I think the really scary thing that is only sort of mentioned in the article is ads coming as updates. Once a game has critical acclaim, won a ton of awards, but is not mostly collecting dust, why wouldn't you throw in some ads to "support live services". I also wouldn't be surprised to see classic games released for free with an ad supported model and the original version the fans all know and love being unavailable.
hell no. if they sold a title to you, that you own now, they must provide a way for the title to be playable as-is, without shoveling a ton of ads down our throats. if the title is single player, it must be playable offline, if the title is multiplayer, they must release server components for self-hosting. that is as simple as it should and must be. we have to punish them and hold them accountable for selling titles that they lock us out of in a short amount of time. that is basically theft. fuck EA, and basically most of the AAA studios overall. i will never support such behavior.
Same goes for the gambling mechanics they build into their games. What they planned to do with Star Wars Battlefront 2 was the final straw for me and I've been happily boycotting them ever since.
The business model for the most popular games now is that they are free to download and play, but they monetize through loot boxes and aesthetic skins. And now ads.
Like with news, it is hard to compete with free+ads.
I wish we as consumers had better collaboration tools for this. They always do this "testing the waters" shit where they put out news like this, and if we all just had the will power to not complain, wait until they do it, and fuck right off from buying anything from the company after they have shot themselves in the foot: there would be much better effect in really hurting them.
But as of now, they can just push the limits slowly and easily and look at how much public whining happens to gauge if they can get away with it
Aren't in-game ads old news? Sports and racing games have had them in the past. Even a shooter game like Quake Live had them for a time. And they're all over mobile games. The article makes reference to "next generation of in-game ads" but doesn't elaborate what "next generation" means.
I'll play devils advocate and say in-game ads aren't terrible if they're in the background and aren't immersion breaking, for example if I were playing a racing game and drove past a Coca Cola billboard I wouldn't be bothered. Without Coca Cola's sponsorship the developers would have invented their own fake product to put on the billboard anyway.
Makes the advertising in computer games of the past seem quaint. Oldest I'm aware of, though not exactly the third party advertising proposed by EA, is 7Up's Spot[1]. Must go further back than that though.
You knew someone would eventually say it... along with layoffs and shrinkflation, all things must be enshitified to make it worse for the user while appearing to make some money in the short-term.
Considering advertisers had pull over potentially objectionable content in other types of media, would you consider advertisers also potentially having a pull over the game's content as well?
It's so sad that ads got such a bad reputation as being intrusive, annoying, fraud, etc. While when used correctly, ads are very useful and sometimes fun.
Especially in this case, the future will talk more about the engagement, conversion, impressions, clicks, etc related to in-game ads, and not how to creatively integrate the ads in the game in a fun way
Every consumer, and every human being in society faces the "exploration-exploitation" dilemma [0] weekly or daily.
They've discovered a set of things they like and dislike, either through family, friends, circumstances, or marketing ploys in the past. Finding new things they like isn't easy. You need external influence. Without these you feel life is boring, repetitive, predictable, lacks texture or excitement.
As most honest people will tell (one recent example I've stumbled upon could be independent game developers) - you could have a great product, but sadly most people will not know about it or will be "too busy to try it", and will prefer sticking to their habits or past experiences.
How would you go about solving this issue in a reliable way, that's not prone to similar distortions and hijacking as advertising and public relations ?
Here I was thinking marketers were in it for the money but now I see clearly. They're honest people just trying to help solve a problem we all have. Without advertising human beings would sit helpless, unable to discover the world around them.
Look something has to be done about the constant interruptions these aggressive advertisements cause. They're breaking the internet experience and wasting an astonishing amount of valuable human life hours. They're really stealing that time. If advertising was an option, 99.9% of people would switch it off.
I think there was very little truth in your first reply it reads like an excuse for an exploitive business model. I'm assuming you're a marketer or just like playing devil's advocate.
In any case, time has come to find technical solutions to hit back at advertising to the degree the industry can never recover.
If I liked playing devil's advocate, I wouldn't be annoyed at your answers.
To be honest I started a few years ago interacting with comments I would otherwise ignore because I thought it was harmful to keep yourself in filter bubbles, but I think it's pointless and I'm mostly having negative experiences that I don't need in my life.
To address your points: I'm not a marketer, I've got a STEM masters degree and I work as a data analyst, never worked in any marketing related job so far, no interest to do so.
You bring a decent point that often advertising isn't something people want, it's rather something they have to accept because they're paying either zero or less than the producer wants/needs for the service they're using, which I think is a fine point. We could go back to a point in time where most things were not financed by ads: either they're financially viable or they don't exist. That's a tradeoff, and companies like Netflix tried to move away from this and found some success. But it seems to me in a lot of situations most people are fine with the old radio station model where you get a few ads every now and then but don't pay anything.
If we decide to go this way and make it impossible to fund most of your company or activity through ads, then we'll have a lot less ads, but still won't reach zero ads. Think of the very old ads in the newspaper kind of thing. People need to send information about things they're selling or jobs they need, or events that might interest people. You're bound to have some advertising, you probably just mean to say you would like to have much much less than the current level.
While technically Craigslist is an advertisement any layperson can see we’re discussing the concept of advertisers and they ferocity to lie and deceive in their ads, not the very concept of ads themselves. But valiant attempt to derail the conversation.
You go to craigslist, it doesn't come up to you and interfere with your activity and waste your time and sell your attention to a third party. We all know what I'm talking about here.
Uh, do you understand that you're actually looking for advertisements in craigslist right? Just because you're looking for it doesn't mean that they're not ads.
Nobody defend yt or mobile game-likr advertisements. Ads comes in many forms, steam storefront page is another example of good (imo, ymmv) ads.
Ads are manipulation, that is not a reputation, that is a definition. There is no logical conclusion that omits a message from being classified as both an ad and manipulative. One can't come without the other. An ad is non-consensual. You don't ask for ads. The ads don't answer questions you specifically are asking, they are exploiting your demographic using keywords and phrases their research shows to be effective towards influencing your decision making to doing exactly what they want (selling you something.)
If you really think ads are not by definition intrusive, I am curious to reconsider my stance.
What a strong negative opinion, really proven my point. Ads by definition are very broad, maybe you only see ads only in the form of tv / youtube / mobile game ads that halts your activity and forcing you to consume the ads content.
Ads also comes in a form of storefront banner. By your definition, then there shouldn't be McDonald's logo on top of their shop's front door. So how can you know that building is a McDonald's?
Yes, it is generally intrusive and non consensual. But if you say nobody ask for ads, you're very wrong. If you're going to a forum to get game recommendations, you're looking to be advertised. Steam recommend section or hot deals or storefront page are all advertisement. Game trailers are advertisement. They just don't really feel as intrusive as yt ads, and an example of good ads in my book.
