Jeff Brown to the TV Networks: We’re eating your lunch!
by Alphaville Herald on 08/09/04 at 1:04 pm
EA’s Vice President for Corporate Communications, Jeff Brown
That smack talkin’ mack daddy of corporate “we pwnz u”- speak was at it again last month, this time claiming that the TV networks were history, cuz giant game companies already pwn the eyeballs of young males, and soon they will get the advertising dollars as well. Oh joy, does that mean more McDonalds kiosks in our games? The quotes appear in an otherwise sober and thoughtful piece in Wired News by Frank Rose. Read on for quotes and s/mack-back analysis by the Phrrrst Philosoper of Gaming…Urizenus Sklar!
Here’s the JB passage in question:
“We’re eating the networks’ lunch!” crows Jeff Brown, EA’s vice president of corporate communications, mentally computing the bite EA might someday take out of the television ad market. “Now, this doesn’t happen for 6, 12, 18 months – but when television executives take full measure of how their advertising dollars are moving to videogames, you should prepare yourself for a lot of news stories about how bad videogames are for kids. In fact, I would recommend that Morley Safer get started right now on how videogames are warping the minds of young people. Perhaps” – he grins wickedly at the thought – “they should run it right after all the gore on CSI.”
Actually I agree with Jeff on this up to a nearby limit. If games have captured the eyeballs (and they have), then shouldn’t the advertising dollars follow? There is a certain logic to that, although advertising techniques are basically finely crafted exercises in social psychology and propaganda techniques that have been refined by 50+ years of beta in the television industry. Does anyone really understand how to get the same effect in a game environment? Especially a console game? Frankly I doubt that Jeff and the bright lights at EA have put a whole lot of thought into this.
But no matter. While the march of Dialectical Virtualism may be on the side of EA for the moment (translation: advertisers probably will figure out how to push products from inside games), it is probably just a fleeting historical moment on the road to the End of History for EA and the console companies. Their problem is this: advertisers don’t *need* game companies, because they (i.e. their marketing/advertising agencies) can design their own games from the bottom-up, and they will be (1) better than the crap that EA is pumping out and (2) engineered to optimally sell the products and values of their clients.
All EA has to offer at the moment is a marketing/distribution system that can deliver boxes to gaming stores, but we all know that that distribution model isn’t going to last much longer. Soon the games will be pushed to us through the internet. When that happens, why does John Madden and the NFL need EA? They can build their own games, offer them as downloads on their own websites, and advertise them during their r/l sporting events. They can build anything they want into these games. Or better yet, they could build desktops/platforms that provide the same interface for both r/l and v/r sports events. The possibilities are mind-boggling.
In effect, while Jeff is right that advertisers and marketers will be moving their money from television to games, the same advertisers will quickly see that game companies like EA are providing nothing but fucktarded middle-men, building uncreative and technological primitive games by committee, and are charging exorbitant prices for the privilege of letting the rest of us pass through their anti-creativity bottle neck. Where does all the money go? Apparently to big buildings, EA shareholders, and Jeff Brown’s salary. Think about it; who needs that?
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