Lock your doors and bar your windows- EA is monitoring you.

Naturally, EA would disagree with me. Their retort to all criticism of the game involves mentioning that the game ?only? monitors what advertisements you view- ergo, monitoring what you see and what you don't. However, what they won't tell you is that that kind of advertisement is not present in the Australian version of the game: Their code, which they do not fully reveal, is banned by the Australian Anti-Spyware bill. Surprise surprise.

But, we cannot completely trash all In Game Advertising. When it comes to EA, I think it should be absolutely removed from the game. However, one cannot blame a game company from trying to make a little extra money on the side. Take, for example, Valve's Half Life. Half Life has been around for something like 8 years now, and it has always been supported by a very powerful network of Valve servers that constantly pump out thousands of multiplayer game a day in about a hundred different modifications and versions of the game. This means that if you dropped about $30-40 on Half Life back in 1998 and continued to play the game until now, you have not only gotten your money's worth from Valve- but you have no doubt cost them more than they have made from you.

So in that case, I completely understand in game advertisements. It is unfair to expect a game developer to provide you with 100% free gaming (especially online gaming) without expecting a reasonable amount of cash from you, be it up front or through a monthly payment system. In the case of shooter games, it is always the former- which explains why gaming companies need some cash coming in. Doing In Game Advertisements is a rather fair and simple way to make this process streamlined- it keeps companies from asking for cash, while simultaneously keeping gamers from being assaulted with advertisements on a website or the like.

So obviously, when it comes to things of this nature, I find it hard to really come up with a good reason to say ?Good? or ?Bad? to IGA. In Game Advertising can be key to providing the gaming we all continue to have fun with, but it can also mean that we get assaulted by unscrupulous developers (EA) with absolutely no skill or originality (EA) who simply look for quick ways to make money (EA) without ever caring about the gamers or the concept of the game itself (Again, EA.). We just can hope that EA doesn't share these twisted concepts with other developers.

There you have it. Black out your windows, close your air vents, put sound proof padding all around your gaming room. Hopefully, game companies like EA will never find out what you enjoy playing, eating, drinking, wearing, drooling at, or touching. Maybe it's time for a good old fashioned boycott of EA, namely Battlefield 2142, until they figure out gamers do not like to be advertised to, especially when you monitor how often they browse pornography. Or maybe I should go ahead and cut my Internet line now and put on the tinfoil hat. EA will never steal my mind. Ever.

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