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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."
Not bring down the price of the games.
One thing I've always wondered about this wonderful set of games is exactly how much wheeling and dealing did they have to do to get as many "real" cars and products into the game.
In any event it is the perfect touch: a race track without product billboards isn't very realistic. Cars that you can say "Hey I know someone with that car" are playable. You can walk into a tire store and look at the same tires offered in the game.
Software companies promote themselves all of the time in their own games but should they now seek ad revenue for games? Hungry companies could see this is a new boon. Players could start to see this as a new bother.
However the GT series does this correctly because it is subtile. The car designs and products are the ads themselves...you don't need to be intrusive with load screens shouting "Parts of this game were funded by Soandso". If players start seeing intrusive ads they'll start to turn away from it.
So, if your Sims eat a ton of Big Macs, do they fatten up, get hardened arteries, and have heart attacks? I hope EA is sticking with the "reality" theme.
When I was working on PC flight simulators, to use any likeness, logo, or performance data you had to pay the aircraft manufacturer. We argued that they were getting free exposure for their product, but got no dice. At least in this instance EA was able to turn it to their favor and further fund development. Good for them.
But back to my origional point from before I got on a rant. If they use this money to do something like elimenate the monthly fee, I'd see no problem. They could even make it an option: pay us $10 a month (or whatever) or see branded items. I don't see a problem with this. As long as they ads aren't obtrusive, it's fine with me. What do I mean? If your sim's computer play the intel song and shows a P4 logo when you turn it on, that's fine. If your sim can buy McDonalds when they're hungy, that's fine too. What I DON'T want to see is my house wallpapered with the golden arches, or finding NPC that always steer the conversation towards "Have you heard about Intel's great new powerful processor? And it's only costs... you should buy one now! Infact you can buy one from me!". THAT would clearly drive people away.
It's like my opinion of product placement in movies. If it seems natural or is unobtrusive (Tom Hanks working for FedEx in "Cast Away") then I see no problem with it. But if it gets like that ad in "The Truman Show" or like Wendy's in "Mr. Deeds", that I don't want to see.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Why should I pay for entertainment, then be forced to watch advertisements? Once this makes its way into every game (every movie is getting polluted, and TV shows are soon to be) it's going to be an ugly world. Until then we call all use Mozilla and BannerBlind. That is, if Mozilla is still legal to use post Palladium.
In this case I want a '88 caddy and a .45, to do drive by shooting, just like in real life. Are there going to be cops and prisons and judges and laywers and politicians too? And I want my character to be able to run a crackhouse with 17 year old chicks being digitized for the net with a Sony digital camcorder.
Please, it's just a game. Games are a means to escape reality, not sink deeper into it...
"Piter, too, is dead."
if done correctly, for example I much rather see someone drinking a can of coke then someone drinking a can of what looks exactly like a coke can but is labeled cola (or whatever). I like the idea of Mc Donalds, as long as its not the only hamburger place, same with pizzahut, its harder to control pizzahut thoe as the Sims order pizza on their own and it would suck to see a the pizzahut logo on every pizza box, I don't like the idea of the Intel inside logo unless they plan on making it life size ( 1"x1") so you really cant see it without zooming in really close, it would suck, if it was a big ass logo on the side of the computer, as it would not look real
I'd hate having product placement in a workspace environment. But I wouldn't meind seeing a few in some GNU games. That way there'd be more games for my favorite OS.
Channel One?
How exactly does wearing a shirt whose front consists entirely of a gigantic "Tommy Hilfiger" logo ever get to the point where it is considered "cool"? Whoever managed to pull that off is a genius.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I know several people who drink coffee that was just percolating in the pot. That puts it around the boiling point of water. I asked a few people about the lawsuit, and I never found one that felt it was justified. Everyone said hot coffee had better be damn hot when it's poured, as otherwise it turns into lukewarm crud within 10 minutes.
If I was driving a Porche at 150mph and crashed after failing to make follow a curve in the road, should I be able to sue because the car is made to go too fast?
Everyone knows it was the old lady's fault she got burned. She put the coffee cup between her legs and removed the cover, despite knowing how hot McDonald's coffee always is. Sheer idiocy is not supposed to be cart blanche to get money from large corporations. Prior lawsuits notwithstanding, there was no way that is an acceptable behavior in an industrialized nation. Otherwise why would companies even offer products that may possibly make them responsible for some idiot's actions?
So, in a game that's [potentially] going to be the very worst for abusive play, do you really want your brand getting associated with it? Imagine the joy of having "A Mac Attack" becoming the most hated concept on the net. Or maybe the next "A rape in cyberspace" story beginning, "It was under the pixelated golden arches of a virtual McDonalds..."
Money can't buy that kind of advertising. Probably for a very good reason.
The Maxis (or are they EA now?) spokesperson in the article stated that there would likely be more product placement deals announced before the launch of The Sims Online. They also made the point that the nature of the game allows for easy "upgrading" of clients to handle additional advertiser/sponsor insertions into the simworld after it launches.
I really don't have much of a problem with product placement on this level, as long as there are other options (ie, not every restaurant is a MacDonalds, and not every computer has Intel Inside). It will be equally troublesome, however, if they are signing exclusive contracts with these companies.
Just as in RealLife, I would want my Sim to have the option of eschewing certain brands. S/he shouldn't have to starve I choose not to endorse the MacEntity. Similarly, I would hope that Intel's inclusion doesn't mean that Apple can't buy some simspace as well, or Red Hat for that matter (maybe IBM would foot the bill and go for a co-branded sim-machine). Not only would it completely suck for there to be only one (real) brand of food, computer, car, etc (and make one wonder about the legal ramifications of monopoly positions in a simverse), but it would be either grossly unrealistic or virtually post-apocolyptic.
Damn, this makes me wonder whether any degree of entrepreneurialism is coded into The Sims Online. Can I have my character open a falafel and carrot juice stand, corner the market on vegetarian health food, and go on to sell franchises across the simverse? Hmmm.
That game was sponsored by KP Skips crisps. Follow the link above and you can see a screenshot clearly showing the Skips logo. Now - I can't remember if there were any Skips logos actually during gameplay, but that's the first piece of advertising within games that I'm aware of.
1985. Can anyone point to anything older?
Cheers,
Ian