Product placement in video games

I'm going to chime in with Alan Wake's energizer batteries.

This is how it played out

there seriously wasn't any product placement in any FF game until 15? could've sword there was shit in 8.

Oh, well that's not as bad as I was expecting, but that's still pretty awful.

No no, user, I think you mean gunblade.

I vaguely recall that there was product placement in Splinter Cell 3. For example, there was a bathroom with Nivea products.

I think in theory, product placement can make games more immersive, but in practice it doesn't work, since it's usually restricted to one brand, which actually has the opposite effect, because I know that not everybody on planet earth is using exclusively Nivea products.

I think it's preferable if you put some effort in fictional brands. GTA is a prime example for that.

Yeah, an entire sidequest about making Cup fucking Noodle. What rock have you been under that you didn't see people discussing how ridiculous it was?

What's there to quest about? You buy Cup Noodle at your local store for a low and affordable price, pour hot water into the cup, wait short three minutes, and that's it, you are ready to enjoy the rich flavor and texture of a Cup Noodle! Guaranteed to satiate your hunger!

I don't remember those bing in the game.

They were removed in the western release, thank fucking god. Replaced with generics.

AH YES, TORILLA CHIPS, INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM DORITOS

we had like 5 threads about it when the game released.

Phantasy Star Portable 2 had some good product placement.
You could even take Colonel Sanders with you on missions after you met with him.
Shame it was censored out in other regions, and the Infinity version of Portable 2 never left Japan

What part of "Replaced with Generics" wasn't fucking clear? Calm your 'tism.

Alright faggots, time to chose
Maruchan
or
Nissin

I fucked up my spoiler the first time

Only when it fits the world of the game. Full stop. And it can't be plastered fucking everywhere. Trademarks on weapons is a good start.

chut up eat yer noodles user

I welcome this. Anything that stops videogames from "being taken seriously" is good in my book.

dubs for maruchan

They shouldn't over do it either. Fight Night Round 3, holy shit. I didn't mind some of it, but if you accidentally hit the button to view that Dodge Caliber commercial, you cannot fucking skip it at all.

Or Battlefield 2142 where there is ads in game on fucking adboards.

Funny thing is, some games are going to have to do some advertising to recoup money from big budget games eventually. In theory it should make the games rely less on DLC, but with companies being massive jews, they'll just put in a lot of advertising while jewing out DLC.

Product placement in video games done right!

Cool Spot on Genesis was the shit!

They tried outside the game. The next logical move is in the game. Future advertisement will be in our dreams which I honestly think it's working since I can't stop dreaming about it

Didn't FF15 gotten tie in power rangers 2017 product placement DLC?

Cool spot games were too good to be a ad for 7-up

/fa/ here, I liked this.

I think it's cancelled for custom character customization.

wat
I never noticed
those were real adds?

Maruchan

Yeah. A shitstorm came from it when it was first released. It wasn't as bad as the media and players hyped up to be, but it was still a bit dumb.

Honestly, I've always liked the ridiculous amount of product placement in NFS UG1, UG2, and MW. Makes the world feels more realistic and alive.

A.K.A. skittles: the game. Main story involevs you catching "magical" skittles which grant you powers und shit.

Wasn't that one of the many games that had/have malware installed to track your search habit and give you advertisements based on your history?

I woill argue that part of why the product placements work in Phantasy Star games is that despite them taking themselves serious to various levels at then end of the day that are MMO-likes and MMO's cannot be taken 100% serious due to the fact that you have you often redo the same boss encounters over and over again without plot change necessarily; though PSO3 was clever as fuck about that.
MMO's and MMO-likes can have product placement because they cannot break your suspense of disbelief because you cannot fully suspend it due to the gameplay mechanics.

Reminds me of Wipeout HD.

IIRC it had ads on boards too, only that the way they did it basically made the game lag and load stages worse.

And Lagging is BIG no-no on GOTTA GO FAST AG Racers, so they ended up being removed.

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This entire thread disgusts me.

That is because Pepsiman is transcendent.

What's wrong with ingame advertisements? The west tried it and it worked perfectly.

Maybe the guy who created the FF15 American Express company was a guy called Americo Vespucio

you sure that wasn't planetside?

I don't really mind product placement at all.
I mean, shit. Whether the vending machines in the game say "PLEBSI" or "PEPSI" doesn't really impact my view of it.

Even FF15, which I haven't played, and its infamous Cup Noodle quest. It's so stupid and silly that it actually works. I remember a time in my own life where I was constantly experimenting with adding things to instant noodles to make them real satisfying meals. I can't really hold that against the game; It actually successfully captured that feeling of a bunch of idiotic boys going around doing idiotic boy things.

Bad examples do exist, of course. Alan Wake had televisions around the world that played interesting Twilight Zone ripoff shorts, but I believe the last one in the series was just a literal commercial for a product, and you'd get an achievement for sitting through it. That's the foremost example of product placement done wrong.
If you're just putting a car on a billboard or something then I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

I liked the product placement in FF15, thought it worked well.
Most of the autists crying about it aren't even going to play the game anyway.

Texas sign, because reasons.

Wasn't that a plot to an episode of Futurama?

Wasn't the original pitched of final fantasy 7 was to be set in future New York City?

