So I love video games. A lot. Maybe even a little obnoxiously. If my friends and family hear me talk about Borderlands 3 again today, I imagine that they are going to harm me, which honestly, I'd deserve. However, recently in the news, the video game industry has come under fire as developers and publishers alike such as 2K Games, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and many others, have angered consumers through a vast array of unfavorable decisions. These involve installing predatory gambling mechanisms within games aimed at children, forcing employees to work 80 hour weeks, and most recently within the context of the last few years, having ads play within the games they have published. However, being a newly enrolled marketing class student, my interest was piqued when I stumbled upon a trending set of articles that dealt with advertisements in video game loading screens.
https://www.ibtimes.com/2k-puts-unskippable-commercials-nba-2k19-2802679
For context, when a video game console is trying to load the next portion of a game, there typically is a loading screen that occurs that will then end once the game is loaded so the player can continue playing the game. It essentially is something for the player to look at or engage with from within the game content as they wait for the game to render. This brings us to the video game publisher 2K Games.
2K Games entire value proposition is that they are currently one of only two video game companies that can make games with the National Basketball Association license and starting in a few years, they will be the sole license holder, so if you want to play an NBA game, you can only play their games. With their annually released basketball series "NBA 2K", they have creatively used loading screens for advertisements as the game loads, something relatively new and pioneered by 2K Games. It makes sense when you hear it at first as there isn't anything else for the player to do but wait, so why not play an ad and make more money in the process. Still, while there are a lot of players who find this very weird and sometimes even invasive (such as myself), 2K Games allows the player to skip the rest of the ad to continue playing the game, once the game is fully loaded. Again, weird, awkward, and a little invasive, but understandable. A company has to make money as best it can.
However, with the latest game in the series, NBA 2K19, the most recent update for the game has caused controversy as the game will no longer let the player skip the ad once the game has finished loading. Instead, the game only proceeds once the ad has finished running, which usually takes about thirty seconds to run. Some players say that they can disable the loading screen to essentially just look like the black void within 2K Game's soul, but many players have said that the option to do so has been disabled entirely. Naturally this move has greatly irritated and upset a rather large portion of the gaming community as a whole as many people already have bought the game for $60 and feel a little cheated that there is more "hidden fees" to play the game.
Now I am aware that what constitutes as a controversy for video game consumers often sounds ridiculous more often than not to people who don't play video games. But if you don't play video games, this is comparable to buying a brand new coffee maker but before you pour yourself each cup of coffee (notice how I said each), you have to watch an unskippable ad before you get to drink that hot cup of joe. Whether that ad is five seconds or thirty minutes long, odds are you aren't buying that coffee maker just out of principle. However, it's important to note that this analogy isn't even a good one as you'll encounter loading screens several times within thirty minutes of playing, whereas coffee you may have only one or two cups a day. Add on the fact that consumers are wary that 2K Games and other developers would incorporate this mechanic into other games and you naturally have a sort of uneasy distrust between consumer and developer.
Naturally, 2K Games needs to make money, and gamers understand this. How else are they going to be able to get games? However, the challenge is trying to figure out when enough is enough and when is it time for the company to stop trying to take more money out of the consumers pocket. To much meddling within a product after the consumer has already bought the product just becomes an annoyance and its akin to hidden fees within the game that cost time and even entertainment of the actual game.
If there's a marketing strategy to start with, it begins with telling 2K Games to simply leave gamers alone once they have bought the game itself. The transactions are done and now its time to move on. They paid the full amount of the game and now its time to get out of the way and stop invading players games. If I'm a marketing consultant for 2K Games, any advice I give essentially equates to just that and recommending to superiors that they actually need to revert this mechanic as it was a genuinely bad business decision that just irritates consumers. If it's annoying to ask consumers to watch ads before each cup of coffee then it's especially annoying to have players watch ads before they can play the game they bought. 2K Games entire marketing position has continually frustrated consumers and convinced the industry that they only care about what more money they can get rather than simply making great games that can be enjoyed by consumers.
All in all, I learned a lot from this article and other articles that were written about this subject on how not to market products rather than an example of how to market to your consumers. I'm pondering if perhaps marketing is more than just your traditional marketing of advertisements. Maybe I am wrong but perhaps marketing also incorporates a sense of public relations and corporate social responsibility as well, something 2K Games and several other developers have struggled mightily at in the last few years.
*Below is a video summing up this topic in a much better way*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSuW6FflYcI
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