Why am I so mad at OWI for putting ads IN the game? Because advertising has so completely infiltrated every form of entertainment in America. There are ads on TV, ads on radio, ads in magazines and comic books, ads at movie theaters, ads at amusement parks, ads are everywhere. One of the last bastions of ad-free entertainment is the video game, a fact that we take for granted everytime we play them.
Would you be happy if there was a 2 minute ad between each level of a game? If the characters tried to sell you stuff during the game? What if that kind of thing was normal?
Now, you may not think what OWI is doing is as extreme as that, but the fact is, it could be. If we LET them put this much advertising in a game now, however small it is, it's a free license to put more and more ads in games in the future.
Sure it's easy to say that it's just one ad now, that it doesn't matter. The point is that it DOES matter, because one ad becomes two, and then we start having longer and longer ad spots, until finally there are commercials.
I say we should stop it even before it starts.
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