In his office at EA, Andrew Wilson sits dreaming. Specifically, the CEO is dreaming about ways to deliver ads to EA players, up to (and including) potentially sticking them into the corporation's $60/$70, «AAA» videogames.
That's per a recent earnings call between Wilson and EA investors (via Tom's Hardware), in which the EA boss was asked if there were plans «for more dynamic ad insertion across more traditional AAA games.» Wilson's answer? «We have teams internally in the company right now looking at how do we do very thoughtful implementations inside of our game experiences.» Gulp.
To be clear, it sounds like EA's efforts at in-game ads are still very much in the drawing board stage, but Wilson is clear that it's something the company is dedicating a fair bit of brainpower to. «As we think about the many, many billions of hours spent, both playing, creating, watching and connecting and where much of that engagement happens to be on the bounds of a traditional game experience, our expectation is that advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for us,» Wilson told investors.
In less flowery terms, that reads as: Loads of people play our games and we sure could make bank if we showed them ads. And, to be fair, things like this have existed in games for a while.
There were Duracell batteries scattered around Alan Wake, real-life ads on Burnout: Paradise billboards, ads in Street Fighter 5, and—the one that stands out most strongly in my memory as an immersive sim sicko—ads in the loading screen for Deus Ex: Human Revolution.