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Product Placement in Online Gaming
ceejayoz writes "MSNBC/Reuters has an article about product placement in 'The Sims Online'. EA has made a multimillion dollar deal with Intel and McDonalds to include 'Intel's familiar jingle, its product logo, and computers using its Pentium 4 processor' and 'a McDonald's kiosk and ... the company's branded food' in the game."
And, hey, maybe your Sim can sue McDonalds for making them fat and get rich. That'd sure beat the hassle of that job thing.
Does this mean my Sim will start getting fat? Will it develop an urge to sue McDonalds later on, or just spill coffee on his crotch?
If we're lucky, we might find The Sims Online in a Happy Meal :-)!
While I'm sitting here drinking my cold, refreshing Coke, I looked on my KDS LCD flatscreen monitor that I bought from ThinkGeek and realized that they should apply this to TV shows as well. Why interrupt a show with a commercial break when product placement could work just as good? In the movie "The Truman Show", which I watched the other day on my DirectTV satellite system, the "show" that the movie was about had no commercials, just product placements. While that was just a movie, if The Sims proves this can work for other mediums, maybe we'll soon see a future where Tivos can no longer skip over commercials because there AREN'T any to skip over.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I would agree to this kind of advertising under three conditions.
1) The price of the game should be reduced by a percentage of the advertising revenue, since it's our eyeballs doing the work of watching the add.
2) NPC's should get fatter, sue because they don't want to be responsible for anything, including what they shove in their mouths, and then they clog up your court building and you loose 1000 points.
3) You should be able to rob the drive-through, just like in real life.
But Mc Donalds meat is already simulated meat. So when it gets used in a simulation, does it become real meat? What a philisophical pondering...
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
for weapons manufacturers.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
and a fine addition to the game.
On of the big events The Sims is watching them respond to events, like when there is a fire on their stove.
The fires get a bit boring after a while. A nice event instead will be watching your Sim collapse in the McDonald's kiosk from a cholesterol-induced heart-attack.
Makes a nice tie in too for genuine Intel(R) products: crack open the nearby computer equipment and use the live wires to see if you can shock your Sim's heart into restarting again.
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Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
Pop ups in games add value to the product. You are lucky the price isn't going up for these features.
In the middle of fragging your friends in Doom3, a message appears in the console:
This small show of violence was brought to you by the NRA. Without us, your dreams of actually owning your own mini-gun will never be realized.
I love you Charlton Heston, you damn filthy ape!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
My virtual cup of coffee was WAY too hot...
But ads get in the way! When I'm playing DOOM III the last thing I need is to be bombarded by bright flashing graphics and loud sounds!
... and when they do, can you sue Sim McDonald's for forcing their sim products down your sim throat?
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
Will my sims get sick and throw up like real people do after eating the McSomething?
If they really wanted to sell more PCs, Intel would pay EA to include Macs as well. They'd cost twice as much as the P4 PCs, and they would generate less happiness points (or whatever the hell they're called...).
"I started out just like you guys - on trash. Now, I'm washing lettuce. Pretty soon I'll be on fries. In a year or two, I'll make assistant manager....and that's when the big bucks start rolling in!"
How long before they strike a deal worth millions and, as the Sims are about to "get it on," that old familiar "Trojan Maaaaaaan" jingle is heard. To make matters worse (just because they simply _can_) Trojan Man himself makes an appearance, horse and all. In his tone of voice, we hear the Sim's patented mumble, obviously giving them advice on why to use his rubbers. Finally, he hands the couple a Magnum Size and rides off into the sunset.
Will Microsoft fight back and offer more money to, instead of the Intel jingle, have their Microsoft Sound play when a Sim sits at a computer? Could the Linux Community lobby in favor of Tux on the screen? Wouldn't it be just the shit if a Sim sits down, boots up Linux, starts WINE and plays The Sims?
I'd say I have too much free time on my hands, wouldn't you all?
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
You can gather all your Sims around the local McDonalds, and have your very own anti-globalisation protest.
And as those nice Intel machines'll need equally nice software to run on them, we'll find our little Sims people running down to their Simulated PC-World and bringing back a Simulated copy of The Sims to run on their machine... and then the Sims will find their little simulated Sims people running down to....
Well, at the very least it would be nice if the Sims could get "Little Computer People" running on their PCs...