This article originally ran under a different banner/website in November of 2019 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
HEAR YE!!! HEAR YE!!! Gather around my loyal followers. I see a grim future ahead of us and you must heed my warning. Imagine you have returned from home from an arduous and draining day at work. Battle worn and mentally drained, your head hits the pillow as you drift off to sleep. You enter a dark dream world with a floor that appears to be water. You noticed a small child hunched over in the corner. You slowly glide towards him. You can hear him muttering something into his hands. You move in to try to make out what he’s saying. Then he snaps his head towards you exposing his manic grin. He begins to sing in a pained and ghoulish tone:
“One eight seven seven. Kars for Kids. K A R S. Kars for Kids. One eight seven seven. Kars for Kids. Donate your car today.”
You instantly awake in terror. Eyes wide open. Beads of sweat running down your forehead. The kid and his deranged smile nowhere in sight. Merely a dream. A horrible nightmare of a horrific child and an equally traumatic advertisement. No time to dwell on it as your head connects with the pillow again.
You insanity return to the same nightmare. Same kid. Same twisted smile. Same jingle. He continues to tortuously sing the pained jingling, before finally vanishing into thin air. A calm voice announces that the following ad had been brought to you by the Google Dream Projector, a device to allow companies to run advertisements for you while you sleep. You feel your blood boil until you notice the same child hunched over in the corner. Rage is replaced by terror. As his head turns to you, you scream and immediately awake to find your pillow soaked in sweat.
My loyal followers, while no company has perfected the art of projecting advertisements into your dreams, it does not mean they wouldn’t try. Much like the downtown streets of Los Angeles in Blade Runner, advertisers would like nothing more than plaster anything and everything with a reminder that they will gladly take money out of your wallet. The latest reminder comes to us courtesy of Monster Energy in Hideo Kojima’s game, Death Stranding. Despite taking place in a world with rain that causes everything to age, Monster Energy Drinks have somehow survived. On top of that, the vile energy drink is the main source of hydration with Death Stranding. My initial thought when hearing that was, I rather try drinking the toxic rain before drinking a Monster Energy Drink. The reason Monster Energy drinks survived is not due to any real narrative reason, but due to the massive amount of cash Monster Energy gave Kojima to advertise their drink in the game. This news naturally caused me to roll my eyes.
Of course, the marriage between video games and advertisements has been ongoing since the nineties. I remember receiving copies of The MLB Home Run Derby within boxes of Honey Bunches of Oat as a kid. The games were simple home run derby contents with a handful of MLB stars and a monumental amount of Honey Bunches of Oats advertisements. This was not the only cereal gaming advertisement. Many people still remember the fantastic Doom mod known as Chex Quest. I still have a few brain cells dedicated to Burger King’s marketing strategy of releasing three Xbox 360 games titled PocketBike Racer, Big Bumpin’, and Sneak King. As a Warcraft fan, it would be remiss of me to not recall the World of Warcraft Mountain Dew Game Fuel. Alliance Blue and Horde red respectively. Who could also forget the infamous Pepsiman on the Playstation? He has no mouth and he must drink Pepsi.
While those were more harmless examples, the current generation of games has been pushing the boat when it comes to in-game advertisements. Of course, mobile games are littered with advertisements, but it is not just mobile games getting in on the action. Street Fighter V plastered their fighters and game environment in advertisements for their Capcom Pro Tour. In the hope of Street Fighters V esports taking off, Capcom placed the Capcom Pro Tour label like an overeager child with an abundance of stickers. Many considered it tacky and tasteless. The logo was over the character’s gloves, tattoos, and Dhalsim’s skulls. The same skulls that came from children from his village who died of the plague. You could turn these ads off, but you would receive less in-game currency. While it could be considered a choice, it certainly doesn’t feel much like a choice if you are in need of the in-game currency the game drip feeds you.
Speaking of a lack of choice, let’s talk about NBA 2K20. For those who have forgotten NBA 2K20 drew headlines for their tone-deaf trailer to showcased more loot boxes and gambling than basketball gameplay. If getting your kids into loot boxes, slot machines, roulette wheels, and plinko machines weren’t enough, NBA 2K20 now has unskippable ads only weeks after release. After receiving backlashes for adding them into NBA 2K19, 2K thought shoveling them back into NBA 2K20 was an excellent way to trade player goodwill for cold hard cash. While mobile games are offering to extend a run or give additional resources in exchange for watching an ad, NBA 2K20 merely thrust the ad into the player’s face for no reward. It essentially says we are NBA 2K20 and you have to watch this ad if you want to play this game you spent sixty dollars on.
Now, you might say unskippable ads would only be in sports games, but I think, much like microtransactions, they will slowly start creeping into more video games. Advertisers are a near-standard in mobile games. Both advertisers and publishers recognize the opportunity available to them. They know players will sit down and engage in a game for hours. This would provide endless opportunities for commercials to assault the player. Advertisers smell the blood in the water and will jump on the opportunity to infest video games with advertisements. Naturally, publishers will graciously allow advertisers to seize the opportunity if it means they can line their pockets with more green.
Now while Monster Energy in Death Stranding pales in comparison to the unskippable ads in NBA 2K20, the slope is always slippery in the games industry. While I will take Kojima taking a Monster Energy sponsorship over implementing loot boxes, that’s merely how it starts. Soon Kojima will be implementing both paid sponsorship and microtransactions to pay for Normas Reedus and Conan O’Brien cameos. That’s how sports games started and where are we now? Yes, ads might not be as intrusive as loot boxes, but they should not be tolerated, or the end will be … sponsored by Kars for Kids.
