2K Sports Could Have Avoided Its Un-Skippable Ads Backlash If The Ads Were Better Content
from the advertising-is-content dept
For over a decade, we have been trying to drive home the point that advertising actually is content and that content is advertising. It's a mindset sort of thing, but one that is incredibly important in an internet age where so much of a revenue emphasis is on ad-driven business models. The point of this all is that you can make any advertising included in a good or service all the more effective if --wait for it -- your customers actually want and enjoy the ads. If they're engaging, useful, or funny, the normal complaints you hear about commercials and the like simply melt away.
But if your ads both suck and you force them on your customers in a paid-for product in the most ham-fisted way? Well, then it turns out you're 2K sports.
One of the many shitty things about the NBA 2K series is the fact that, for the last few years, there have been unskippable ads that sometimes load before a game. This year is no exception.
The ads usually turn up as part of a pre-game video, and while in previous years they’ve been for brands like Converse and the TV show Snowfall, this year it’s an Oculus Quest commercial that’s got fans upset.
I'm a fan of the NBA 2K series, but it is undeniable that this is the worst part of the franchise. When it comes to pissing off your own customers, who are often paying $60 for your product, there is no more comprehensive way to irritate them than by forcing advertisements upon them that are shitty and not useful. While this practice would be irritating for any game, it is especially so for NBA 2K, which is a retail game customers pay for and which already is chockablock full of in-game sponsorship advertising to go alongside microtransactions. And making the ads un-skippable seems to indicate just what media the 2K Sports folks think they're delivering, because this is more of a television thing than a practice for video games.
Meanwhile, gamers are generally pissed, enough so that 2K Sports responded with a tweet.
2K Community đź—Ł pic.twitter.com/rvMC9z0Wft
— NBA 2K21 (@NBA2K) October 20, 2020
It's frankly quite hard to believe them, given that this has been the norm and the public response to it for some time. And, again, what if the ads were good? What if some real effort was made to put in content that was relevant, entertaining, or useful? Do we really think 2K Sports would be getting the same backlash?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: ads, advertising as content, nba 2k, video games
Companies: 2k sports
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
... yes?
And, again, what if the ads were good? What if some real effort was made to put in content that was relevant, entertaining, or useful? Do we really think 2K Sports would be getting the same backlash?
The number of ads people actually enjoy tends to be a rather small percentage of ads in general, such that most of the time they're seen as something you put up with as payment for whatever service they're on or an annoying inconvenience. Unskippable ads in a full price game though were basically doomed from the get-go, as even if the ads were good due to their placement they would be playing all but constantly, quickly souring people's opinions of them, and more importantly when someone buys a game they buy it to play the game, not have it interrupted with ads preventing them from doing so.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ... yes?
If the game developer thought people would like the ads, they'd have had no reason to make them unskippable.
I don't know about 'backlash', but unskippable anything gets damn annoying. E.g., Ocarina of Time is generally a good game, but the cutscenes and their s...l...o...w... ...t...e...x...t... are infuriating. I always have to think twice when I consider replaying it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: ... yes?
The backlash comes from not getting what was paid for. Or at least the appearance of it. EA has been doing monetization crap like this for the last few years. Each time getting a complete rejection and backlash from their players. Along with several news outlets making stories and commentary about the whole "debacle" A.K.A. EA's intentional design of the games.
At this point I would argue anyone that buys an EA sports title deserves whatever they get. Even if that whatever includes a forced rectal examination with a rusty mace. They've kept buying it despite the clear attempts to turn the game into something they hate. Despite the massive reporting from pretty much everyone that EA has gone in this direction for years. Why should anyone expect anything different at this point?
FYI: I think it's a horrible practice. A full price game should not have advertising like this period, let alone be unskippable. So I have some sympathy for the players that suffer through this. Of course one of the other reasons EA can get away with this is because they tend to have exclusivity contracts with the various national leagues for the player's likenesses and trademarks. Which gives anyone else trying to make a fantasy sports game huge legal difficulties, and gives EA a legal monopoly on an entire genre of video games. Giving me yet another reason to dislike them.
Now imagine unskippable ads being injected at each loading area.
(Context for younger kids: OoT has a lot of loading zones. Pretty much one at every doorway or area transition.) Hell depending on what Twitch channel you use, you could potentially experience that right now with a let's play.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: ... yes?
No, I think I'd rather not.
Are you sure these are "loading zones"? As a cartridge-based game, there was essentially zero penalty for accessing game data. It's more that there were a lot of cutscenes, and a lot of characters delivering long monologues slowly (which were at least skippable on subsequent attempts to talk to them in the same playthough).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ... yes?
