While product placement can be traced back to early movies and radio, the digital world we live in today gives companies ample opportunity to send us images of trucks we should buy, what computers we should use and even what movies to watch. While previous advertisements within movies and television could easily be ignored, it’s now becoming more blatant, intrusive and becoming part of our gaming life.Paramount Pictures and Massive Inc. recently launched the first in-game advertising campaign. This “game”, which is included in Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 from July 18th 2008 through August 25th 2008, is an advertisement for the upcoming movie Tropic Thunder. Gamers will get to see a series of nine clues in this scavenger hunt type game. Each clue will lead them to a new clue until they have completed the scavenger hunt.
Amy Powel, the senior vice president of Interactive Marketing for Paramount Pictures stated, “This innovative scavenger hunt enables us to reward our target audience and give them a direct call to action to go see ‘Tropic Thunder’. We’ve had a track record of success working with Massive since the business started. This is taking our in-game advertising campaigns to the next level by making them interactive and actionable. Gamers are motivated to seek out the next ad, which is an amazing way for us to build awareness and excitement for our new release.”
How far is too far though when it comes to advertising? With the release of this “game” within a game, we’ve reached that point. While the CEO of Massive, Cory Van Arsdale, believes this is “a new and highly innovative use of dynamic in-game advertising and really demonstrates the creativity and marketing power of this medium”, the movie posters that appear throughout the game are simply an eye-sore, take away from what should be a great game and open the door for more direct advertising in our video games.
Do you feel product placement in video games is going too far? Does this open the door for game makers and marketers to create additional goals in future games to upgrade to the latest Reebok shoe or save Chester Cheetah to earn movie tickets? Let us hear your opinions!
Link: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 
Since its a single server which serves Ads its easy to create a Vista firewall rule to block all requests to the server.
personally, i dont have a problem with using real product placement in realistic locations. when they start going out of their way to add in copious amounts of bill boards and movie posters then we might have an issue.
But it's good that we can get these awesome free games due to the in-game advertisement and it's good that it's done in a non-intrusive way in this example.
A billboard or two is one thing, coding a mini-game just to advertise is another, imo.
Just as long as Linux remains ad-free!
Oh wait...
maybe the 'scavenger hunt' is more like achievements on steam and xbox live? like it ties into a movie being released soon, but otherwise its just as pointless... i mean, if you wanted to be unhappy and spoil the game for yourself you'd search on the internet how to get through the scavenger hunt and stuff
I, like many others, play games to escape reality, not to be reminded of it. In game advertising goes along the same lines as discussing politics or religion in game, simply not cool.
I'd much rather the game developers make up some silly parody billboards and posters to put in there game than having to stare at real life brand names. Hellgate London was smart and actually used the posters in the subway stations to display in game achievements by guilds and players, like which guild had the highest average level, biggest guild, most money, and whatnot.
I use blocking addons in Firefox, don't pay attention/ignore billboards, turn my attention away from TV during commercials (or just laugh at them and don't remember what it's about later), and just don't care to notice in-game ads.
I don't have any issue with in-game "advertising" if they fit the setting. It's actually kinda cool when they add authenticity.
Are they turning to advertising movies in games because games based on movies are so horrible? I thought movie games did a good job of promoting movies in the first place... ah well... the whole thing seems annoying.
You act as though the consumer has no power. Sooner or later developers get the clue: games with ads = low sales = bad while games with no ads = high sales = good.
Yet, most consumers will bypass this understanding and put up with the ads because the game is fun...which makes the developers say "see, people like ads in games - the sales are high."
Not to mention most people probably won't notice the billboards if not looking for them. They're easier to block out than you might think.
-Spenser
but this is not product placement, it's BS.
Go cheat sites, go!
that's for example when I'd say cheating is ok.
boycott such "missions" in games, or the whole game even!
Glassed Silver:mac
I am so totally against this and I think Ubisoft should be ashamed of themselves for letting Paramount and Massive do this.
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