From the quoted article on the front page:

''In games like Crazy Taxi, product placement is so excessive that it almost feels like a joke,'' says Bryan Younce, a 24-year-old gamer in Los Angeles.

Okay, but that didn't stop it from selling 750,000 copies in the US alone (also from that article), so...

My personal take on product placement is this: just as in movies, it can be excessive if used to the point where it's obvious and distracting. But it can be a good thing, and I would like to see more of it, if properly used.

In real life, soda machines say "coke" or "pepsi" or something, not "Kola." When I'm running around in a gritty real-world action game and I come across the "Kola" machine, it breaks my suspension of disbelief. I'd rather see a Coke machine.

I'd rather Solid Snake smoked Lucky Strikes or Marlboros than some generic fakey brand of cigarettes that nobody's ever heard of. I just don't want him to stop and say "mmm...nothing calms me down and reveals laser triggers like Marlboro (tm) brand cigarettes!"

"mmm...nothing calms me down and reveals laser triggers like Marlboro (tm) brand cigarettes!"

that's gold... I wouldn't mind seeing that - it'd just make me laugh.

"In real life, soda machines say "coke" or "pepsi" or something, not "Kola.""

Way back when, I was doing a preview of Half Life. I had a playable build of the underground lab and it had the actual Coca-Cola logo on the soda machine. You know, the ones that spit out a bunch of Coke cans when you smash them with a crowbar. Don't pretend you've never done that.

I told them basically the same thing Jason mentioned above: that real world logos help immersion, so it was great to see the Coca Cola logo. Later on, they asked me to make sure I didn't take any screenshots of the Coke machines because they weren't sure if they were going to have to change them. Sure enough, Half Life comes out and the soda machines have generic logos. I guess the Coca Cola image is too expensive for Valve to license...

It's strange to me the directions money flows when licensing is involved.

-Tom

I wonder how much it would set them back to license "Sam's Choice" or "RC". =)

Tom said:
"It's strange to me the directions money flows when licensing is involved. "

Yes it is. I would have thought that in some ways, a publisher could make a little money since product placement could be perceived as advertising.

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Quote:

I would have thought that in some ways, a
publisher could make a little money since product
placement could be perceived as advertising.

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Companies are careful about what they want their product associated with. I think computer and video games have a bit of a stigma attached to them.

True, but find me a demographic that drinks more Mountain Dew then gamers. The TV commercials try to appeal to the "renegade" crowd, but they aren't the true product buyers. It's us people who want to stay up for 48 hours straight playing Half-Life that keep them in business. :)

"True, but find me a demographic that drinks more Mountain Dew then gamers."

I seem to recall the underappreciated Jet Moto on the Playstation had some *very* prominent (i.e. all but whack you over the head) Mountain Dew product placement.

Can anyone think of legit product placement in other games?

-Tom

Maxis was contemplating real-world brands for Sim City 3000; I don't recall if they made it in.

Simon & Schuster Interactive is doing a Tomb Raider-style game with a Skittles element. Thee was also an M&Ms game recently.

IIRC, one of Gremlin's Zool games and Ocean's One Step Beyond both had snack-treat tie-ins with English companies and Psygnosis may have done something similar (tho the name of the game eludes me).

po

A lot of EA Sports' recent games have featured advertising from various companies - NHL 2000 comes to mind, as it featured ads for the Hockey News. I believe the FIFA series has had advertisement in it for several years.

NHL 2001 has advertising on the boards but it would look really odd skating around without it. I figure since it has to be there, it looks more authentic to have real advertisements.

Exactly. I think a lot of games could have well-placed advertisements in them, but in sports games, they seem more appropriate.

>I think computer and video games have a bit of a stigma attached to them.

Too true. Cliffy B's lecture at GDC this year was "designing hardcore games for mass market audiences." It was actually rather good, if not backed up by enough data and hard research.

He brought up something in the beginning that I heard echoed from several other bright people who have been in this business a long time, each in their own way. He had a section called "what we're up against" and it was a series of slides depicting the average Joe Consumer's view of games.

"Games are toys."
"Kids play with toys."
"Adults who play with toys are dorks."
"I don't want to be a dork."
"I don't play games."

I try to have a reasonable social life, and I see this basic mentality all over the place in the Real World. People, as a whole, see games as fringe. That perception is eroding, but we're a long way from having everyone in the country think of games as the kind of general entertainment that movies and TV are.

>Can anyone think of legit product placement in other games?