It can be much worse, for example Youtube was filled with 4 hour ads that were nothing more then random footage from towns in south east Asia. Just think of the reaction when one of those ad's sneaks into an unskippable advertisement.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: ... yes?
... the hell? How does that even make it into the ad server to begin with, you'd think someone would have noticed the multi-gigabyte size of the videos in question.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: ... yes?
Depends, what was the resolution on them? 8K 60-sec video of some celebrity promoting Coke, vs. a 480i 4 hour video of some poor security cam footage from Asia can be quite different in storage size. To say nothing about longer political or pharmaceutical ads.
Hell, given that many of those professional ads tend to have versions for each major resolution to avoid downscaling, it may even be less noticeable or even preferred by the CDN.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
innocuous leader
meaningless comment
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
2nd innocuous leader
even more meaningless...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Here's my BLOCKED comment. -- WHY blocked?
Crows give caws for alarm
Google has been telling TD you're not a fit place to advertise.
TD was defunded because of the "dangerous and derogatory" content your fanboys make. Think on that just one sec, as that's how long it takes a reasonable person to spot the cause and solution.
Been saying that, have you? Skipping that I missed it: TD's content is not just the pieces you re-write from others (for free), but the comments. And those, as I've pointed out "for over a decade" are vile and nasty, by apparent 13-year-olds, with all the wit of ankle-biters just yapping their heads off, and DRIVE REASONABLE PEOPLE AWAY. I don't need to prove it, you all KNOW it!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Here's my BLOCKED comment. -- WHY blocked?
It's not a good look for you in this case to be pointing at Google for the example here. Why? Because the policies used by AdSense are known to change at random without warning and are enforced in a manner that is seemingly arbitrary.
Ergo, this effectively renders your comment as the equivalent of 'this guy that changes his mind everyday proves my point'.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Here's my BLOCKED comment. -- WHY blocked?
Oh, you're 13? Good grief, how old were you when you started commenting?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Here's my BLOCKED comment. -- WHY blocked?
Ralph Wiggums
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Here's my BLOCKED comment. -- WHY blocked?
"And those, as I've pointed out "for over a decade" are vile and nasty, by apparent 13-year-olds, with all the wit of ankle-biters just yapping their heads off..."
Vile, nasty, 13-year olds...Every accusation, a confession indeed. We all still remember when you went on a frothing rant about how all the "aspies" on Techdirt would go to prison and the ghoulish glee in which you described just how everyone of us would get ass-raped in the slammer.
Or when you threatened to SWAT people and insisted you had been "collecting evidence" of our alleged wrong-doing - apparently "not liking you very much" - for, apparently, years in the firm conviction that any day now The LAW would come and haul us all off in chains. The same way they'd haul off pirates, or any black man DARING to march in protest of George Floyd's murder, in chains, to languish forever in some dark hellhole of your imagination.
"...and DRIVE REASONABLE PEOPLE AWAY. I don't need to prove it, you all KNOW it!"
Plenty of reasonable people around. Anyone reading any two comments made by you, however, on any topic here, realizes full well that you aren't one of them.
It's been about ten years since you started haunting the forums of here and torrentfreak. Isn't it about time you grew the fuck up, Baghdad Bob?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
3rd innocuous!
approaching zero meaning...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: 3rd innocuous!
I've been fighting active blocking that stopped working sessions, apparently okaying each, but with the usual holes, so why do they bother? Anyway, you're welcome.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: 3rd innocuous!
Oh, wait. I could prove it!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: 3rd innocuous!
-- Have a list that shows TD lost at least 50 old accounts in the year around last election, and more since, while new accounts are down to a minimum. This year even more proves that you clowns are just rabid partisans
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd innocuous!
. But no "conservative" actually cares about your stances, Techdirt. We're strong enough to argue -- and most don't even question your true motives as I do, even though you're REALLY blatant leftist / crporatist / glbalist. No, what kills your forum is the toxic fanboys and utterly unfair treatment of dissenters. Period.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd innocuous!
OH! Can't use "crporatist" or "glbalist"!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd innocuous!
So, since defunded by GOOGLE and diminishing number of readers, what good is your stance on advertising?
What a balloon ego, Timmy, that you think can advise a far larger company on its practices!
I've been fighting active blocking that stopped working sessions, apparently okaying each, but with the usual holes, so why do they bother? Anyway, you're welcome.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd innocuous!
YEP. All in once removed an "o" from those two words. Maz is getting to REALLY control-freak mode!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd innocuous!
