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Advertising Games

TV-Style Commercials Are Coming To Console Games (kotaku.com) 140

Posted by BeauHD from the no-thanks dept.
As Axios reports, a company called playerWON (kill me), described as "a first-of-its-kind in-game advertising platform" (bring me back then kill me again), has signed deals with companies like EA and Hi-Rez (Smite) to try to bring TV-style commercials to their console games. Kotaku reports: Having tested this tech for over a year, they feel like it's now ready to be implemented, the idea being rather than just beaming videos to them in the middle of a game, players would be able to view an ad then, when servers detected the commercial had been viewed in its entirety, "release rewards to the player." This tech would be licensed out to developers so it could be implemented in the game itself (unlike the ads we already see on consoles, in places like system menu screens), and they're trying to justify it by saying that because young people are "cord-cutters," they're unreachable via traditional, cheaper marketing, and are only being reached by branded content deals (like the sneakers and clothes in NBA 2K, or cup noodles in Final Fantasy).

Testing has been taking place inside Smite for around a year, and the findings are as awful as you're probably expecting: "Data from one of Simulmedia's pilot campaigns with Smite, a F2P multiplayer battle arena game from Tencent's Hi-Rez Studios, shows that players were much more likely (22%) to play a game and spend money within the game (11%), if they watched in-game ads that gave them access to more gaming perks." As a result, playerWON "plans to launch in-game ads in roughly a dozen more games by the year's end."
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TV-Style Commercials Are Coming To Console Games More

TV-Style Commercials Are Coming To Console Games

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  • adds in games (Score:5, Interesting)

    by raslin ( 110940 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @02:12AM (#61542968)

    guess which games i am not going to be playing. this better be only on the free to play games.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      So I guess you'll be subtracting them from your Wish List?

      We gotta do something about this new business model, lest the number of titles multiply. But creators are likely divided over how the inclusion of ads effects the experience of the game, verses the extra revenue they can factor into the product.

      • Seems like your generation likes to get thousands of people to threaten to cancel services if they dont get their way, why should EA get a pass from it. At least in this case, much like the bus protests from the 60s, youre the consumer actually being mistreated. Its one thing to threaten cancel culture because some ceo wrote a personal check to someone you dont like. Jts entirely another to boycott based on how you as a consumer are treated.

        • Seems like your generation

          How do you know what generation they are from?
          You guys know each other?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by skam240 ( 789197 )

            They don't. The only inkling they could have is via user numbers (lower user numbers suggest older users) but the above poster actually has a lower user number than the poster you're questioning so they're just making a dumb assumption.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Vomitgod ( 6659552 )

      its called an "ad"
      is it spelt "addvertisement" ?

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by The123king ( 2395060 )
        Spelt = A species of wheat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        Spelled = Past participle of "Spell"

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          According to my Oxford dictionary "spelt" is the past tense of spell. "Spelled" is also acceptable.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by skegg ( 666571 )

            Yup, concur. Brought up in Australia, I was taught that as well.

            But I suspect it's old school, now replaced by the easier-to-remember "just add 'ed' to make it past tense".

            Don't know what today's kids would think if they saw "ae" joined together [wikipedia.org] in a word.

            • As a non-native English speaker I was a bit surprised when someone told me (here, in a response to a comment) "learnt" wasn't correct. That's how I was taught it in my school. I guess it's not used much nowadays but was suprised to be told that it was wrong

              • As a non-native English speaker I was a bit surprised when someone told me (here, in a response to a comment) "learnt" wasn't correct. That's how I was taught it in my school. I guess it's not used much nowadays but was suprised to be told that it was wrong

                As an American I'm surprised as well, because "learnt" and "spelt" are correct even here, if slightly archaic. It would be like someone telling you "colour" or "honour" were incorrect.

                Ok, I'm not surprised. Who am I kidding? We're all complete morons now.

              • It's predominantly a British English thing. Spelt, learnt, but not earned.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              I've heard my young niece say "spelt" in relation to her school work. In the UK it's common to ask "how is that spelt?" I've also heard people say "you spelled it wrong", in fact I think I might have used it when I saw a guy putting up a shop sign that read "Tanning Center".

