Advertising, advertising, advertising

In talking about advertising and advergames, a couple of issues and connections seem to spring forward into prominence. Advertising, product placement, broadcast underwriting... these all play a role in today's society. Coming from a political science and pseudo-PR background, it's pretty simple to pick out certain key objects and ad buy-ins that pervade entertainment media today.

Bogost appears to have engaged in an interesting historical retrospective in these chapters, outlining major steps in advertisment games and product placement in games. It would appear that his approach in doing this is to demonstrate that persuasion in games is not limited to the procedures in place, but also by the inclusion or exclusion of certain advertisment aspects. To say that product placement in games is ubiquitous is no mere understatement- one has only to fire up any of the NCAA Football or Madden games on X-Box 360 to be bombarded by any number of major sponsors. If these games feel like watching a football game, it may be because the UnderArmour, Coke, and Gatorade logos are as prevalent as hulking linebackers. These placement attempts may degrade the gaming experience, but once the player realizes that without external assistance from these sponsoring companies the gameplay itself would suffer, it becomes a little easier to understand and handle.

The examples of product placement I find most interesting are the consistent placement of products that simply do not exist. One can enjoy seeing Red Apple cigarettes in Tarentino films, for example, even though this brand of cigarettes doesn't exist. They provide a kind of associative advertising experience, if a negative one as seen in Pulp Fiction. In Mass Effect, weapons manufacturors brand and offer their wares for specific play types. The Halcyon assault rifle is designed for those who want a high rate of fire but reduced accuracy, while the Rapier rifle may provide greater accuracy and hitting power at a reduced rate of fire. Similarly, in Wing Commander III, modern day aircraft manufacturors are billed as the designers for the futuristic exo-atmospheric fighters used to win the war. An argument may be made for the continued success of McDonald-Douglass and Lockheed based on these futuristic visions of their product lines. By associating these companies with successful actions of future (if fictional) engagements, there may be a drive by investors to ensure that these companies continue to succeed.

I would argue that any time a modern weapon system is used in a game, that is an associative, rather than demonstrative, product placement type of advertisement. The weapons demonstrations are not 100% accurate, but the feeling one derives from effectively killing an opponent with a Colt Arms M16 or M4 is definitely a positive ad in favor of the system.