SE5 bad reviews and problems.

[RonGianti]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/19

[Xrati]

LOL, I like the "Play on Words."

[Jeku]

"Do you have verifiable source of evidence, or is that an anti-rumor rumor?"

Like I said, I work at EA so I did my own little investigation when the game was released. I didn't want to be associated with a company that installs adware or spyware. There are also articles on Gamespot and IGN that distill the incorrect rumour as just that, a rumour.

"Even if it doesn't track sites you visit, it is still a despicable practice (ad banners in products you explicitly paid for)."

Actually it's not. Think about it. World of Warcraft charges you what, $10 a month? The Battlefield franchise charges you a one-time fee of $50, in which you can play *forever* without another cost. EA has to pay to keep their servers on, and given there is almost 100,000 players logging on every DAY, you can imagine that this gets expensive.

[Jeku]

Sorry for the double post:

"On the 2142 note how can it make relevant in-game ads without tracking what you are doing on the internet. If it doesn't do that then it must just generate generic ads for everyone, if so then why does it need to do anything outside of run the game?

Exactly it does moniter what you are doing."

It bases the ads on your country based on your IP. It doesn't give you ads based on your interests. I don't even know why I'm defending the game, as I don't even like online FPS'

[Fyron]

Jeku said:
Like I said, I work at EA so I did my own little investigation when the game was released.

While I don't doubt that you did your investigation, that's not a verifiable source that all can refer to and, well, verify.

EA has to pay to keep their servers on, and given there is almost 100,000 players logging on every DAY, you can imagine that this gets expensive.

I can also imagine huge sums of money coming from all of those sales...

If they can not afford to run the servers (which I doubt), then they should charge to access the servers (or maybe charge to access "premium" servers and have free, but lower bandwidth/performance servers). Adware in a paid-for product is not acceptable.

In-game advertising is despicable in all forms. We are already overly saturated with a bombardment of advertisements everywhere else; we do not need games to fall prey to ad-whoring as well.

[Combat Wombat]

Are there still ads on non-ranked servers in which EA is not spending any money doing stat tracking? yes

Also its a bad trend what is happening in battlefield games where you have to play 100s if not 1000s of hours to unlock weapons and features that should have been available to you from the start. These features can only be obtained playing on ranked servers. But who cares more money for EA when you play their ad filled game...

Then the expansion packs, they make them even if theres still massive glaring issues in the orignal game that should never have been there to begin with. At least with MMO games you get the expansions for free almost all the time or you eventully get them for free if you wait long enough.

[Jeku]

You guys are hilarious. Ads have been showing up in games for *years*. Remember Space Quest V's Sprint logo? This isn't new. What's new is the ads update, so you don't get an ad for a car that's 5 years old.

Do you get upset when you see a coke can in a movie?

EDIT:

It's not like you have to sit through a commercial-- it's non-obtrusive. You pay for your cable TV every month but you still have commercials--- what do you do about that?

[Phoenix-D]

I don't pay for cable TV, that's what. And commericals are *exactly* why.

[Fyron]

1. The hostility to those of us who are not thrilled with Se5 is real. I have almost stopped posting here because of it.

Again, I don't really see it... Who is being hostile? Where?

Jeku said:
Ads have been showing up in games for *years*.

So? It was despicable then, it is despicable now. Luckily, I have never had the misfortune of buying a game with ads in it... Don't even want to think about how hard it would be to return such tripe. :-\

It's not like you have to sit through a commercial-- it's non-obtrusive. You pay for your cable TV every month but you still have commercials--- what do you do about that?

I don't watch TV. If I did, I would set up a DVR that let me skip ads (probably have to be a HTPC). But that's not the same thing anyways; you don't pay for each show, just a general connection service. Channels that you actually pay for have no ads (eg: HBO, Cinemax), other than the short spot between shows/movies telling you what else is on the channel. Paid download for episodes of shows don't include ads either (at least, the ones I've read about).

Broadcast TV is free, so being ad-supported is one thing. But a video game is most certainly not free... Even the ability to connect to multi-player servers is not free, because you have to buy the game (and expansions in some cases) to be able to do so. If they want to provide the _entire_ thing for free (like broadcast TV), then maybe, just maybe, they can make it ad-supported. Charge for the service, AND put in ads? Despicable. It's reminiscent of AOHell...

[Caduceus]

Jeku said:
Do you get upset when you see a coke can in a movie?

"Look at all the *junk food*."
- Bill Murray
"Ghostbusters"

Coke wasn't exactly thrilled with their paid spot.

EDIT - poor spelling