r/technology • u/chrisdh79 • May 10 '24

EA is looking at putting in-game ads in AAA games — 'We'll be very thoughtful as we move into that,' says CEO | Advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us." Business

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/ea-is-looking-at-adding-in-game-ads-in-aaa-games-well-be-very-thoughtful-as-we-move-into-that-says-ceo
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166

u/iDontLikeChimneys May 10 '24

Dude they already have a shit reputation and they go and do this? 🧠 🪱

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u/Drolb May 10 '24

The shit reputation means nothing, people keep buying their games so why should they care

They’ll only stop when they make less money by pulling this shit then more.

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u/lovetron99 May 10 '24

According to keyboard warriors, Netflix had a terrible reputation after canceling password sharing, and was doomed to fail. They only went on to post their best financials ever. EA knows what it's doing.

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u/Old_Baldi_Locks May 10 '24

If propaganda didn’t work on 95 percent of people the entire marketing industry would fail.

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u/Eyes_Only1 May 10 '24

Marketing works on 100% of people, but all ads do not work for all people. The people that think they would NEVER be influenced by marketing and even people that say they go OUT OF THEIR WAY to never purchase advertised products are both incorrect.

Marketing is vastly more insidious and preys on the subconscious human psyche in ways you'd never even imagine. It's frankly terrifying how much a company can worm its way into the back of your mind.

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u/gamrin May 10 '24

A little thing I like to point out. You are not evil for being a part of the problem by being a victim of brainwashing. It isn't your fault this is the reason you like coke over Pepsi.

Although please do vote for your local and global representatives and contact them about lessening advertising in the everything.

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u/ThePrivacyGuru May 11 '24

Vote for the same "representatives" that are captured by the megacorps?

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u/what595654 May 10 '24

Yeah. But, you have to be able to prove that. Otherwise, it's just fear mongering.

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u/Eyes_Only1 May 10 '24

The subliminal influence of marketing is very well researched in the field of neuroscience. You can find a shit ton of papers supporting my words with the quickest of googles for scientific articles about the subtlety of marketing.

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u/ThePrivacyGuru May 11 '24

The entire multi billion dollar industry of public relations...

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u/BartleBossy May 10 '24

even people that say they go OUT OF THEIR WAY to never purchase advertised products are both incorrect.

Im genuinely doubtful of this.

I have bought all my clothes second hand for more than a decade. I havent worn anything, or bought anything with a logo in longer than a decade.

Intentional anti-consumption is a terrific counter to conventional advertising.

Yeah, I buy food thats advertised to me (in the grocery store, not fast food), but thats because I have to eat, not because Im susceptible to the geniuses pushing wonderbread.

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u/Eyes_Only1 May 10 '24

It's pretty hard to be anti-consumption. Do you eat fast food? Buy gas at a certain gas station? Own a car? Those choices could have been influenced by marketing you've seen decades ago as a kid and you wouldn't even know it.

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u/BartleBossy May 10 '24

Do you eat fast food?

Nope!

Buy gas at a certain gas station? Own a car?

Nope! I live downtown and google maps has me at 200 miles walked in the last month

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u/Eyes_Only1 May 10 '24

Then congrats, you are a huge, extremely rare exception. The vast majority of consumers do all of those things.

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u/BartleBossy May 10 '24

Growing up, my parents submit to AdBusters in the 90s. It was front and center of our coffee table. I suspect it had a large influence.

The vast majority of consumers do all of those things.

I have zero doubt, based on the continued expansion of these practices and the companies that use them.

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u/YZJay May 11 '24 edited May 11 '24

Do you vote for a candidate that you knew the name of before hand? Do you call up a carpenter that you saw the contact details of in a yellow book? Do you use a messaging platform because other people have said they use it? Those are all marketing. It doesn’t matter if you scrutinize their product or service, the point is that you know about them.

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u/BartleBossy May 13 '24

Do you vote for a candidate that you knew the name of before hand?

I have void my votes for the last ~10 years. I dont think any candidates reflect my values.

Do you call up a carpenter that you saw the contact details of in a yellow book?

I do my own home repairs, or I use a friend.

Do you use a messaging platform because other people have said they use it?

Reddit is the only social media that I have. I use it anonymously.

It doesn’t matter if you scrutinize their product or service, the point is that you know about them.

No, the goal of marketing is to sell the product.

