It’s not enough for the CEO of Electronic Arts to charge 70 euros for his video games. You are already learning how to advertise in them

• Andrew Wilson assured that there is a team researching “how to implement advertising in their games in a very thoughtful way.”

• There are precedents and they are all quite criticized

Advertising in video games has always been a topic of debate for obvious reasons. Finding ads while playing is probably the last thing you would expect to find if you paid 70 or 80 euros for it, but it is no secret that this topic is being researched and, as we will see later, has been implemented. in some cases with greater or lesser success.

Today’s leading company is Electronic Arts, which held a meeting with investors a few days ago to present its quarterly results. And yes, there was a question about advertising in triple A and yes, the answer is clear: it is being studied.

What about advertising? If we look at the transcript of the meeting, on page 12 (PDF) we can read a question asked by Eric James Sheridan of Goldman Sachs. The executive asks about “the market opportunity for incorporating more dynamic advertising into more traditional AAA games across multiple formats and what the Electronic Arts CEO believes the mid- to long-term revenue opportunities might be.” The response from Andrew Wilson, CEO of EA, was as follows:

“As far as advertising goes, I think it’s still just the beginning. Throughout our history, we have been very conscious of advertising in the context of our gaming experience. But again, when we think about the billions of hours we spend playing, creating, watching and interacting, and since most of that interaction happens through traditional gameplay, we expect that advertising could be a big driver of growth for us.

We’ll keep that in mind, but right now we have internal teams across the company looking at how to make very thoughtful implementations in our gaming experience. But more importantly, as we start to build communities and harness the power of community outside of our games, how do we think about advertising as a driver for the growth of these types of experiences?”

Summarizing. According to the company’s CEO, it is “too early” to talk about advertising in regular games. It’s one thing to have a game from a franchise that attracts advertising, such as sports games (EA is the main indicator in this sense) and quite another to put it in the conditional triple A, for example, Star Wars Jedi. However, this is a reality that is being explored, and what remains in question is the meaning of “very thoughtful implementations” and what to expect from them.

Potential. This is of course huge. Eric James Sheridan also asks about the possibility of films and TV series being made based on his franchises (a question that makes complete sense given the success of Fallout), and while Wilson is somewhat vague in his answer, he does make it clear that users are seeing “billions of hours only in FC (football game)” and imagine if we add “Madden”, “The Sims”, “Battlefield” and “Apex”. Electronic Arts has a huge audience, allowing them to show ads not only to players, but also to characters who watch players (Twitch, YouTube, TikTok…). Only time will tell us how these studies will materialize.

Background. Just because, they are. Already in 2007, the video game “Crackdown” was criticized for showing advertisements for the film “300.” A year later, in 2008, there were ads for voting for Barack Obama in Burnout Paradise (by EA) and many others like it. How can we forget the Doritos and Mountain Dew power-ups in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, the Verizon phone company in Alan Wake, or the Mercedes-Benz in Mario Kart 8.

Announcement of The Boys in UFC 4

EA’s case is also special because it has already been criticized for this many times. We can quickly recall the video game NBA 2K21, which showed ads on the loading screen as if it were a pause in the actual game. And what can we say about the UFC advertisement for “The Boys” that appeared in the middle of the game. Needless to say, the people who paid for the game weren’t too happy with it. Other companies that had done something similar, such as Ubisoft, also had a good chance.

For any reason.

Image | 3DJuegos edited by Xataka

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