Nope. That's what evil overlord Haim Saban WANTS you to think.
It wasn't advertising anything specific at all - just some generic outfits that were intended to look like the kind of thing Japanese kids' show superheroes wear. But Saban's lawyers went after them with "hey, they're clearly ripping off our Power Rangers (tm) franchise!" - and apparently scared Squeenix enough to at least delay the DLC.

Saban has a long history of doing this. Apparently he really wants people to think that Power Rangers is an original American creation. (Akibaranger had a very funny episode about this.)

Maruchan. Even niggas in the ghetto got leery if they saw a motherfucker slurpin' some Nissin.

It's intentionally silly, not pathetic, faggot.

Nissin doesn't even fucking scrape Maruchan's flavor quality.

Chaos Theory had a lot of Sony product placement I think but it was low key enough to actually help a bit with immersion. Certainly Conviction did.

Jesus, I don't recall this at all, then again I stopped playing Burnout paradise well before the election.

My favourite example of product placement is Marc Ecko's Getting Up. Really good game, but the product placement is ridiculous. Mark Ecko himself owns Ecko Unltd, a clothing brand. Every character has Ecko brand clothing.
All the spray cans are by Montana, and are referred to by name repeatedly. There's a pickup that lets you spray longer, and it's a Montana Gold can.
You take pics of famous artists and their work, with a Nokia N-Gage. Speaking of the famous artists, they make cameos. One part is particularly jarring, where you have to meet up with one of these legends so he can tell you how to paint the whole of a side of a rail car or a top-to-bottom as the game calls it. You do a mission in the previous chapter where you do that on a moving train, but if the graffiti is bigger suddenly you need advice from the pros.
The sound menu? It's an iPod. You pick up iPods in levels to unlock new tracks. There's an Apple store in one part.

As for other games, there's Sonic Adventure 2 with the Soap shoes, NFS Most Wanted with the Cingular network, THPS3 with Jeep and the Nokia 3310, and True Crime: New York City with Nike. Killing Floor 2 has an Arduino clone strapped to the pipebomb, but that's more of a reference than outright product placement.

It's at the start of an episode where Fry dreams about Lightspeed Briefs.

The Mad Max game had a car that was made out of Rockstar energy drink cans.

Yakuza 0 has you delivering hot pizza and that gets a pass, so I guess this shilling is at least on the subtle end.

Nothing will ever top Big Boss shilling Axe body spray, Uniqlo designs, and Doritos washed down with Mountain Dew by handing branded merchandise to his private mercenary army. Those were at LEAST so obviously dumb they made me smile before contemplating suicide.

i dont think there's anything wrong with product placement.

its a good way for developers to fund their own games, without the excuse of "bawww our games don't sell, we're never making/localizing one again!" im looking at you digimon franchise and give a game whose setting is "modern world" a more realistic feel.

i mean just look at Yakuza, you think all those adds around kamuro-cho are there for shits and giggles?

Sonic Adventure 2 changed Sonic's shoes to soap shoes which were shoes that were designed to be used to grind on rails and you could buy them in real life.

Oh I can't believe I almost forgot about this gold.

They haven't been advertised in the Sonic games themselves but the blatant shilling during the 25th anniversary livestream was hilarious.

I honestly prefer the SOAP shoes. They look more flexible for platforming

I always wondered why his shoes looked so different in this game than literally any other.

That's actually pretty funny. Disappointing, but enough to get a laugh.

I bought a pair of those shoes after seeing them in the game.

They sucked.

Ads on in-universe advertising surfaces are about the least intrusive form of product placement though.
The only major rules I have for product placement to not be money-grubbing bullshit are when it's consistent with the setting/climate (MGSV's sponsored clothing, for instance, would actually be perfectly admissible in Watch Dogs), and when it's not entirely one thing (as in your third picture, where the entire rink/court is plastered with Obongo)

Here's the worst offender.

Other than SWAT 4 and Homefront have any games had real guns as product placement?

Not sure. All I know was BF2142 had ads.

Nissin is the worst noodles, Maruchan is so much better

Kind of dissapointed

One of the cods had a gun with the remington brand on it. that should count.

I'm impressed they not only changed so many things for different regions, but also managed to get the game released on the Wii. Like, holy shit that must have been a licensing nightmare.

whats with japan and pizza hut?

multitrack marketing

It's fine in Yakuza though because it's a game set in real cities. It doesn't feel out of place to see advertisements in Tokyo.

Its just a name. Like American McGee. Nothing to see here goyim.

Don! don!
Don! don!
Don Quixote!

Ichiban is most aptly named. Maruchan tastes like pissed-on shit by comparison.

GET OUT OF MY HEEEEEEAD

Toriyama sure loves whoring out his waifu. I wonder how much he makes from pimping her.

Are EA so Jewish that they'd take Political Advertisements
Don't answer that
Seriously how did I not know about this

Maybe it wasnt noticable because people still had CRTs at the time, or people were having too much fun in the game to stop and pay attention.

Metal Gear Solid

IIRC only poor people had CRTs back in 2008 like my family

NICE

My family wasnt well to do either, I'm just going off assumptions since it wasnt until 2010 or 2011 where HD TVs became more accessible and less of a big deal.

That, or everyone forgot about it because it's a nearly 10 year old racing game by now.

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