In today’s news of ‘things nobody except an executive wants’ is EA Games commenting that they’d like to put adverts into games we’ve already paid for.
That’s right, you know that game you just spent £60 on? EA would like you to see adverts in that game because the money you spent just isn’t enough for them.
EA are the company behind the latest Star Wars titles featuring Cal Kestis
On an earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson was asked about “dynamic ad insertion” into AAA games and his reply was this, “I think it’s still early on that front. But we have teams internally in the company right now looking at how do we do very thoughtful implementations inside of our game experiences.”
He’s not saying it’s a definite, but it’s a possibility worth looking into as it would generate more revenue for the publisher. He spoke about growing the gaming communities around their games but really it comes down to that idea that they’d be down for it in certain circumstances.
Advert
Now, I’m not going to say advertising doesn’t work in certain games; sports titles, for example, utilise advertising on the sides of pitches or race tracks much like in real life.
But this idea has been tried before and it didn’t work then. In fact, EA has already tried this and walked it back.
Not only did it not work, but it angered quite a few people at the same time. There was a spate of titles back in the Xbox 360 days with Doritos making throwaway games just to shoehorn their brand onto consoles.
It was tried in the 16-bit era too, with Cool Spot and Zool repping 7-Up and Chupa Chups respectively.
Advert
It was quirky back then, but I don’t want to see Cal Kestis stopping after a hefty lightsaber battle to take a refreshing sip from a can of Monster before snuffling down a bag of Doritios to regain his stamina.
There’s a reason this doesn’t work nowadays; it’s too blatantly a move to monetise our time. We’ve already given you our money, plus you likely got some ad revenue when we watched the trailer on your YouTube channel. No thanks, EA.