              The "ed" thing is a common mistake that even native speaker make often, because many verbs in English are irregular. You often hear kids say "goed" instead of went, for example.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by skam240 ( 789197 )

              Over a century ago a US dictionary maker (a major one although I forget which) decided to make some changes to the written English language. Some made a lot of sense and some made no sense at all but this is the reason for things like the fact that in the US we write "color" and in the UK (and I imagine Australia) it's "colour".

              What I'm getting at here is that maybe this is one of those things as I was always a reasonably strong English student here in the US and to me "spelt" is most certainly a grain.

          • Do you actually own an Oxford of Websters dictionary? Its been decades since I have had a 40lb book just collecting dust. Isnt the Oxford version specific to British spellings like Grey instead of Gray, shoppes instead of shops, etc?

            • Do you actually own an Oxford of Websters dictionary? Its been decades since I have had a 40lb book just collecting dust. Isnt the Oxford version specific to British spellings like Grey instead of Gray, shoppes instead of shops, etc?

              Yes, Oxford is pretty obviously a British dictionary and Webster's is the American equivalent.
              Also, I believe you're supposed to specify the weight of the Oxford in stone.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              I think I might have a paper copy somewhere. There is an Android app and they have a website too. Used to charge but it's free now (with ads).

              In British English we spell it shops, "shoppes" is maybe some kind of fake ye olde-worlde thing I think. "Gray" is listed with a note that it is US English and correctly spelt grey in Oxford/British spelling.

              British English actually has multiple spellings for a lot of words. Oxford Spelling, which I prefer, uses -ize but most newspapers and schools use -ise, for examp

          • He who smelt it dealt it.

      • An "add" in a game is an additional (and unwanted) enemy who notices and attacks you while you are already fighting other ones, thus complicating the fight. It sounds like the definition fits this advertising platform.

    • If most new major-studio games to play on a TV sell for $119.99 without ads or $59.99 with ads, would you just stop playing major-label games?

      (Source: Extrapolated by analogy to the pricing models of Paramount Plus, Peacock, Hulu, and the LA Times)

  • And nothing of value was lost (Score:4, Insightful)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @02:20AM (#61542976)
    Oh look, they figured out how to get more money out of the brainwashed consumer drones. I'm sure Candy Crush and League of Legends players will be thrilled to, do whatever it is they do to get money, just to turn around and give yet more of it to a company. The perfect Skinner box is only a few years away, and then it'll be more addicting than heroin. And unlike heroin there's much less production cost!
    • From TIAC to TOAW. K W Jeter wrote some bleak stuff but was he ever prescient

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        Are we supposed to know what that means?

        • From "The Infield Against Cleveland" to "The Outfield Against Washington". Kurt Warner Jeter wrote some bleak stuff, but was he ever prescient?

          I'm not quite sure what the question has to do with the topic of TV-style advertisements in video games, but since it was asked, my answer is an easy "no". While Kurt Warner Jeter was an excellent baseball strategist whose tactical mastery no doubt contributed to his nephew Derek's inclusion in the hallowed halls of Cooperstown, I view his writings as excellent overv

    • And it's legal.

      And those campaign dollars saying it better stays legal, too.

  • This seems as if they missed a trick. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Flownez ( 589611 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @02:29AM (#61542986)
    In game advertising such as billboards and product placement would likely have a much more cerebral and persuasive impact that blunt force advertisements made for a completely different media format. It would seem like the lazy choice to opt for such an antiquated approach, not withstanding the fact that the Venn circles of demographics persuaded by such an advertising method, and demographics playing the games, probably don't even overlap.

    • IMO in-game billboards and product placement if done correctly (the game is set in the present or near future/past etc, for example GTA) would be a good thing for immersion. I do not really like when a game is set in "the real world" but has fake brand names on everything.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      In game advertising such as billboards and product placement would likely have a much more cerebral and persuasive impact that blunt force advertisements made for a completely different media format. It would seem like the lazy choice to opt for such an antiquated approach, not withstanding the fact that the Venn circles of demographics persuaded by such an advertising method, and demographics playing the games, probably don't even overlap.

      The thing is, they've tried this for years, it didn't work for a variety of reasons but companies stopped shelling out huge sums for product placement because the ROI just wasn't there. Adverts have shelf life, once the campaign is finished they're often completely ineffective so an ad that cant be replaced is only useful for a few months at best. Add in the mix that your ad will either need to be tailored based on location (we're gonna need extra for that) or you end up with the wrong brands being shown in

  • Those are games I won't be buying (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @02:40AM (#61543008)
    You try to shove this shit down my throat and I'll go out of my way to avoid you and everyone you associate with.

