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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."
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.
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.