Not a big fan of ads, not gonna lie. Don't get me wrong, i understand their necessity as it pertains to maintenance of entertainment properties. It's sort of a 'sad truth' sort of situation. I just hate their style or general lack thereof that we see in the ad
erts of here and now. In the days of old it seemed like adverts styled themselves around exaggeration and showmanship, which one could argue was misleading but at least that made them entertaining to watch. Nowadays it seems that we have a mix between either throwing a famous face in our eyes to imply "Buy this product and you'll be successful like X" or propping some charisma-less lifeless mannequin up on a stick and tell me that they're an ordianry person like me. (I mean, I'm not gonna lie and say that's not accurate, but that doesn't make them any more worth my time.) So the very concept of ads sneaking their way into my daily life, whether that be through watching content or just straight browsing, pretty much leaves a bad taste in my mouth. So if that's the case, then you can understand why this latest overreach of the marketing arm pretty much sickens me to my core.
You've heard of UFC, right? Course you have, respectable fighting tournaments where folk at the peak of physical fitness try to grapple each other into submission. Real erudite stuff. Well do you remember the gaming series based on UFC? You might be forgiven for missing that due to the fact that it's one of the few sports series that don't get inundated with yearly releases in order to keep up with the overwhelming demand of an army of lobotomites. I'm not even sure why. Maybe it's because UFC just isn't as popular amongst gamers or maybe these folk just aren't as receptive to EA's machinations. Oh that's right, the UFC game series is published by EA. Does that surprise you? It shouldn't. They've got their eyes on becoming the defacto publisher of every sports franchise into the world so that they can homogenise each sport into being dark mirrors of one-another. (Lucky they haven't got Basketball yet, that sport is being whole-sale slaughtered by 2K instead.)
But how do these two topics come together, you might wonder. Or, more likely, you've deduced already and am starting to develop that sickening feeling you get whenever you're watching a show and are fairly certain the scene is about to reveal the death of a character you really liked. For you see EA, in their infinite wisdom and completion of their scared duty as total bastards, have a new grift they want to unleash upon the gaming world, yet they decided to beta-test it in a sports game like they always do. That grift being, the introduction of real-life ads into the full price UFC 4 game. Oh yeah, you read right. In the middle of a match you could, for a time, expect to see a flash of an advert for Amazon's The Boys, or see a little banner pop up at the bottom of the screen in the middle of gameplay. So quick that you may even think you're hallucinating. But they're there, they're real and it's time we make some really serious discussions about what this means going forward.
Firstly, we need to address how shadily these advertisements were implemented into the game. For you see, absolutely no reviews ever mentioned real-life ads, and if they had you could imagine that having a knock on the final score. (Afterall, it's just distasteful.) That's because EA made the decision to throw in these Ads weeks after launch and all the reviews in order to circumvent those criticisms like the truly irredeemable scumbags they are. This actually gives me flashbacks to the time when Activision bought out the microtransaction store for 'Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fuelled' after the fact for the same reasons. We need to start preempting these sorts of moves from companies and implement dynamic reviews which respond to these gross tactics. Let these companies miss their review margins for the crap that they pull, they absolutely deserve it.
Secondly, we should look at the response from EA themselves, because yes, they did respond. As it just so happens it wasn't too long after the fact that Ads were hastily removed from UFC 4 and 3, (because they got retroactively added to that 2 year old game too) alongside some hasty message accepting little to no responsibility and spouting some crowd-pleasing nonsense about how 'The fans come first' and 'they didn't like it so we removed it'. Let me make one thing absolutely clear; fans have never and will never come first at EA, don't even let them entertain that lie for a moment. And as for the implication that the negative response which the UFC audience rightly threw at this practice, I hate to burst everyone's bubble but there's no way in heck that had any baring on this marketing cycle, that makes literally no sense at all. Decisions like this never happen in a vacuum and EA would rather burn down a puppy orphanage than break an advertising contract. Clearly they wrote a contract for a limited ad campaign which they completed and now are acting as though they're the selfless heroes. It's a lie, like literally everything anyone at EA says.
The natural response to this has been a user revolt, mostly on the site Metacritic wherein the user score is currently 1.8. But seeing as how Madden's user score is currently 0.2, I don't think EA's going to be losing any sleep over bad user experiences. (Remember, this game's not for the player; it exists to be ground zero for whatever scummy move EA want to pull next) But that revulsion with the game isn't just from this one horrifying overreach on the team's part, no. Apparently the game itself is a buggy and unbalanced mess too, which just makes sense with this company, doesn't it? They can't even put together a half decent game with two years to make it, maybe there just genuinely cannot be a well made sports game under EA's supervision. Perhaps it's a universal law that quality can never enter an equation that starts with 'EA Games title'.
Oh and this has all been going according to EA's plan, by the way. Lest anyone smile and think that we've won in dunking this game to oblivion. As it so happens it appears that earlier this year AT&T and Warner partnered with EA to distribute three ads for the 2018 game, UFC 3. (Which is why no one noticed.) EA were mindful, throughout that time, of a potential player backlash and were ready for it, so that when the proper test began, with UFC 4, they'd have the prepared statement ready to go. These people are schemers, through and through, and the more we give them the benefit of the doubt, the more they'll use that to take advantage and set another gross precedent in the gaming world. I've been thinking back on every moment of Ads making their way into games, like when Capcom did it, and yet this feels like the start of something horrible and I feel it in my bones. (Dark clouds are on the horizon for us, I fear.)
The worst thing about all of this? I don't know if there's anything that we can ultimately do in order to stop the inevitable deluge of advertisements in our games. This is the point where companies like EA will start to think it's their right to own the time we spend in the games we pay for access to, and monetising that time is their right. What recourse could we have? I shudder to think where EA could go with this but rest assured, your worst nightmare won't even compare. I know that it's a cliche at this point to paint EA as the stereotypical 'evil greedy' company; but oh my god they so absolutely are! It's like they're so avaricious and gluttonous that it almost tips out the other side and you wonder if they're actually that bad; but never forget who you're dealing with and never let them have an inch of ground. This was your regularly scheduled reminder that EA is a cesspit, please come back next week for whatever crap they're up to then.
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