In the wake of Facebook’s beacon disaster EA Games is the latest company to enter into the grand social experiment, advertising to an audience that really doesn’t want to be advertised to. According to The Guardian, EA is releasing a free version of Battlefield which is funded entirely by adverts.
In a change of tact rather than place adverts in the game, a tactic that many games use to promote ‘realism’, these adverts will be more overt appearing on start-up screens and the game website.
At first glance you’d expect this move to spark another uprising of the anti-corporate movement. But, in reality this is never actually likely to happen – if they don’t want the adverts then they simply won’t play.
As such, while this move will never invoke the indignation of the Beacon failure it remains to be seen whether gamers’ love of free stuff will override their determination not to be marketed to. The game could easily fall flat on its face with such obvious corporate interference.
To add to EA’s worries it’s also dubious whether such straightforward ‘name mentioning’ advertising will actually get through to such a savvy audience.
Success or not? Only time will tell.
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