    • Re:Those are games I won't be buying (Score:5, Funny)

      by infolation ( 840436 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @03:35AM (#61543100)
      Next up: UBlock Origin in the Steam Store.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Next up: UBlock Origin in the Steam Store.

        Forget the steam store... There will be an independent FOSS firewall for this shit, or a simple script that will update your Windows firewall.

        This is not for us, this is the for the Console peasants who will be forced to try and block it at the router (so most wont be arsed). I can see the first game to feature things like this will be the yearly Generic Sports Reskin 20xx (NFL, FIFA, et al).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      Same here but given how many $hundreds of billions idiots are spending on loot boxes, this will no doubt continue, I don't think this advertising is intended for me or you. The market has proven itself to be a bunch of gullible sycophants endless times. Loot boxes, pay to win, pay-to-continue, day-one DLCs, season passes, What next? This is next.

    • Every time a publisher announces new in-game advertising or new spyware to curtail cheating or new intrusive copyright measures, gamers say the same shit. And yet, here we are.

  • I can't wait for this! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02, 2021 @02:49AM (#61543020)

    There is this huge hole in my life and the only thing that can fill it is more advertisements. This is going to be super awesome!

    I set my DVR to record just the ads. I don't even watch the shows, they're awful. The ads are where the money is!

    • I set my DVR to record just the ads. I don't even watch the shows, they're awful.

      I only record the shows because my DVR is an older model and I only have limited hard drive capacity. Lucky for me, I can record many hours of programming for mere minutes of actual shows wasting my precious disk space.

  • I wonder how many people would rather play Civ1 and SimCity than put up with 30-120 seconds of drivel.

    • I think I'd rather write my own game. Out of sticks and branches. And poke myself with them. Rather than put up with that.

  • Brother, get the flamer. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spiritplumber ( 1944222 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @03:21AM (#61543074) Homepage
    The HEAVY flamer
  • No, no more adverting!

  • Yeah, because it worked great in browsers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @03:46AM (#61543120)

    Remember when ads in browsers were a thing? When there was windows that pop up, under, over and if it could would also pop corn to make sure you would see all sorts of flickering and often even blaring garbage you had no remote interest in, interrupting your browsing and keeping you from accessing what you actually wanted to get until you paid it attention? Remember them?

    They got so bad that even the non-geeks started to install adblockers. The "average Joe" users. You know the type. The ones that never update or fix anything on their box. The ones that were ok with having a thousand browser bars installed that came with every crap freeware that made your browsers run like slugs on i7s and gave you a screen real estate of a stamp on a 27" screen because everything else of the browser was taken up by the bar and its "information windows". The ones that dutifully click away 10 error messages every time they boot their computer like that's how it should be. They managed to piss off these people enough to go out of their way to install adblockers. This is how obnoxious that crap got.

    Now, browser advertising is pretty much dead. Pages are begging you to turn off your adblocker, which is usually met with "Ok. NEXT!" before closing that window and taking the next result on Google. This is how far them being obnoxious got them. Because they thought they could simply continue what they did on TV. Here I interrupt your experience and you'll sit there, grin and bear it.

    Guess what: That's not the case in an interactive medium. I can do something against your ads. And I do.

    Why do they think that this is going to be any different? Because I am absolutely certain how this is going to go down. They'll interrupt the gameplay with some ad. Which will be about as effective as it is with YouTube. What happens there is that the user is frantically clicking "skip" like it's some kind of clicker browser game without paying any heed to whatever is going on on the screen. People have no idea what the ad is for. What the see is the lower right corner of the screen where the countdown to their content is being shown.

    It will be exactly the same with the in-game ads.

    And at some point, it will piss off people enough that they start to figure out how to get around this bullshit. You're dealing here with a crowd that is no longer used to having their fun interrupted every 5 minutes for bullshit. They cut the cord long enough that they are used to pausing the movie when they have to go to the bathroom, not wait for you to tell them when it's time.

    • For that I'm willing to unblock as there's no good alternative model out there. But in game ads - a new opportunity for the adblocker community to show off their technical skills!

