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Product Placement in Online Gaming

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the mcdonalds-inside dept.

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."

2 of 374 comments (clear)

  1. Grand Turismo Series Does It Right by EXTomar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Associating Your Brand by nick_davison · · Score: 5, Insightful
    One of the big concerns about The Sims Online has been the way it seems designed, from the ground up, for griefers. Even the designers admit that they don't know how that aspect will play out on line. The one play journal that was on the website for quite a while was almost purely about how much fun it was to grief other players in imaginative ways - and that's just the design team.

    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.