Tony Hawk 2 had great product placement--name-brand skater clothes and gear. They were definitely srategically placed (don't know if the companies paid, or how much, though), and they added an air of authenticity to the game.

Perhaps the best integrated form of product placement is games like Gran Turismo, which feature lots of real-world sports cars. Oh sure, the companies don't pay (and in fact Sony might pay the car companies), so it's not technically "product placement." But they certainly see it as a way to get their brand and image out there - they're awfully concerned about the cars showing damage.

Then there's the products that are nothing BUT product placement. Harley Davidson racing and 7-up Cool Spot and stuff. That's not really the same thing though.

"True, but find me a demographic that drinks more Mountain Dew then gamers. "

I have... Seven 2 liters of Mt. Dew on my desk right now. Oh yeah, another on the floor, and one on my subwoofer amp.

I don't think advertising in a game would increase their sales. I'm hooked like crack.

-Freon

"Perhaps the best integrated form of product placement is games like Gran Turismo, which feature lots of real-world sports cars. Oh sure, the companies don't pay (and in fact Sony might pay the car companies), so it's not technically "product placement.""

I'm pretty sure the car companies get money from the Gran Tourismo folks. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not sure I understand the direction money flows in these situations. I know Empire Interactive paid Ford for a recent Ford Racing game. I'm sure the same goes for stuff like GT, Beetle Buggin', etc. I-76 had fictional cars partly to save money.

-Tom

I agree, Tom. It doesn't make a whole lotta sense that a game company should have to pay Ford for the use of cars in the game. (Okay, maybe it makes a little sense. It's better than them having to pay to put in a coke machine -- that seems pretty ridiculous.) I'd think they'd love the advertising, though.

On the note of product placement -- I think Excitebike for N64 has quite a bit of appropriately-placed ads.

I think it all has to do with who has the most valuable property. When you talk about Coke, or Pepsi, or Ford, or Levis or products that are at the top of the food chain in their respective industries, you're going to have to pay them to put their products in something as small-scale (to companies that buy millions of bucks worth of TV ads, for instance) and potentially controversial as a computer game.


If, on the other hand, you approached Billy Ray's Bait Shop on Rte. 81 with an offer to put his crawfish souffle in the game, well, he'd probably pay you (most likely with a bucket of nightcrawlers, but hey...).

It seems strange to me that you would have to pay Coke or Pepsi to put their products in a game. I can kinda see Ford wanting money for a company letting people virtually drive one of their cars in a game, but a Coke logo on a vending machine? Come on!! Now, if we were interacting more with it, maybe, but not just for the logo. That's ridiculous. They should just welcome the free advertising and have a nice day. If money's going to change hands at all, it should be Coke giving the game company a little cash for the advertising, but, ultimately, I think the company should just clear it with Coke first, and then Coke says okay, and the company puts it in the game. Money shouldn't have to change hands over so trivial an issue.

Ultimately, I don't think it will affect sales drastically one way or the other, and perhaps that's why I don't feel like money should be spent by either side. It's not like more people are going to buy the game due to a Coke logo. And, more people probably aren't going to buy a Coke because of the plug in the game. It just seems silly to have pay for that, from either side. I agree that it adds to the immersion factor of the game, and I think that's great. But should anybody really have to pay for that? I don't think so.

It may well be ridiculous, and I could indeed be wrong, but I suspect folks with highly visible and popular brands see it differently. From their vantage point, if you want to put their billion-dollar brand in your game, you're adding value to what is in their eyes a much less valuable product.

If your game flops, their brand could be tarnished by association. Even if your game succeeds, it might get Ashcroft or Lieberman upset, and what if one of them shows a screenshot of a pregnant women being decapitated in front of a Coke machine?

Yeah, that's fair enough, I suppose. But is there really any way that someone could see a pregnant woman getting decapitated in front of a Coke machine in a game, and have that reflect on Coke? That just seems ludicrous. Although, I must admit, nothing is outside the realm of possibility these days. I see Coke's point, but I don't think that ultimately, one affects the sales of the other. I would argue for the inclusion of the Coke (or Pepsi) logo simply for the sake of immersion.

I think it's a matter of who is making money off whose property.

If I'm making a racing game, and I want your car company's car in there, I'm making money off the likeness of your car and the authenticity of putting it in the game. If I go a step futher and want to make a game called "Beetle Buggin'" then I'm DEFINITELY capitalizing on Volkswagon's product, so it's only right I license it from them. That's not really product placement, though.

