Cognition Dissemination: What’s the Point of These Street Fighter V Ads?

Street Fighter V has received several updates of varying sizes over the years, the receptions towards which have been mixed depending on the content included. The latest update is firmly on the controversial side thanks to one of the main features included: Ads.

Capcom confirmed that players would start seeing new sponsored content through this update in a blog post last week, and mentioned that leaving them on while playing matches would let players obtain more Fight Money. Considering how Capcom has reduced the number of FM options over time (and further reduced them with this newest update), this seemed like a big deal.

To no surprise, there was a wide range of opinions about this move. One group believed they would be fine if they weren’t too gaudy, and if they were, they could avoid them entirely by turning them off. This was the dominant opinion among those who had plenty of Fight Money to go around, perhaps those to took advantage of the options that used to exist before they were removed in January. But others felt the mere thought of ads being included in the game was a slippery slope towards introducing more nefarious features.

We’re seeing them in action now that the update is available, and the implementation is easily more in-your-face than even the largest pessimists expected.

The new ads come in the form of Capcom Pro Tour (or “CPT” for short) logos and emblems inserted onto most of the default outfits for the characters, along with some Story Mode outfits. Several of them are in egregious positions. Some are more silly than obtrusive, with characters like Urien, Dhalsim, and Zangief receiving the addition of a champion belt to display the logo on. Personally, I would have preferred for Urien’s to be placed on his bulge, to fit in with the absurdity.

But this gets worse with other characters. Bison has a large one placed on his chest, which is impossible to miss. Akuma’s CPT logo is on his back, where it replaces the iconic “ten” (or “Heaven,” in English) kanji after landing a successful Shun Goku Satsu on an opponent. Lastly, Guile’s is tattooed on his arm, where it replaces the American flag. This, of course, is a war declaration. These are only a few of the examples.

Capcom replaced america with ad space pic.twitter.com/etX0i7NCn5

— Christopher Hancock (@ChrisCCH_) December 12, 2018

But why is this happening? Why is Capcom rolling out these plans now? Those are the big questions, and there are possible hypotheses for them.

It’s possible SFV could be struggling to bring in continued revenue at this point, and that Capcom’s streams for the game aren’t receiving as many views as they need. The Capcom Pro Tour is nearing its conclusion this year with the Capcom Cup 2018 happening this weekend, so they see this as an opportunity to advertise it to attract more fans to the stream. This is also happening at a time where they’ve increased the number of players, as a free trial is currently available until December 19th. The trial includes the initial 16 characters and familiar DLC characters Guile, Akuma, and Sagat, and several modes are available — including online modes. The ads would have been a good idea if the logos weren’t haphazardly thrown on the characters.

There’s also the chance that Capcom is preparing for larger advertising plans, and the CPT ads are only the start. If this is the case, these could soon include more brand advertisements adorned on character outfits, which could join the noticeably-less-obtrusive Red Bull ones. This might be worth it if some characters also receive gloriously bad in-game outfits like Ryu and Chun-Li’s special Red Bull redesigns.

The mere thought of adding more advertising to a game through an update is skeevy; but again, the biggest problem with this particular sponsored content is the lazy implementation. The logos were clearly added in a quick fashion. It reeks of this being a last-minute decision made by the company’s executives, who told the developers the placements of the CPT ads had to be visible while giving them limited time to do so.

But walking in-game ads don’t have to look this bad, as the outfits that feature Red Bull emblems show. These, however, aren’t as obtrusive as those with the CPT logos, which might be the problem. This also isn’t getting into the aforementioned outfits Ryu and Chun-Li received. The ads would look better on separate outfits made specifically to advertise other brands, instead of just throwing logos on existing default and Story outfits. Whether this will be part of the long-term plan remains to be seen.

For now, the Fight Money rewards for leaving the ads on isn’t worth it, with only an extra 4 FM provided for each match. But this could increase, or they could remove the option to disable the ads — though hopefully the latter option will come with better ad implementation. The current ones are a bust, but more sites are talking about SFV again, so… mission accomplished?