Thoughts on Jim Sterlings video about Advertisements in games?

[Damian Cunliffe]

You don't need a union to not buy a game I have no problem not buying games I don't want to play.

But like with anything else, only a tiny % of gamers are even aware of the issue. The rest just keep buying the games and encouraging the microtransacton culture.

Before I buy a game I look how it is monetized. If it's scummy I don't buy it, no matter how much I may want it. I want to play RDR2. I won't buy it because I won't support scummy monetization. Most gamers don't give a crap though, so my not buying it is irrelevant.

[PriestTroit]

Most gamers don't care because it's not as big a deal as others pretend it is. You're fooling yourself if you think all "scummy monetization" is equal across the board.... and you're robbing yourself of playing good games because of it.

[GutsGodhand]

In a nutshell.

In-Game ads won't make a game cheaper for the end user. We're all kidding ourselves if we believe that. Would it help cut costs for the development? Sure. But we end users won't see those savings.

I mean come on......they won't even give us costumes or color palettes to unlock for free. We get nothing for going through arcade or story mode do we? You think they are gonna make their entire package cheaper in exchange for shoving ads in your face? Nah.

I grew up on fighters. Love them. But I can't support what Capcom is doing. I wouldn't support it if any other developer did it. And even though I love fighters, I just can't. I own every Street Fighter up to this point. But I won't spend a dollar on V. Just can't bring myself to do it.

If Capcom needs the E-Sports crowd so badly.....then put ads all over that shit and give it to them for free. So those ads pop up during big matches and everyone participating and watching on stream can see. But if we gotta shell out $60+ for a game, then it's DLC packs....and it's costume packs....and they still wanna shove ads in my face? yeah I'm gonna pass. I don't care how fun your game is. It's not worth that to me. There's plenty of titles out there that don't harass me after I've already given them my hard earned dollars.

[Aidy]

I wasn't aware there was scummy monetisation in RDR2. Though I'm currently playing AC Odyssey and I didn't know you could spend real money in that game until I saw some reviews moaning about it.

[Dub-Z]

How Street Fighter V ads work:

- 100% optional
- you get 16 extra FM per fight for leaving them on
- you still earn the same FM everywhere (super casual play gets me 5000 every couple weeks, easy)
- splash screen over the loading screen
- select costumes with small logos
- the ads are for tournaments and costumes

I can understand the slippery slope, dystopian future fears but this isn't new to games, he's soapboxing for people who wrote the game off years ago when it released, and really have no interest in seeing it be a sustainable competitive game for the people who actually play and follow it. SFV is my favorite fighting game in the series and of the generation. I watch EVO, Capcom Cup, and any other tournament I manage to catch.

A lot of shelf collectors just want a final release ASAP and for the whole competitive scene to just be irrelevant, so that it stops getting balancing patches, technical improvement, new systems, characters, stages, costumes etc + servers and Fighters Network functions like replays. I vastly prefer the business and distribution model the game has now to buying a new version for $60 every 2 years, let alone the 50 cent arcade days or the $75 SNES cart days.

[MadMummy76]

Ads in free to play games: OK
Ads in paid AAA games : HELL NO Especially injected retroactively after the players have already bought the game. Do you see now why i've been saying that games as a live service is a bad idea? Because they can pull any kind of crap that is detrimental to your experience and you can't do anything against it.

I'm fine with product placement tho, as long as it is not immersion breaking.

[MadMummy76]

I wasn't aware there was scummy monetisation in RDR2. Though I'm currently playing AC Odyssey and I didn't know you could spend real money in that game until I saw some reviews moaning about it.

It's not like they put it in your face with full screen ads, or anything.... Oh, wait, it is like that. Unless you haven't even finished the tutorial in the game there is no way in hell you can miss it, as the game gives you 500 of the ingame currency that you use in the built in shop to make you ogle at the things it is not enough for.

[Aidy]

It's not like they put it in your face with full screen ads, or anything.... Oh, wait, it is like that. Unless you haven't even finished the tutorial in the game there is no way in hell you can miss it, as the game gives you 500 of the ingame currency that you use in the built in shop to make you ogle at the things it is not enough for.

