At some point in time, in some marketing meeting filled with starched suits and blank expressions, a Capcom executive that has never played any of his own company’s games called the now-very-real in-game advertising campaign of Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition “bold” and “innovative”. After the meeting, they went ahead with the program without discussing what the ads would look like, or considering the impact it would have on the way the game was perceived on social media. No one cared. The machine just moved on.
I just made that up, but I’m sure reality has to be close to that scenario. I can’t imagine how else the completely hideous ads in SFV came to be. It would seem VesperArcade is on a similar wavelength in his latest video: In case you somehow missed it, SFV’s character costumes are now inelegantly splattered with ads in what is likely a work-in-progress for in-game ad space for ESPN, Capcom Cup, and other future big events. Vesper breaks down all the ways the ads impact SFV from both aesthetic and gameplay perspectives — and why he, and likely all SFV players will be toggling that Sponsored Content switch to “off”.
Welcome to the future, I guess.
Source: VesperArcade