To be clear, what I did was chop off the end until it was blocked. NO DOUBT remains that those two words hit the precious "filter".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd innocuous!
And to be even more clear, it's silly tricks like that which makes people just leave, Maz.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd innocuous!
And Maz used to chide people for playing whack-a-mole! He won't admit that he does it too. (I'm just going on to see if this browser session is blocked. The kids LOVE clicking "report" to censor away, too, assuming an Administrator doesn't do on own initiative. Maz won't even admit there IS an Administrator.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd innocuous!
And I've NO reason to not run on here. My every comment, no matter how mild, is censored for no articulable reason -- though of course it's due to my viewpoint, a discrimination which is outside of law. That principle was settled with lunch counters: business can't just refuse service, but need a good clear cause in common law. I'm sure Maz wishes to roll the state of law back so that his precious corporations can RULE arbitirarily, no matter that would reverse civil rights. Maz doesn't care about individuals, ONLY corporations.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd innocuous!
So long as you keep this system, Maz, I intend to avail myself of what you (or appear to) freely offer of your own volition, presumably in hopes of drawing large numbers of eyes to advertising. But since defunded by even Evil Central, GOOGLE, I have to wonder what keeps you going? You haven't changed anything in 20 years! You keep losing on every front. And getting more shrill and trivially partisan.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd innocuou
Let's all try to use "corporatist" or "globalist" with the "o"...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd inno
YOT. See, I can't find any pattern to the blocking here! Maybe they turn it on and off when pointed out. -- Since Maz's system is entirely opaque, and what he does say about it is a LIE, that it's "the community" which "hides" my comments, then it does stir wild speculation.
You could end that, Maz, as you did in late 2017, when my comments stopped being blocked for about 3 or 4 months, then like a switch, back to same random blocking, by which I conclude there IS a switch (button).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd
Alternately, maybe some people just really wanna see you monologue your trip into insanity. Given the wall of text you've given us so far, I can see the appeal.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Nah, it's simply because enough people haven't been interested enough in a sports-game related article to notice that Woody has gone on one of their batshit rants again and flag them into oblivion yet. Soon as enough people show they'll be sent right back to time out like the petulant child they are.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
30 clicks, 15 flags.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd
Could be, stay with me for a second, that there is no blocking, and the comments are already flooded with your "I'm blcked!" comments.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd
Just a quick reminder that the meds your psychiatrist is trying to give you might actually be necessary...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What gives you the right to make someone host your speech on their private property, Brainy?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd innocuous!
What the hell are you on about?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 3rd innocuous!
"What the hell are you on about?"
Baghdad Bob...a.k.a. Bobmail/Jhon Smith/Out_of_the_blue/etc is just in the "full meltdown" stage of whatever bipolar cycle he's been running for the last ten years.
In the beginning of that cycle it isn't quite that bad since he settles for just tossing in random garbage. At the end, when you start seeing shit like the above, he goes into full paranoid schizophrenia where he eventually ends up trying to argue about some fiendish conspiracy out to somehow get him. Right now that appears to be that the whole world is a sock puppet exclusively piloted by Mike Masnick just to silence him.
Which is odd but still arguably more inventive than when he spent years on Torrentfreak trying to persuade everyone that he was a wealthy businessman ruined by having "pirates" stealing his spam email address list and posting negative reviews of whatever his latest fraud scheme was on social media.
If his cycle holds true to historical form he's almost at the point where he'll write one final verbose message about "Being a long-time lurker, first-time poster disillusioned and disgusted about TD's policy of "censorship" (allowing users to downvote comments) who will now leave FOREVER".
And then he stops posting for a month or so until the cycle begins again. We've more or less all concluded Baghdad Bob is a bona fide lunatic living completely inside his own head given the tenuous grasp of reality he keeps displaying.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Honestly, the few months Brainy SmurfÂą was gone this year were a breath of fresh air.
¹ — I call him this precisely because of the gag associated with that character. It seems to fit the general reaction to Blue Balls’s rants as well.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Yeah, but Stephen, that's a pretty harsh condemnation of poor Brainy Smurf. Like comparing Ernst Röhm to a dry and dull english lit teacher.
Bobmail/blue/Jhon isn't just a walking antrhopomorphic personification of dunning-kruger, he's a malicious one who appears to be fueled entirely on hatred - against, apparently, Jews, black people, "aspies", liberals, principled people, "pirates"...and all the 7 billion sock puppets in the world which are all Mike Masnick out to get him by hiding his comments where everyone can easily find them.