Are you serious? I don't even remember that happening. I'll take your word for it but there is so much going on at the start it just past me buy. I'm over 100 hours in, level 55 or so and have never had paid-for content mentioned or suggested or shown to me at all. Neither have I felt I've needed it, it's not that hard of a game.

Saying that being given some premium currency after a tutorial and told you can use it in the shop and it never being mentioned again is "in your face" with "full screen ads" is, IMO, fairly unreasonable.

[Frank_Underw00d]

Not sure why everyone is getting their panties in a wad for, EA has done this in BF4 and I know a few racing games did it as well. If you don't buy the crap they are selling they will stop, but i think will buy the skins anyway.

[DarknessFX]

I think SFV is preparing to be a PSN+ "free" game and this AD will be always on for PSN+ gamers.
In general I not following or care anymore about Jim Sterling since he went full SJW in a video about a silly game that involves a foreign political figures.

[Spect3r]

Ads in games are one of the most obvious moves and i find it amazing that no one ever done it before.
Im not saying i agree with it, but is really no surprise to me that they have done it.

Also, if done in a non intrusive way, specially if done "organically" with in the game, it doesnt botter me that much to be honest.

[Omen Gaming]

I have been subscribed to Jim's channel for a while now and while I do not always agree with everything he says I do find myself disagreeing with his opinion less than I used to, and on the point he makes in the latest video I agree with him completely.

Watching the video he makes a lot of valid points like how one character's tattoo has been replaced by an advertisement for something (a e-sports tournament I believe it was), and you can turn the adverts off but then you get less xp than if you play the games with the advertisements activated. And then he went into other games with advertisements a lot of which you look at and you realize he is correct you maybe just didn't give it a second thought to maybe notice before. We can already see in some games, (Grand Theft Auto Online being a the example of one I have played so have seen first hand) where you will have NPC mission contacts offer you new missions however you need to buy a certain vehicle, building or weapon before being able to do it and then you are charged a extortionate amount of in-game money that will no doubt require you to have to spend real world money to purchase it. And look I know there will be many out there that can afford these items, that played the game to oa point where they have grinded and completed missions and earned the money and can afford these items, so isn't it also kind of a slap in the face to those players for sticking with the game. I am getting off topic, sorry.

My main issue is something I saw someone mention on another thread which is games being released as incomplete or there being long beta demo's and alpha testing of games where developers are pushing games out earlier and earlier to build hype for a part-finished game, with potential to be a really good game but then ultimately the game never reached that level and flatters to deceive. It has become less about the game play, less about the story, less about quality control and more about quantity; how quickly they can push a game out, how much dlc they can add, can they get away with adding a season pass, how many in game currencies they can have and loot boxes/crates and different skins and costumes and weapons customizations, what cheats they can add to save players actually completing the game and unlock everything players would otherwise grind at an ever slowing rate as games become increasingly grindier in an attempt to make players either play for longer or get bored, pissed off or both that they end purchasing some pay-to-win item which will give them a short cut.

I remember an era when a game would be advertised in a magazine and you could go down but it at your local games store or order it directly from the maker, and what you got was a completed game, sometimes there may be a bug or glitch but for the most part games were fun, playable and most of all complete. It's sad how things have changed so much and can never return to the way they were when a game was a game and not just one component of a long term marketing strategy.

[MadMummy76]

Are you serious? I don't even remember that happening. I'll take your word for it but there is so much going on at the start it just past me buy. I'm over 100 hours in, level 55 or so and have never had paid-for content mentioned or suggested or shown to me at all. Neither have I felt I've needed it, it's not that hard of a game.

Saying that being given some premium currency after a tutorial and told you can use it in the shop and it never being mentioned again is "in your face" with "full screen ads" is, IMO, fairly unreasonable.

When I played the game they shown full screen ads for every new horseskin or ship crew package or xp booster that you could buy with helix credits.

And it's not about how hard the game is, it's about how grindy it is. The xp gains is purposely reduced to make the xp booster more appealing. Also the stat differences make it impossible to explore in the game without levelling up to the appropriate level, again encouraging players to get the boosters if they want to play the game without doing every last side mission in an area before moving on.

