Electronic Arts (EA) is a major player in the gaming industry. In its over four decades, it has produced or acquired popular franchises such as FIFA, Madden NFL, The Sims, and Battlefield.
Despite the many successes under its belt, it’s also had its fair share of controversies and bad decisions in the past decade, ranging from the acquisition of companies to anti-competition lawsuits.
Therefore, it isn’t a shock to see them in the news cycle once more for an idea that might be good for their company coffers but bad for their customers—the gamers.
What is this idea? I’ll let EA CEO Andrew Wilson’s disclosure during the 2024 first-quarter earnings report speak for itself. When asked by an investor about dynamic ad insertion in AAA titles, he said:
“To answer your question on advertising broadly, again, I think it’s still early on that front. And we have looked over the course of our history to be very thoughtful about advertising in the context of our play experiences. But again, as we think about the many, many billions of hours spent, both playing, creating, watching and connecting and where much of that engagement happens to be on the bounds of a traditional game experience, our expectation is that advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us.
We’ll be very thoughtful as we move into that, but we have teams internally in the company right now looking at how do we do very thoughtful implementations inside of our game experiences. But more importantly, as we start to build community and harness the power of community beyond the bounds of our games, how do we think about advertising as a growth driver in those types of experiences?” (Page 12 of the Q4 2024 Electronic Arts Inc Earnings Call on May 07th, 2024)
A company that produces big hit titles like Dragon Age, Maddon NFL, and Mass Effect is looking at adding real world ads into games that cost $70+ USD?
Let’s not gloss over the fact that a game like The Sims 4, which went free to play in 2022, has a total of 15 expansion packs, as well as 12 Game Packs, 20 Stuff Packs, and 29 Kits. To buy everything would set a player back over $1200! Granted, very few people buy every pack but that is still a lot of money for a game that’s a decade old now. And, adding insult to injury, earlier this year they added a prominent shop button to the game that encourages players to click on it and, hopefully, purchase something. It was so widely hated that one modder even created a mod to remove it from the interface.
That is just one game in one franchise.
So with all of the money that EA surely makes from the many titles under its umbrella and the savings from laying off over 600 people earlier this year, a whole other controversy, why do they choose to place intrusive advertisements into the mix.
Again.
This isn’t the first time they’ve tried this either. Previously, the game EA Sports UFC 4 included full-screen ads during ‘Replay’ moments. That went over like a lead balloon, leading them to disable the ads soon after.
But this time they hold the patent to an in-game system to generate ads based on a person’s playstyle. The ‘Persona Driven Dynamic Content Framework patent‘ would be able to create a player ‘persona’ based on gameplay style in order to dynamically change the game to make it easier or harder. It could also be used to determine potential ads for other games a player might enjoy, based on their playstyle. This sounds absolutely dystopic and could have been part of ‘Ready Player One’ or the book ‘Feed” by M.T. Anderson.
On a side note, if you haven’t read ‘Feed’, it’s worth checking out at the library.
It’s not the end of their bad decisions either. They also speak about using generative AI as a method to get people to spend more money on games. I don’t even know what to say about that, except that it’s manipulative and predatory to the max.
For my part, I will avoid purchasing any new EA titles. I avoid ads whenever possible as the majority of them are low-effort, low-quality, and, in some case, straight up scams. If I don’t trust or want to watch ads on the television and if I use adblockers to avoid ads on websites, why would I play a game that shoves random ads in my face? Games, after all, are supposed to be an entertaining escape from real life, not an extension of it.
In conclusion, EA’s latest move to integrate ads into its AAA games is just one more decision that prioritizes profit over player experience. While the company has had a hand in shaping the game industry with its iconic franchises, a financial strategy like this comes at the cost of gamer satisfaction and trust.
As players, our power lies in how we choose to spend our money and time. By voicing our concerns and making informed purchasing decisions, we can push for a gaming industry that values quality and player enjoyment over intrusive monetization tactics. It remains to be seen whether EA will listen or continue down a path that risks further alienation. Only time, and our collective actions, will tell.
Ms. Bella's World 