The Rise Of Adverts In Videogames

Thanks to Evil Avatar for pointing to a brief Fortune article discussing the rise of advertising placement in videogames. A particular example discussed - Intel have struck a deal with EA so that "..when characters on The Sims Online use their PCs, players see the Intel logo and hear the company's signature musical bong." How insidious is too insidious? Mind you, advertisers would have to push to find licensing as plain bizarre as Skittles' product placement in Darkened Skye.

Comments

Re:Enter the Matrix

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Quite right: this is why we, the movie-going public, need to rise up and demand that these kickbacks be passed along to the end user. If Intel wants me to watch their commercial within the movie, I will require a quarter. I don't even need the quarter, the theatre can just subtract it from my ticket price. Here's an idea: a megaplex that shows the regular run of the mill Hollywood movies but before they are shown, commercial images are branded onto them locally. Of course, digital film would make this much more possible. Anyway, Tom's Local Chicken Shack can pay the local theatre some money to have their commercial within the movie and because of this added profit, the theatre can charge less per movie. For instance, if there are five adverts within a film, my ticket is discounted at some factor times five. What a great idea! Oh, but I think this type of editing is illegal under the DMCA...