Product placement is when the placement of a product has nothing to do with the overall impact of its medium. When the can of Pepsi One that Rene Russo is so GRATUITOUSLY refreshed by in The Thomas Crown Affair could just as well be any other soda, or water, then that's product placement.

I guess the line is harder for us to distinguish in games because it's an interactive medium. Maybe that Dodge Viper matters a lot to you in Gran Turismo, or maybe you play the whole game and never buy it.

Either way, product placement in games is a hell of a deal. On TV, you spend a hell of a lot for 30 seconds, during which time your audience flips to another channel or goes to use the bathroom or hits mute or whatever. You get your product placed logically in a game, and a gamer could see it for hours on end. Even if it's brief, they can't ignore it, because they're playing the game at that moment.

Making it seem all the more likely to me that Coke should be paying, not getting paid, to have its logo in a game...

If I ever have a nationally-renowned product, and any of you want the logo in a game, no money has to change hands. It just seems so mutually-beneficial for the company whose logo appears in the game and for the game itself, no money needs to exchange hands, if it's up to me.

Marketing is all about this deep part of your mind and what gets embedded there. If you have a successful product that is making you money hand over fist, you want to be very careful about what gets lodged in the back of people's minds with your product. You don't want people to think of Soldier of Fortune and people's intenstines leaking out when they see your brand of lemonade on the grocery store shelf.

"You don't want people to think of Soldier of Fortune and people's intenstines leaking out when they see your brand of lemonade on the grocery store shelf."

True, but it might help sell more band-aids. :)

It's amazing to me that gaming still is stuck in the basement. It's a multi-billion dollar a year industry, but companies like Coca-Cola and Ford still think about it as a bunch of adults playing with toys. The people who are buying these games are the same people that they spend $10mil for 30 seconds during the Superbowl to appeal to. The typical game buyer is apparently 19 - 49 and makes $27,000+ a year. That is the prime marketing age group... oh well, I don't have a merketing degree so I don't know what the justification is.

The trick here is to understand that none of this makes sense, nor is it supposed to--advertising and marketing are black arts, practised by wizards who play with the dead. What's logical and makes sense to the normal is precisely what these necromancers abhor....

That's the most mystical description of advertising I've ever heard.

Companies take their licensing very seriously. The movie Cast Away was almost like a commercial for Fedex at times, yet Fedex seriously considered not allowing their name to be used in the movie due to the plane crash at the beginning. They didn't want the perception that Fedex planes are prone to crashing. In the end they let the filmmakers use the brand and it didn't cost them a penty and they received a huge amount of free advertising.

>You don't want people to think of Soldier of Fortune and people's intenstines leaking out when they see your brand of lemonade on the grocery store shelf.

Or more disturbingly, when you buy some Beefaroni.

Thanks for that visual, Jason. No, seriously, I appreciate it. Thanks for ruining my favorite Chef Boyardee product ;P

Anyone else remember the hidden character, Pepsi-man, in Sega's ridiculous arcade fighting game, Fighting Vipers? I think that's got to be just about the most offensive use of product placement in a game to date. Either that or it's a profound joke that's way too clever for me. Which definitely might be the case, come to think of it.

Pepsi-Man is much funnier if you've seen the Japanese TV Commercials that the character comes from. It actually turns out to be a cool character and a great joke. Those commercials were great comedy... too bad they never used the character over here.

--Dave

Jason said:

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Perhaps the best integrated form of product placement is games like Gran Turismo, which feature lots of real-world sports cars. Oh sure, the companies don't pay (and in fact Sony might pay the car companies), so it's not technically "product placement." But they certainly see it as a way to get their brand and image out there - they're awfully concerned about the cars showing damage.

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>Anyone else remember the hidden character, Pepsi-man, in Sega's ridiculous arcade fighting game, Fighting Vipers?

Time to strut my total game geekdom a bit...

Pepsi-Man in Fighting Vipers was actually sort of a running joke. It first appeared as a hidden character in Sega's even more rediculous home fighting game Eternal Champions for the Genesis.

Yes, I *DO* spend to much time and mental energy on games. It's a good thing it's my job.

Why don't they just put rotating ads on the backs of your character in third person games (say, Rune, Tomb Raider, Heretic II, etc.), and then ads on the caps and helmets and then ads on the fronts of everyone's shirts.

Then, it'll be just like watching golfing! :)