Gearbox Ingame ad's

Quote from zaphod

I wonder how much phillips pays for something like that? It doesn't seem like it would do a lot of good for phillips, like someone would be shopping for tv's and think hey, I remember having a shootout in that old bombed out 1940's phillips factory, I should see what they have for sale! It also seems like a lot of work for the developers to work that in so I would imagine the situation is much more like "we are going to put this in anyway, lets see if the company will pay us to put their signage up there instead of making up some fake company", Instead of an actual form of revenue where companies can push what they really want to advertise.

Product placement is really about penetrating minds with a given product brand, not the context. From what I've seen in film and television, advertisers aren't really too concerned about how the product is used as long as it fits into the film/programme well (eg: car being used by villain is blown up — BMW makes sure it's one of theirs).

Game advertisement is still extremely immature because it's seen in a very immature light: it must show the product in a positive light, it must be on a billboard or something really prominent, etc. Subtlety and context suitability hasn't really evolved much yet, but it will with time and product placement will become completely normal in games.

The Thrik has spoken. And so it shall be.

Quote from Thrik

Product placement is really about penetrating minds with a given product brand, not the context. From what I've seen in film and television, advertisers aren't really too concerned about how the product is used as long as it fits into the film/programme well (eg: car being used by villain is blown up — BMW makes sure it's one of theirs).

Game advertisement is still extremely immature because it's seen in a very immature light: it must show the product in a positive light, it must be on a billboard or something really prominent, etc. Subtlety and context suitability hasn't really evolved much yet, but it will with time and product placement will become completely normal in games.

Absolutely right.

What still amazes me, however, is how slow big parts for the game industry is in catching on to these tricks - considering how much of it is just directly transferable from the movie business.

Game companies should get in more movie people. Or at least look at them and copy more.

Quote from WitchKing

[What still amazes me, however, is how slow big parts for the game industry is in catching on to these tricks - considering how much of it is just directly transferable from the movie business.

Game companies should get in more movie people. Or at least look at them and copy more.

I get what you're saying but not everything transfers from medium to medium. Ever watch the TV show 24? I have, and I admit that I loved it....for a while. While I am obviously embilishing these lines and purposely misquoting them, here is what I remember on an emotional level from recent seasons:

Jack: "Suspect is driving a blue Lexus ES 350 with the luxury package and smooth handling."

Jack: "I'm uploading the schemetic from my Treo using the fastest, most reliable wireless network available." (Zoom in on Sprint logo on phone.)

Chloe: "They can't break through that! It's a CISCO router!"

Again, I know these were not the exact lines, but on 24 it just felt distracting because the show was not intented to be a farse and the frequent product placements became noticable and laughable and only highlighted how ridiculous the plots were becoming. But hey, it's 24...where were they gonna go? Nuking Valencia, CA in episode 4 of the last season was about all they could do I guess.

Anyway, more on topic to Gearbox's in game ads...I hope it all goes well. Rigiht now it's all about testing the waters with this stuff and we need some more traditional games like a WWII shooter to test out how it can be done tastefully. Let's just hope the money's filters down into the developers pockets.