EA VP Urges Companies To Think About In-Game Ads During Development: ‘That’s A Huge Opportunity’

To think there’s not a single billboard or radio ad in the Black Flag remake. All those missed opportunities…

I don't and won't play games with in-game ads. No matter how good they apparently are otherwise, I'll never know.

“Please normalize this and diffuse the backlash across the industry so it’s not just another thing people hate EA for.”

I never got into Android gaming because 90% of it is adware. If the PC landscape turns into this, you can bet your ass I'll stop playing that as well.

This has been a hot topic among AAA developers for a long ass time. Steam is setting certain requirements, such as engagement with advertisements may not be forced - But product placement that fits within the world is fine

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/advertising

I've sworn off game companies for less.

Person who has developed a service to put ads in games says companies should think about putting ads in games.

"EA Advertising is a platform that’s directly integrated into Frostbite, the engine EA uses to make its biggest games, from Madden to Battlefield. The idea is to streamline what’s required to create custom ads for clients and then track how players “engage” with the ads. “Advertisers can now collaborate with EA in a privacy-safe way to improve targeting and gain deeper campaign insights,” the company wrote last month. “EA ensures ads are viewable, delivered to real audiences, and measured using industry-accredited standards in partnership with Integral Ad Science.”

Once again, my decades long boycott of EA is paying off.

Do these execs really not grasp how many sales they slowly bleed by making modern triple A games unbearable...? Like they don't actually have a captive audience, people can and do just play indie and old games instead.

Making games genuinely unbearable and pissing everyone off seems like such an obviously bad business decision, but being a VP requires being dumb as a brick I guess

What happened, EA? Did five minutes already pass before you gave everyone something to hate about your greedy, corporate, pulseless guts?

I swear, nobody can have any hobbies nowadays without execs enshittifying everything.

Advertising is brainwashing and should be illegal globally. No more ads!

There are better ways to finance stuff.

I'm all for it. Everywhere there's space for an ad to be blended into the background of the game to subliminally market to me should be utilized to its fullest.

The games will be free, right? The ads are what pays for it, right?

There are more people making independent video games today than at any point in history.

I just don't understand the all-or-nothing perspective that video game social media pundits have.

Personally, I absolutely prefer indie art films generally, but my preference doesn't mean that Michael Bay blockbusters shouldn't exist, or that Universal Pictures should go out of business...

Not everything needs to be for everyone, and most things created aren't created for ME.

They've been saying this for 20 years.

The whole point of my favorite games, especially the single player versions, is the escapism. The “I do not want to think about the current world or its problems”. You start throwing ads in the game, that aspect is completely removed. I will never play a game that has this in it. Walking through Tamriel and some fucking beverage or mobile game pops up and I’m gonna fire bomb some game execs million dollar house.

Im fine if they actually fit the game. But this means they are basically limited to games that are only set in the real world. I actually liked seeing the Old Spice and Nokia billboards in NFS Underground 2, and seeing them now is an even bigger reminder of the time the game came out. Or the random products in Kojima games.

But seeing real world product ads in games like Halo or Dark Souls? No thanks. I can't see how you add those to the world and make them feel like part of the game world.

The funny thing is they did used to do this back in the day with games like Crazy Taxi. It was a decent way to get some development funds as well.

They stopped doing it because I think it was too hard to gauge how much of am effect it actually had.

Knowing EA, they're probably thinking about unskippable slop and not franchising ingame universe with billlboards and locations lol.

Honestly I'm for it. I hope all the major players adopt this so we can watch the pillars of the gaming industry collapse.

From the wreckage will be a renaissance of developers whose priority in making games is that they're good.

Putting Dao's personal cell phone number and other contact info on the back of every in-game billboard with a real ad would be a nice Easter egg.

I thought EA had already been doing this with need for speed all the way back in Xbox 360 times?

"This Ring of Fire Resistance should protect you, Sir Bolden. And you know who else can protect you? State Farm!"

Even more product placement? I thought we already did this! Now we're gonna have Google Ads telling me to buy some cheap thing from Temu or Shien that looks suspiciously sexual like a flesh colored body suit?

They already advertise in games. I’ve been drinking Nuka Cola for years now, and expect to continue doing so for centuries

The only ads in games I’ve ever been ok with were the ones in SWAT 4 where they just had dynamic textures that pulled different ads in so it was literally just like, decorative flyers on the walls were real ads instead of fake ones. Of course I could do with most the whole game braking 20 years later because the back end shit down thing.