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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.
Not bring down the price of the games.
EA will quickly learn if this business move is bad. Their sales will drop from "The Sims". Frankly, I have never figured out why so many people are afraid of advertising. If you don't like it, don't buy their products. The only question I have is if the Mac OS X version will drop the Intel ads?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
"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!"
Last year Sobe had a 'vendo' in Munch's oddysee...gave you back your health. (What about truth in advertising?)
I'm 90% certain the Atari 2600 E.T. game had Reeses Pieces in it. (E.T. was supposed to be caught with M&M's, but Speilberg couldn't get the rights. Boy was THAT a bonehead move!)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
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.
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
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.