The game mechanics are subordinated to microtransactions. These games are no longer designed to give the best experience, they're designed to give maximum incentive for ingame purchases.

[Spect3r]

When I played the game they shown full screen ads for every new horseskin or ship crew package or xp booster that you could buy with helix credits.

And it's not about how hard the game is, it's about how grindy it is. The xp gains is purposely reduced to make the xp booster more appealing. Also the stat differences make it impossible to explore in the game without levelling up to the appropriate level, again encouraging players to get the boosters if they want to play the game without doing every last side mission in an area before moving on.

The game mechanics are subordinated to microtransactions. These games are no longer designed to give the best experience, they're designed to give maximum incentive for ingame purchases.

I played the entire game, killed all the cultists, did the Atlantida story, etc, etc and not once i felt like i had to buy xp boosters or anything else.
I dont even think i saw a menu of them selling anything, so i really dont get why people complaining about it.

[MadMummy76]

I played the entire game, killed all the cultists, did the Atlantida story, etc, etc and not once i felt like i had to buy xp boosters or anything else.
I dont even think i saw a menu of them selling anything, so i really dont get why people complaining about it.

I don't know why are there so many people defending microtransactions here to a point where they'd even claim they didn't even know about it. Yeah, right, you didn't see the menu, the previous guy didn't even know about it. . It's quite impossible to miss.

Guess what, I finished the game without buying anything too. So what? I also noticed that it wasn't the best game that it could've been thanks to the aforementioned things.

You people should stop doing an ego thing about games. When someone has criticisms about a game you liked, they aren't attacking you. I think odyssey is GOT 2018, but that doesn't mean I must only say good things about it.

[Spect3r]

Of course you can say good or bad things about a game, i didnt question that.
All i did was give you my opinion on the subject, thats all. My opinion doesnt make your opinion less valid or vice versa.

And no one is defending micro transactions.
But do they bother me? No, not at all.
I am still to find a game that i fel like it forced me to buy anything in the game.

And i disagree, it is not game of the year, not even close in my opinion.

[Aidy]

When I played the game they shown full screen ads for every new horseskin or ship crew package or xp booster that you could buy with helix credits.

That's not my experience in the slightest.

And it's not about how hard the game is, it's about how grindy it is. The xp gains is purposely reduced to make the xp booster more appealing.

Again I can only disagree. I find the level progression fine, in line with the previous AC game. If anything it's too quick as I was worried I was hitting the 50 level max too soon, but I see they've since increased it to 75 and they've changed the way master abilities work a bit too.

These kinds of games are always "grindy". Do you complain that Final Fantasy etc is grindy? No, it's a part of the game experience. When you get exp and levels etc you can either make non-respawning enemies and give the feeling of it being an RPG when the reality is that your progression through the game is tightly controlled *cough*Witcher 3*cough*Divinity Original Sin*cough*, or you make the enemies respawn and give the player a little grinding to do.

Also the stat differences make it impossible to explore in the game without levelling up to the appropriate level, again encouraging players to get the boosters if they want to play the game without doing every last side mission in an area before moving on.

Again I can only disagree. I've not had a problem there as I do a lot of the side missions and general exploration along side the main game so I've never been level-restricted in anything. I appreciate if you want to bomb through the game to make a YouTube video to get those views then that can be a problem, but if you do the side stuff too it isn't. So maybe they don't want you to buy boosters, maybe they just want you to....play the game?

The game mechanics are subordinated to microtransactions. These games are no longer designed to give the best experience, they're designed to give maximum incentive for ingame purchases.

Again I 100% disagree. I've never had micro-transactions pushed in AC and never felt I needed them, never felt the game devs were pushing me so that I thought I did. I just put the game in, turn it on, play it, and have fun. It seems to me you're actively looking for something to complain about. I'm not saying some games aren't tarnished by micro transactions, but AC is most certainly not one of those games, and for anyone reading this who is potentially put off playing AC because of micro-transactions, then don't.

You might be put off but the somewhat repetitive gameplay though