Slashdot Mirror
Electronic Arts 'Scores' With Product Placement
Thanks to the San Francisco Business Times for its article discussing Electronic Arts' increasing use of product placement in its videogames. The article explains: "In EA's games, basketball players wear Adidas or Nike and run past a McDonald's banner on the court; Old Spice deodorant highlights football college players of the game; a snowboarder swooshes past Honda Motor Co.'s newest vehicle, the Element." It's also pointed out that "a six-figure deal with an advertiser defrays some of the costs of game development, which can run up to $10 million in the industry", but it's claimed: "Video-game makers said they try to take care when incorporating products in games, not wanting to overwhelm game players with product spots."
Personally, I feel violated when I see advertisements(product placements, whatever) in movies or games. I certainly wouldn't pay to see or play a game or movies with ads in it. Them saying "we don't wan to overwhelm people" is just another clue that companies would jump itno advertising on everything that's possible all the time, if they didn't know people would "revolt" if they went that far so quick. They'll move in with more advertisements here, and then a little more and a little more somewhere else, etc.
This form of advertising, I feel, only becomes a problem when it detracts from the game. Well-considered product placement may even be essential to enhancing the realism; a game set in the 1990s really ought to feature realistic brands, to add 'authenticity'. The same reasoning can be applied to movies, too.
On the other hand, if, having just defeated the Hideous Dragon Zorgaroth (for want of a better name), the player can only restore his health with Lucozade Isotonic Sports Drink(r)(tm) etc., then this is likely to be unacceptable.
Sports game sponsorship falls into the former category. To brind a stadium to life, it is generally better to use current stadium ads, or authentic sports strip, than to invent fictitious, but plausible sounding brands.
The only further problem I can identify with this business model is perversion of cause and effect. For example, if, within the context of an RPG, my character eats MacDonalds regularly, he _should_ become unhealthy. If this is not the case, then it is conceivable that among regular players, the cumulative effect of these type of 'causal anomalies' could cause the player to be less critical of their own diet. Many people identify very strongly with their characters, and this will tend to increase the effect.
A similar problem is if the game rewards preferentially, e.g. drinking a particular type of cola, buying a particular type of PC in game. It is not impossible to imagine a situation whereby to keep your character happy, a MacDonalds is required. Or to advance the character's skill, an HP Handheld PC is required.
In the cases above, these placements are no longer passive. This is problematic especially if the game is attempting to model 'modern life' (e.g. The Sims). Then the distortions introduced are causing the game to resemble a marketeer's nirvana, rather than the reaility and causality we experience.
Few studies have been conducted about the effect of 'reality' games on the mind - those studies that have been done done have tended to focus on 'fantasy' games (e.g. the much publicised Doom and Quake studies).
If implemented as above, this could create a whole new method of implanting brands into people - if you spend your time continually associating 'MacDonalds' with 'happiness', and carrying out the accociation actively, not passively, there is likely to be a significant crossover into reality.
I actually love the idea of ads in games for so many reasons. The biggest one is that it makes the game developer more income from the game, meaning that they can both charge me less, and make more exciting games. It's a win win. I think that I'll only keep on enjoying this if they use advertisements in the current way. Having banners for McDonals in the background of a basketball game actually makes the game feel more real. When I watch a real basketball game there are ads, why should the computer game not have them? I think that certain websites could learn from this. When you push advertisements right into the middle of a page or have a bunch of popups, the user doesn't even look at them. They just get annoyed and leave your site (sometimes). If you do it unobtrusively, then users can still enjoy your site, and you can make a profit. If advertisements are "integrated" into the website and not forced into it, they can even add to the experience.
Just as Hollywood has converged on the "two hours of explosions with product placements" formula for guaranteed success - I fear that the videogame industry is going the exact same way.
Just as the independent films are typically the only original movies today, the only truly original games of tomorrow won't be made by the large corporations. They won't be willing to take a risk that a completely new game idea / concept will sell enough to recoup the huge production budget.
Think about it. The formula for a movie today seems to be something along the lines of:
Gratuitous slow-motion action shots, The Shootout scene, The Car Chase scene, the hero is a martial arts expert that can automatically use any weapon that it is possible to build, lovable sidekick provides comic timing (but may be killed, further motivating the plot) on the way to save the hero's love interest from whoever is this week's bad guy who happens to have a British accent. The movie will suck, but viewers don't know any different go see it anyway. All they have to do is get the biggest opening weekend ever and it doesn't matter how bad word of mouth is, they've already made their money back double.
And big-budget games will soon all be the following:
Third-person action adventures where you shoot, can also drive cars between missions, and get FMV scenes every 5 minutes to further the plot (involving a kidnapped gratuitous "love interest"), while enduring your lovable sidekick's comic antics. The gameplay will suck, but reviewers will say they love it or their advertising revenue plummets - and consumers will still buy them anyway because they don't know any better and they left it 8 days instead of 7 and now the store's return policy expired.
It allows the companies who are willing to pay a chance to get some brand awareness with groups they wouldn't ordinarily conect with and it's not intrusive.
This has been done in films many times (Apple in Mission Impossible) - If it's done well it actually adds to the realisim of the film. It maintains the suspension of disbelief if the hero uses an Apple powerbook (which a lot of people have herad of) rather than a SupaDupaPuter 1000 (made up name). Of course nobodys going to want to sponsor the bad guy...
Sadly, I don't think we'll ever see this approach replace the advert breaks in TV shows
In game adverts don't really bother me when it's more subtle. When I played Wipeout XL, there were ads for Red Bull all over the tracks. I had never heard of the product at the time and when I first saw it in a store, I picked up a can to see what it was. Darkened Skye is way over the top, where there is a a subplot to pick up as many Skittles candies as you can. They just beat you over the head with it. Games with advertisements still seem to cost the same $50 in stores, and I doubt the added income for the developer/distributor will be passed down to the consumer.
Their games are set in the present. Their content would naturally contain ads. At basketball/football/baseball/etc games, ad placement is all over the place. Its only natural to have them in the game. You can't do this with games like KOTOR, they don't have Intel Chips a (really) Long time ago, in a galaxy far away.
so what's the big deal? They have an advantage because of their game setting.
I only mod up parents of "mod parent up" posts...
Hopefully if/when SimCity 5 is developed there will be actual models for retailers.. This IMHO would add a huge dimension of realism for that game. Probably one of the few games were commercial placement would actually be really appropriate.
Ha ha ha ha.
You do realize that if you were to do a survey, pretty much everyone would claim they are "not stupid enough" to be affected by advertising. And guess what? People are.
Advertising is based on psychology and tons of time and money put towards trial and error to figure out what works. But strangely, everyone things that they are so highly evolved that psychology doesn't apply to them, and that commercials won't work on them because they understand what the commercials are doing, while no one else sees through the ruse and knows that when a commercial shows a beautiful woman and a beer, they do it because they want to sell more beer. Well guess what? They do.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
What I'm not for is the fact that this means jack squat for consumers. If EA gets an extra $10 million from Nike, what do I get? The same game, by a rushed developer, with a bunch of extra advertisement... for the same $50 USD.
Companies like EA isn't going to lower the cost of their games because of this. They're not going to give the dev team an extra month to work out the bugs and balance it out some more. No, they're going to pocket the money from Nike, take my money, and pocket that too.