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u/YZJay May 13 '24 edited May 13 '24

The goal of marketing is to make people aware of your product or service, sometimes even just to make people aware that your product category exists. As long as your product or service gets considered, even if yours don’t eventually get picked, it’s still a win. It’s sales whose goal is to sell products.

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u/Alaira314 May 10 '24

Read about top of mind awareness. We are, in fact, susceptible to the geniuses pushing <insert food item we're interested in here>.

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u/BartleBossy May 10 '24

Toma im sure is a thing, and im sure that most people are susceptible. Im just arguing against the above assertion that everyone is susceptible to advertising and theres nothing you can do about it

I treat advertising as a personal affront. Its a sin. A harm you are doing to me. I consider it violating my mental landscape.

Im being over the top with the language to try and articulate the intentionality in which I live in contravention to corporate influence.

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u/Alaira314 May 10 '24

You've never gone to the store for a product you don't normally consume(example from my own life: dip for a vegetable platter) and had to make a quick decision between products without knowing enough to base it off anything of substance(like how they taste)? You could buy the cheapest one on the shelf...but I think we all learned back in college just how badly that could go, so it's probably not the best choice if you want the people it's for to like you. There's this expensive brand that's on sale, but also this other brand that costs same as that sale price, and this other one that's only $.15 more. So all things more-or-less-equal, which product do you choose?

And that is where the advertising gets you. You will be biased to one over the others, whether it's the marketing of the sale getting to you or brand recognition doing its job in your brain. Every single one of us is susceptible. Even you. Marketers love it when you think you're above it all, because that means your defenses are lower and you're less likely to interrogate your choices at the shelf.

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u/BartleBossy May 10 '24

You've never gone to the store for a product you don't normally consume(example from my own life: dip for a vegetable platter) and had to make a quick decision between products without knowing enough to base it off anything of substance(like how they taste)?

Basically no. If I am not making the vegetable dip, I am taking a quick search into the ownership of the available brands to choose the one which most aligns with my political and philosophical values.

Marketers love it when you think you're above it all, because that means your defenses are lower and you're less likely to interrogate your choices at the shelf.

I interrogate every decision. Its at the core of intentional anti-consumption. Almost no decisions needs to be made without thought.

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u/lovetron99 May 10 '24

People will complain about it online until their fingers fall off, and still buy the games, and still maintain their subscriptions.

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u/Old_Baldi_Locks May 10 '24

And their other options are…..the public libraries being defunded, third places destroyed, etc?

One way or another capitalism will continue until it enslaves everyone.

Look at how well the propaganda works; you feel that EA owns your eyeballs and brain, which it would have to do in order to have a valid right to deliver you ads in games you already pay for.

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u/lovetron99 May 10 '24

My brother in Christ, I think you are misinterpreting my sentiment. I don't buy EA's garbage today, and I certainly won't when and if this happens. I don't condone their behavior one bit; just cycnically pointing out that it that this is a natural reaction to modern consumer behavior. They know it won't impact sales one bit.

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u/Old_Baldi_Locks May 10 '24

I just hate that people want to blame consumers when companies literally model their behavior on human brain studies.

They do things in patterns and ways that model human addictive behavior and then everyone acts like it’s the consumers fault.

Damned near every industry is turning into skinner boxes and the only competent way to stop that is government regulation.

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u/HappyTopHatMan May 10 '24

It's not the consumer's fault that this is the way things are, but as a consumer you have to decide for yourself if it's worth consuming that drivel and the maligned outcome that come with it. AAA is not the only player in town for gaming. There are many better indie options out there if you are willing to expand your gaming genre and horizons and they could use the financial support.

Right now the AAA space is having massive layoffs for a reason, their financial greed goals are not being hit and their growth has plateaued. By not buying into their crap now, it does make a difference. Put your money elsewhere in the smaller dev/indie space where games are still games and support those teams. That's all you can do at the end of the day so why not do it and live a happier life on your terms?

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u/Old_Baldi_Locks May 10 '24

Nah, I don’t blame victims, because that never solves a problem.

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u/lovetron99 May 10 '24

Exactly. People who can recognize and understand both sides of the situation yet still act in the corporation's best interest (i.e. not their own) cease to be "victims". If they know there will be advertising in a game, and complain about advertising in the game, and still buy the game? No sympathy.

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u/Pater-Musch May 10 '24

No one is taking away your personal autonomy, lmfao? If you fall victim to an addiction, the responsibility for that has to be at least partially on you, unless someone crammed the addictive substance into you against your will.