      • It may be difficult to achieve:
        a) Consoles are closed ecosystems and could require a jailbreak to sideload blockers.
        b) Even then, it all depends what serves the ad - a console-wide framework or does every game have their own methods?
        c) Adblockers would most likely not be permitted in the official store.
        d) ...and even if they did, the cost of acquiring a development kit for consoles is probably to much for someone to use on a good Samaritan basis to create and maintain an adblocker.

        • Ads still need to be delivered. If anything, that whole thing could become a great vehicle to jailbreak or mess with game content.

          • Ads still need to be delivered. If anything, that whole thing could become a great vehicle to jailbreak or mess with game content.

            So the method by which ads are served becomes the method by which the game is cracked. This also means a perfect vehicle for malware.

        • Plus, if anything, it will make people who never had any interest in pirating games consider breaking their console locks open to get rid of that crap.

          I wonder if console makers are aware of the Pandora box they're opening there.

        • I wonder if you could set up a Pi-Hole on your network and, unless the ads are baked into the game's code, just block the ad requests. I do that on my iPad and the Web is a much more enjoyable experience.

      • For good journalism I'm actually willing to actually pay, with my money.

        But for the next top 10 of things where 4 will BLOW MY MIND? Nah. I won't even unblock for that bull.

    • One major difference here: The PC allows the ad watcher to customize their environment. The key, as you pointed out, is motivation.
      Consoles are a closed kingdom. No such user tools exist that allow a user to modify the user experience. The console gamer is a captive audience.

      Will they be sufficiently pissed to choose a different platform or otherwise change their behaviors?
      You say they will. My heart is with you and I hope they do. But based on console history to date, if I had to bet I'd go a differen

      • That only means that the threat to the console makers is even greater.

        Right now, the average, honest console player will not jailbreak or mod his console. He doesn't want to play illegal copies. He doesn't want to run alternative operating systems on them. He wants to play his games and be happy about it. He pays for his games and plays them. He is basically the user from above, the Joe Randomsurfer who accepted the slowdown of his PC due to browser add-ons that clogged up his surfing experience, the variou

  • Adpocalypse (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blessedvirtue ( 7004110 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @03:49AM (#61543122)
    I play console games to escape an ad-infested world, so now I can expect to be rudely mentally kidnapped and forced to watch other games that might totally disgust me. Lets hope that they don't raise the volume during the interruption .

    • Consoles were always bad at this... Atari and Nintendo invented the walled garden, invented the idea of a device in your living room which was strictly theirs and not yours.

      Join the pc master race, brÃther.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by noodler ( 724788 )

        Consoles were always bad at this... Atari and Nintendo invented the walled garden, invented the idea of a device in your living room which was strictly theirs and not yours.

        You seem to go a few steps too far with your walled garden accusations.
        Back in the atari and NES days it wasn't feasible to make a cheap gaming machine that could be used as an open platform for people to write their own games on or whatever you fantasize about doing on a console. And by far the most people just wanted to play games on their game console. And this 'walled garden' worked well for that. You buy an atari game for your atari console, plug the cart and it just works. Amazing, right?

        Another impor

        • A cartridge system itself doesn't guarantee a walled garden, but it's true Magnavox is a big part of the history of how things got as bad as they were. Atari, unsuccessfully, and Nintendo, successfully, came up with new legal tricks to outlaw non-approved games.

          Customers wanted it, hah! The credit line decides winners, and companies tempting investors with monopoly profits get a better credit line.

          All of which is really irrelevant to my advice to OP, which is (minus the jokes) that consoles and other walled

        • Another important historic fact is that atari was actually pretty much murdered once the 3rd party publishers started dumping absolute crap on the market. It was the forced openness of the atari 2600 that brought about the us game market crash of the early 80 and allowed nintendo to take over the world with better more curated titles.

          This is more "historic narrative" than "fact". The original Sony Playstation was also infamous for shovelware, and arguably the same could also be said of GBA - yet there was no Great Videogame Crash of the Late 1990s

          The truth is that there were a lot of factors surrounding the 1983 collapse (which, it should be added, was pretty much isolated to the US, and isolated to dedicated home video game consoles - computer games weren't affected, nor was the arcade game market impacted much beyond Atari), and journ

          • If I were to offer a better summary, I'd say that it was a case of the macro-level market being overly reliant on the sales figures of a single runaway success (the 2600), and as the 2600 aged, the games just weren't impressive enough to go buy. None of the next-wave consoles were really enticing - the 5200 had the infamously awful controllers, the Intellivision had bad controllers and wasn't really that much better than the 2600, and Colecovision was expensive and (ironically) had a small software library.

