Didn't see this posted yet on here. Glad gamers were okay with corporate consolidation of devs! Better Microsoft than independent amirite!!
Yeah this isn't anything at all new. Battlefield 2142 I think had in game billboards that would get swapped around with certain ads every patch. Ironically they blended so well with the near future climate apocalypse they didn't really stand out much.
Live adverts in games have been a thing since, I want to say, Rainbow Six: Vegas? So 2006. Then you had similar stuff in Burnout: Paradise.
Before that, games sometimes had static ads like in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (I’m sensing a pattern with Ubisoft).
Then before that you had ‘ads’ as in stuff to make the game more realistic like track advertising in racing games.
My guess is that Microsoft is offering a standardised API that publishers/agencies can use to run advertising campaigns, and then that filters down to games that use that API. They have all the demographic data they need through Xbox Live and gameplay telemetry, so they know exactly how to target adverts. Now they want to monetise that as an additional revenue stream despite, you know, charging for Xbox Live already.
Pay money to buy an Xbox so you can pay money to use Xbox Live so you can pay money to buy games and look at ads :marx-joker: You will own nothing and you will be happy, you will live in the pod and you will eat the bugs
Rainbow Six: Vegas
Yes. The original had ads that would change periodically; for instance, there was advertising on the UNLV Campus map that would change (I remember it being ads for Tropic Thunder at one point)
I remember Guitar Hero 3 having still image ads in the menus and some of the levels that updated occasionally.
For racing games, I think there's an argument that most of the game is an ad for the car companies involved.
See, I’ve always felt that the best console in history was the Playstation 2. Not for being the most powerful, but for being the last console where the tech was advanced enough to realise most artistic visions without being so advanced as to alienate smaller developers without so much money to throw about, so it had a very strong third party library full of quirky weird and innovative stuff like Katamari Damacy and Okami.
Yes, obviously there’s still indie games now and they’re still full of innovation and quirk, but it can be very discouraging making them these days, knowing they’ll probably be drowned out by the hundred million other indie games coming out on Steam every second of every day, where the ones getting the most attention are the ones with the biggest boobies flapping about. The PS2 was an age of equality when stuff like Viewtiful Joe could proudly sit side by side on the shelf with Call of Duty. There’s just not the same social mobility anymore. You either have all the money and all the spectacle and all the attention ‘cos you hire entire small towns worth of people and work them to death, or you get patronized rigid and struggle to escape obscurity.
There’s no middle class to act as a stepping stone. And that brings me to my next point. ‘Cos sure, maybe things could change in the future. Maybe I’m just an ageing curmudgeon blinded by nostalgia for the early aughts. Maybe someday video games will stop being designed primarily around the publishers demanding that they make all of the money that currently exists in the world. But the problem with that is that it would kinda hinge on the rest of society no longer being designed primarily around trying to make all of the money that currently exists in the world. And at this point the corporations are just too entrenched, and government too corrupt, to prevent society’s continued acceleration into inevitable collapse. And when that happens ain’t no one gonna be designing innovative new video games from a climate disaster blasted hellscape.
These are the dark thoughts that nag me and make me worry that gaming has already peaked. But what do you think, commenters? Maybe you think I’m wrong. Let us know because oh lordy would I very much like to be wrong. Sorry, I swear I’m not trying to make all of these end on a depressing note. Hey, you probably can’t escape the system but you could at least find your own way to get by within it.
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/dark-souls-is-the-ultimate-game-of-all-time-extra-punctuation/
Advertisers: "Oh no please don't run our ads against videos that contain content that might be 'controversial'. You know, things like trans rights."
Also Advertisers: "Yes we would love to place a billboard in your murder simulator."
Luckily, game production rapidly industrialized before people figured out a methodology for game design. The games most likely to have ads are also the games that are squirted out on a yearly basis with minor adjustments between titles. Just more reason to watch indi spaces and ignore tripple crunch publishers.
Boycotts for entertainment products don't really work without people pirating the thing instead. The entertainment products are what people use to escape and self-medicate living in capitalist society.
Did anybody see the hilarious ad from pepsi where you get to shoot water protectors in Mexico. It felt like call of duty!
I can not think of anything more immersion breaking than seeing a real ad in a game, unless it's sports.
Reminding people of the real world that they're trying to escape by playing videogames strikes me as a good way to make them fucking hate you.
pihole probably would work for this, since it directly blocks domains that serve ads
Eventually, game developers are going to get clever enough to start feeding you connection keys on the same channels they feed you ads, such that you can't play online at all unless you accept ad traffick.
