pass.
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Advertisements of any kind don’t belong in video games… they are only doing it because they believe it will push people to buy and play other games. The thing is that EA still has their own launcher, with which they have the propensity to advertise all of their games on. So that would make in-game advertisements meaningless… people are going to play the games that they want to play. They don’t need to see an ad for their football team manager video game that no one wants to play for the 30th time in a week.
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I don’t remember me saying they did. And that wasn’t the question.
I don’t think they mean just ads for their own games. I think they mean other products too.
An unskippable ad between games is what I saw on a YT video. A loading screen I believe. Like, it’s YT’esque type of advertising. You have to sit through it.
DNS block, modding and piracy never felt this good
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Kind of tricky to do shady things if most of the games have a live service. E.g PvP.
It’s for their games. They are a big name publisher and they want people to buy more of their games. There may be some ads here and there that are sponsors of the company, but EA has done this in the past and has been hit with major backlash. Yet here they are, attempting it again for the 10th time…
Believe or not ads in PC games has already been a thing back in the 2000’s
Not having them today only means that it didn’t work.
What is funny is that even mobile games (the bigger ones at least) seems to be getting away from too much reliance on ads.
They’re doing/planning third-party advertising, not their own products, which is why the criticism is big.
I mean in OVERWATCH. They’re already advertising for Porsche.
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It depends. If it’s tastefully done and discreet, I would be okay with it. Like you could replace some posters in the cinema with an ad tastefully done and it would be okay. Skins like the Porsche one are also fine. People are pretty happy with paying to advertise the brand. Make more, even give some for free and people would be happy to use them in-game.
If they put some video ads in respawn time or before a game, I’d be done with the game.
They make plenty of money with skins and stuff. It would ruin the game.
I don’t have issue if they don’t make games unplayable.
You ever watch soccer etc? Those ads are around the field. I think some sport games do the same.
Seriously, why would I play a game that has ad vids?
If I get a triple AAA game for free, which is actually good, than I may consider it
And PVP? I only play OW
All the same, in-game advertisements are not a successful venture for any company to entertain. There is simply no way to make 3rd party advertisements appealing to gamers, and they definitely don’t want to sit through advertisements that talk about another game. They bought the game that they wanted to play – that should be the end of that.
I think we both know that this Porsche stunt was just to generate more revenue for the game… I don’t think Blizzard or Porsche were expecting an entire community of people to start buying luxury sports cars. It’s an unreasonable expectation.
It is not the same.
In advertising, the product company is paying the full price to have their ads in the game.
In collabs both companies gets profit but with the game company usually being the one paying the bills.
Also important to know: Luxury brands have, for some reason, pushed into the gaming market.
I saw some adds from luxury brands on Twitch. It’s tricky to do it right and not devalue the advertised luxurybrand
Nuh uh, nope, not feeling that at all. I’d probably uninstall. That is pretty extreme advertising on top of equally agressive monetization.
EA are insane if they think people are going to sit through paid AAA content with ads. The ‘suits’ are on another planet, watching from ivory towers. They are so far removed from reality it is laughable.
That’s like buying a film, and then getting ad breaks in the middle of it. If people wanted that kind of thing they could wait until it gets aired on TV for free.
Companies like EA want infinite growth in a finite economy, and it does. not. work. Eventually the bubble bursts and suddenly its ‘oops, everyone lost their job.’
By all means find your niche in a market, but expecting to get record sales year after year forever is what leads to insane ideas like EA’s. What’s he after? Another car, a house, holiday homes abroad?
Eventually you reach maximum saturation for ads… does he really want AAA games to end up looking like the most sheisty webpage from the 90’s with more ads than content?
(EDIT: good post OP, really nice talking point 
)
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No duh? I’ve mocked it before in other posts.
I mean they’ve already had Porsche, who’s to say they won’t allow for anything else? Do you guys really just read comments as black and white and not sit and consider what a person might be saying?
I swear, sometimes I feel like I’m speaking in a foreign language.