            That's pretty insightful. I've always believed that the Colecovision might have survived if people hadn't panicked and kept the games coming for another year.

            it could actually be argued that the US console market never died at all, you just had Commodore reigning supreme after Atari.

            To a certain extent, yes. Though the cost of a 1541 made the C64 less affordable than a 2600. In the US at least, most of the good games were disk only.

            but there was still plenty of third-party shitware squeezing past the Seal of Check-Clearing Quality - in 1987 alone, alongside classics like Mike Tyson's Punch-Out and Metroid you also had uninspired ports of old computer games like Raid on Bungeling Bay and Winter Games alongside forgettable trash like Tiger-Heli and Jaws.

            Ha! Though some ports later on were decent, try the NES port of Might & Magic.

    • You hope they don't go in dry? How about simply resolving not to take it? And then actually not taking it?

  • Does this bring a discount to the affected games? Of course not! Advertising brings nothing but an unwelcome interruption to a gamer (or TV viewer). It's amazing that people are willing to pay for a service where they also get advertised at. It looks like a massive case of Stockholm Syndrome.

    • It's amazing that people are willing to pay for a service where they also get advertised at.

      And for how many decades was cable TV popular before any ad-free alternatives finally came about?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Malc ( 1751 )

        Not for me. I couldn't believe what people put up with on TV when I lived in N. American - you pay how much for that? I grew-up with ad free TV, and the BBC is still my go-to service. At about 12 or 13 quid per month it's a bargain. I can't stand ads, and I will not watch them.

  • "shows that players were much more likely (22%) to play a game" if there are in game ads. The is wishful BS
    "spend money within the game (11%)" sad but probably true. ads do stimulate some purchasing

    But anyone that watches 10 mins of TV, streams or browses without an ad blocker/NoScript knows the advertisers have gone off the deep end.

    • Re: A lie and a truth (Score:4, Informative)

      by alexgieg ( 948359 ) <alexgieg@gmail.com> on Friday July 02, 2021 @04:58AM (#61543240) Homepage

      To be fair, they didn't say players were more likely to play a game if there are ads, they said players were more likely to play games with ads, and the ads in their entirety at that, if watching those ads gives in-game rewards.

      Alas, this is probably true. Many free-to-play games have a button that allows you to voluntarily watch an ad in exchange for in-game currency, and people do use that when the game is particularly addictive and getting that one gold/crystal/gem/whatever will allow you to play for 3 minutes more right now rather than waiting anxiously until afternoon or some similar BS.

      • Alas, this is probably true. Many free-to-play games have a button that allows you to voluntarily watch an ad in exchange for in-game currency, and people do use that when the game is particularly addictive and getting that one gold/crystal/gem/whatever will allow you to play for 3 minutes more right now rather than waiting anxiously until afternoon or some similar BS.

        This behavior is being normalized in kids growing up today as most all of the mobile games geared towards kids operate like this. It will be considered completely acceptable by the masses.

      • To be fair, they didn't say players were more likely to play a game if there are ads, they said players were more likely to play games with ads, and the ads in their entirety at that, if watching those ads gives in-game rewards.

        Alas, this is probably true. Many free-to-play games have a button that allows you to voluntarily watch an ad in exchange for in-game currency, and people do use that when the game is particularly addictive and getting that one gold/crystal/gem/whatever will allow you to play for 3 minutes more right now rather than waiting anxiously until afternoon or some similar BS.

        I can't say that I have a problem with that. At least you are getting something for the exchange: a few minutes of entertainment.

        I may or may not choose to do it, but it's not inherently immoral or something.

        • I may or may not choose to do it, but it's not inherently immoral or something.

          In the case of free-to-play games it's inherently immoral because those companies hire psychologists to provide them fully developed techniques on how to exploit human cognitive biases. Every single aspect of those games actively triggers one or more of those failures to cause maximum addictiveness while doing all they can to turn off your common sense. That is to say, they do everything in their power to undo most everything civilization has been trying to do for the last several centuries. Their only not-

    • You can probably make a nice amount of money by selling a tool that tricks the ad server into thinking you do nothing but watch ads all day long.