Find a better nickname for him. Even "Baghdad Bob" doesn't truly fit, because the genuine Baghdad Bob was never quite that malicious, even if the ridiculous denial of fact is similar.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
accurately reproducing the sporting experience
Just like going to a real game!
They are just trying to accurately replicate the sporting experience:
Buy your tickets ("paying $60 for your product", "game customers pay for").
Going to the stadium and being bombarded with buying overpriced food and drink, team merchandise being pushed - flags, banners, track suits, jerseys - ("being micro-transactioned ").
Having all the advertising signs, banners they spread around the stadium, on teams clothing, and so on ("full of in-game sponsorship advertising").
The advertising announcements, sponsored events/shows before, after and during the game ("making the ads un-skippable").
Just like being there in real life.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That wouldn’t have mattered. People paid for the game already. They neither wanted nor expected an unskippable ad in the middle of it. If the game was a free-to-play affair, ads would be understandable — expected, even. But in a game sold at full retail price? Only those who enjoy the taste of capitalist boot think anyone else would tolerate, let alone approve of, that experience.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
"People paid for the game already"
At the end of the day, this is the only thing that matters. In a free to play game, or a game offered at half the normal price, unskippable ads would still be very annoying but at least the player knows that the ads are the price they pay for the discounted entry price. Forcing such things on to a game that you've already paid $70 for up front is unacceptable. Doubly so, since with this kind of game licensing means that you can't get the experience elsewhere. If you want a basketball game with real-life players, you have to buy this one, there is no legal competition.
It doesn't matter how good the ads are, the problem is paying again through ads on a game that you already paid for.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
I mean, in theory this could still work.. Say if they only charge 20$ for NBA2K at release instead of 60$ because it's getting supplemented by ads, but it's tricky because the actual value you are getting is pretty subjective.. It works for things whose value is more easily measured like cars
This particular title shows up for dirt cheap on sale, but that's probably more because people hate it because they are paying for unskippable ads rather than because it's subsidised :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
A simple question, when every corporation turns itself into an advertising giant, who will pay them push ads on users?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
2K?
I thought we were up to 4K and 5G? Or is that only in Wisconsin?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"what if the ads were good"
Good is subjective but..
The only reason to make something unskippable is because you think people want to skip it. If the ads were "good" in the way you are suggesting then they wouldn't be unskippable
also if the ads were actually good enough that people want to see them without having them pushed on them then why would anyone be paying to have them included in NBA2K at all?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Quality has nothing to do with it. Any game I paid money for would get nuked from orbit the instant it tried pushing any kind of ads at me. The type of games I play aren't even ALLOWED to access the internet, nor do they have any reason to try. I never liked ads much, but it has been quite a while since my ad tolerance reached 0.00 exactly. Anything that has anything to do with them gets dropped or worked around by whatever means necessary. Sorry, not interested, be they good or bad.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Just curious, what type of games do you play?
My games don't connect to the internet either, but that's mainly b/c I can't afford an xbox live gold subscription to play against other people.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Price of NBA 2K21
Of note: the price goes up to $70 for the standard edition of 2K21 on "next gen" consoles. Still $60 for PS4/Xbox 1 gen.
Or, if you really want to pay for your ads, you can get the special Mamba forever edition for $100 (both gens).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
would it be nice
If commercials got Short and sweet.
But thats not the problem. Its that 5-10 min of Total commercials,
Every 15-20 min.
And if you watch close, 2 things can happen TO THE GAME.
The first one, is what will kill a game, Quickly.
The second is miserable. for the reason that a game that would be 1-1.5 hours is NOW, 2-3 hours long.
But who wins? The corp selling the adverts for the game. Not the game, not the advertiser. And the Owner gets a share.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Go after the advertisers
Instead of complaining about how EA put ads into the games, why don't people boycott the advertisers who paid EA to run their ads like this? Obviously, someone in some marketing department thought it was a good idea to pay EA to run ads like this, so many people need to tell them how wrong they are. This might make more a difference than promising to never buy another EA game again... until the next must-play game comes out.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Go after the advertisers
Just send letters of protest.
As many adverts are for places YOU need to goto.
I find it fun that Roku, does Local adverts, not just national.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Go after the advertisers
Because that would be even more pointless. The issue here is not that certain ads are played. The issue is that ads are playing at all in a full priced game.
"Obviously, someone in some marketing department thought it was a good idea to pay EA to run ads like this"
Yes, and they probably thought that after they were approached by EA after they decided to implement the feature in their game. The feature will still exist even if the current advertisers bail.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Go after the advertisers
Or get another advertiser.
Or advert that they NOW do adverts, for a price.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]