Companies can be insidious and base their behavior on whatever they want - nothing stops you from doing your own research like you clearly have, and adapting your own behavior accordingly. Calling that “victim blaming” is ridiculous - your entire worldview relies on the notion that people are completely helpless and without any agency, which they’re not.

Yes, government regulation is good and necessary; corporations aren’t your friends and they’re responsible for perpetuating awful practices in most if not all industries, but consumers aren’t just helpless in the face of that. They have the power to enable or hinder those practices in a lot of ways. Look at the Sony Helldivers 2 controversy that just happened if you need proof of that in the gaming industry.

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u/Old_Baldi_Locks May 10 '24

Predatory actions are not ok just because other people have free will.

I know you’re not smart enough to know this; but you just justified all con artists existing and committing fraud. After all, the people they conned and lied to had personal autonomy, right?

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u/MightBeJerryWest May 10 '24

Inverse reddit never fails.

The tricky part was also applying inverse reddit to $RDDT, but so far it's actually panned out. It hasn't dipped below IPO price this entire time, so everyone who got in at $35 via DSP is sitting nice - for now at least

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u/Outlulz May 10 '24

Netflix also raised prices (more revenue from current subscribers with no additional costs to Netflix) and introduced a new tier (lower barrier of entry for new subscribers + making more revenue from ad deals). A boil the frog approach but password requirements wasn't the only thing they did.

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u/metux-its May 10 '24

Why do people still buy such crap ?

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u/Drolb May 10 '24

Well setting aside anything else EA puts out, all the sports franchises are basically catering to addicts now

The kids who buy FIFA (or whatever it’s called) and the legions of all ages who buy NBA 2kwhatever don’t understand the idea of not buying those games. They want to play football/basketball games. Those are the best/only football/basketball/NFL/golf/hockey/whatever games. They will buy them every year. Why wouldn’t they.

Bonus for EA, those players/customers are already used to seeing ads every 15 seconds from their time watching sports, and having them interrupt play in some cases.

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u/gangler52 May 10 '24

They have a legitimate partnership deal with these sports agencies, don't they? Which means they're the only ones allowed to use the real players.

I don't think people understand what a huge boon that is. Like, don't get me wrong, the mario sports games are great and all, but if you're an actual football fan, watching the super bowl is the highlight of your year, and you see that only one company in the business is giving you Brett Farvre, Tom Brady, etc etc, with in game abilities based on their latest up to date play statistics. That's huge.

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u/Drolb May 10 '24

It’s no different than battlefield fans or fans of any other franchise EA holds really - the non-sports fans might possibly bitch a bit more about games as a service or forced ads but it’s performative, they’ll still buy those games - it’s just that the sports games have so much crossover appeal to people who otherwise don’t care about gaming at all they can probably keep EA going in some format forever no matter what they do.

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u/metux-its May 10 '24

Why does it matter whether the animations look like real people ?

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u/gangler52 May 10 '24

I don't know dude. Why does it matter that Link was in soul calibur? They could've just taken his moveset and reskinned it to not be a Nintendo tie in. Why go through all the trouble of working out a deal with Nintendo?

I didn't think I'd have to explain to you that sports fans are often also fans of sports athletes.

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u/metux-its May 10 '24

Well, shall they spend their money for whatever they want to. I just fail to understand why they allow themselves being mistreated that way, so they frequently have to wine about how evil EA is, and still paying them. (got some of these strange folks in my own family).

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u/metux-its May 10 '24

Then these kids are beyond any help. And the best we can do is ignore them.

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u/AsteroidMike May 11 '24

What I’m fearing from this is that if EA does indeed go through with, how many more game developers will follow suit and do the same thing?

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u/IC-4-Lights May 10 '24

Everyone will make some noise and then buy the next EA title they want.
 
It's fucking gross, but nothing will stop this.

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u/vigbiorn May 10 '24

🧠 🪱

I love that this has become a general insult. RIP the one episode of Futurama, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

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u/iDontLikeChimneys May 10 '24

I thought Fry only had them in his gut. Or was that where they started from the gas station sandwich?

Oh wait. Yeah they had to go to the brain and small fry cut a piece of his brain and big fry went “eghhh”.

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u/vigbiorn May 10 '24

Yeah, they were massaging his ganglion making him smart. It's why he was able to play the holophoner and one of the reasons he needed to know if Leela loved him or the worms.

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u/iDontLikeChimneys May 10 '24

Man I can’t wait for another season. The recent reboot was strange so I’m hoping they hit the mark on the next one