Electronic Arts, the publisher of most sports games on the market, Battlefield, Mass Effect, and plenty of other huge franchises, is considering putting ads inside its video games as another source of revenue. This isn’t the first time the company has done this, but given how poorly it’s gone in the past, I’m surprised EA is still giving it thought.
News of this came from the company’s May 7 earnings call (thanks, GameSpot), in which EA CEO Andrew Wilson was asked about “dynamic ad insertion” within AAA games, and if he thought this was a possible source of cashflow for the company. Wilson said EA sees advertising as a possible “meaningful driver of growth,” but wants to be “thoughtful” about how ads could be implemented into its games. His full quote on the matter reads as follows:
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?
A lot of flowery language about community building to try and explain why a game you’ve bought might be trying to sell you more unrelated bullshit in the coming years. But EA has already tried this multiple times before, and the community it’s talking about building reacted very poorly. Back in 2020, EA put ads into UFC 4 for The Boys that would pop up in the middle of fights. The backlash prompted EA to remove them, but perhaps flashing a logo during a match isn’t the “thoughtful” implementation Wilson has in mind. And of course, advertising isn’t exclusive to selling you on watching a television show. EA has also partnered with political candidates like former U.S. president Barack Obama, whose campaign was advertised in Burnout Paradise. I’m excited for the next Mass Effect to launch with a big ol’ Doritos logo plastered on the side of my spaceship.
EA isn’t the only company that’s tried this and received pushback. I still remember how annoyed people got when Capcom put ads for the Capcom Pro Tour into Street Fighter V. Those were especially heinous because they just slapped the logo on characters and it looked silly and disruptive. Again, not very “thoughtful.”