  • With adblockers and PiHole I live in a pretty ad-less world. If they force ads like that on my console I'm just going to sell it and turn to retro gaming. There are so many DRM-free games out there that are still enjoyable today! Hello GoG.com!

  • How awfully uninspired to show ready-made TV ads , when video games provide unlimited ways of promoting the customers's goods.

  • One of the big things about the Xbox Series S|X and the PS5 was with their SSDs, games load incredibly fast. Fast enough that sitting at loading screens was an endangered activity.

    I'm sure if you're waiting a couple of minutes at a loading screen, then an ad might not be such a negative thing. But with the mdoern consoles turning what was once a couple minute wait into a few seconds long, then the only way this will happen is if they're going to wait for the ad to finish before moving on.

    And this is highly

    • Load times have to increase. Players are starting to notice that the average 60+ dollar game has less than 5 hours of content.

      With load times back to what they were in the early CD-Rom days, we should push that to 15 hours easily.

  • Guess which games I won't be buying? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Malifescent ( 7411208 ) on Friday July 02, 2021 @05:54AM (#61543332)
    Haven't these morons learned anything from the success of Netflix?

    NO ADS!!!

    People are paying top dollar to get away from ads and these guys have the brilliant idea to put them back in?!
  • This isn't at all a new idea. Tried to play a "free" game on your smartphone recently? You won't make it two minutes without being interrupted by a mandatory ad. Even if you pay a few bucks for the ad-free version of the game, some will give you the option to watch ads for in-game perks (exactly what this "first-of-its-kind in-game" platform is bragging about doing).

    • There's lots of smartphone games that don't force any ads on you, and only offer you stuff for watching ads.

      They are slightly in the minority, but not all that hard to find really.

      Unfortunately you have to read reviews to find out which are which, unless you just want to test each one.

  • I hope they figure out a way to put ads on my bathroom mirror.

  • The right way to do it: (Score:3)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Friday July 02, 2021 @07:21AM (#61543438)

    20 years ago I was playing Unreal Tournament. I clearly remember that Orange Telecom had UT servers up and every once in a while you'd hear a PSA anouncement in the arena: "The Future is bright, the future is Orange!". Back in the day I thought it was kinda cool, because it wasn't obnoxious and they'd integrated it neatly into the game in a way that was totally plausible. ...

    The problem with real-ad in-game Billboards though is, that the opportunity for humor is somewhat mitigated. Watch Dogs 2 has "Noodle Maps" and such and Fallout, Bioshock and others have satirical ads, RoboCop style. It would be a shame if those would go in favour of real-world ads.

  • Google vs. EA (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Apple: "You're the customer"
    Google: "If you're not the customer, you're the product"
    EA: "Why not both!"

  • So ... (Score:2)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    ... nothing but ads for Medicare supplement plans?

  • I like how the game pubs/devs have the balls to include more ads in games after raising the cost of a game to $70.
    I hate all the idiots that think this is good or tolerate it.

  • In the movie adaptation for the novel Ready Player One, an evil corporation is seeking control of the the global VR gaming platform/internet. In a board meeting, the CEO unveils the plan to "upgrade" the system to spam 80% of a user's viewable space with advertisements (more would cause seizure). https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    - Ready Player One vs. playerWON
    - Forcing adds into games

    This seems like someone saw the movie and though, "Ya! The guys in the suits! They're the real 'good guys'!"

  • Well yes, it's true that many people will often rather watch ads every so often than pay more money for perks in video games. at least that is the user's own *CHOICE*. TV style commercials are forced upon the viewer whether he or she wanted them or not.

    The conclusions of this so-called study are so laughably fallacious that I was honestly not sure whether or not this story was some kind of joke.

  • Never will, now, that's the final nail in the coffin of that idea for me.

  • If it's in my house, "watch" equals "hit mute within the first second, then play with the dog, eyes off the screen, until all ads are complete".

  • I wonder how well Pi-Hole ( or anything similar ) will work against this silliness.

    Yet another ( new ) reason not to pre-order anything.
    Let everyone else find out your game is loaded with ADS so the rest of us know to mark it off the list :P

  • Excellent! I can't wait to be able to not watch that bullshit. I never owned a game console.

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