Advertisements and Video Games – A Rant Thing

I haven’t used an Xbox 360 in a long time (much less online), mind you, but I’m pretty sure even the least Microsoft-aligned gamer is aware that the 360 dashboard has advertisements and is pretty horrendous.

Yeah, I went there. Eat it.

Or.. eat McDonald’s!

While I can understand that companies need to make money, it’s still very difficult for me to understand the logic of paying for a service and still be bombarded with advertisements. I feel the same about being prompted with a Captcha despite being a premium member on some websites (imgur, for example). There are a few things, as a paying user of a service, I would normally expect not to be bothered with.

See, you can claim I’m just some bitter Sony or Nintendo fan all you want, but I’m more of a PC user and keep consoles at an arm’s length for the most part. What’s more is the PlayStation 4 is all set to give you some advertising lovin’ once it’s released.

All that blank space is prime ad space.

The ugly truth is that video games are very slowly becoming an advertiser’s playground, much as television has been for decades. While this is to be expected with a free service, advertisements plaguing up a paid membership holder’s console UI is not to be expected nor should it be tolerated.

A Captcha proving I’m a robot even if I pay a few dollars a month is a (sort of redundant) security measure, but reminding me that fast food and soda are American staples and are delicious through my video game console (with paid membership) is nothing but corporate greed.

With so many studios in hot water and the console industry seeing some spectacularly weak numbers, these practices are only going to become more widespread. Ads in video games are already a “thing”, but we are almost guaranteed to see more of them next generation. More advertisements on our console UI and more to be found in-game — that’s where we’re going, and it’s not going to stop. It’s a little depressing.

Capitalism is a pretty cool guy, but his friends are jerks. I didn’t invite all these people to my house, but they’re asking me for money and keep walking in front of the TV. I just wanted to play video games..