I like in-game advertising about as much as I like dealer-pimping license plate holders and badges. In the same way I'm happy to advertise my car dealer if he's wiling to fork over some cash for my personal automotive real estate, I'm all for in-game ads if the electronic entertainment's free, or at least heavily discounted. But no. While Grand Theft Auto keeps it real (by keeping product placements unreal), Midnight Club LA reveals that Rockstar is a complete whore, ready to sell my eyeballs to corporate America and charge me full whack for the privilege. OK, the extra money [allegedly] helps the game's designers make a better product. And I don't have to buy Midnight Club LA if I don't want to. Yada X 3. But I'm pissed that I can't prise the ads from the videogame or swap it out for a revenue neutral version. And I figured you might want a heads-up that DUB, TIS Modular (Wheels), Pizza Hut, Zaxby's (more fast food), The Coffee Bean, Pioneer, Quiksilver and BVLGARI are all supporting Rockstar's unconscionable advocacy of anti-social behavior. And that's just in this clip. And yes, that last bit was a head fake. It's all in good fun! Until someone puts an e-eye out.
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Zaxby’s really? Wow, I thought they were a small chain in the south. Way to rock with the big boys! for total disclosure I do like their hot chicken sandwich.
Carjack a car that has TIS Modular Wheels, turn up the pioneer radio, swing by The Coffee Bean For a quick espresso, murder some guy outside, take his BVLGARI watch, meet up with some buddies at the beach, change into Quiksilver surf clothing, assault a group of gals at the beach who are eating pizza hut, and after a long days work, stop by Zaxby’s for a burger. Pick up a lady of the night and don’t pay her for services rendered.
I think adverts in those games can be cool when placed cleverly, but Pizza Hut seems kinda family-ish to me.
The only cool thing about dealer pimping badges and license plate holders are when it’s a dealer that’s been out of business or renamed for 10 years, or one from out of state. I have some out in the garage from cars my parents bought 50’s- 70’s, and they’re neat. And none of the dealers have the same name anymore, or exist at all.
The trailer for Midnight Club LA reveals that, unlike Grand Theft Auto’s creators, Rockstar is a complete whore, ready to sell my eyeballs to corporate America and charge me full whack for the privilege.
I don’t understand that statement, since Rockstar created GTA.
I didn’t actually see any ads for anything in that trailer, maybe i was too focused on the digital car pr0n …
Next you’ll be telling me girls have eyes.
Yeah, Rockstar is behind GTA too. But while GTA is a satire of everything we see in modern urban life, Midnight Club seems to be about lifting all real brands and letting us exploit them in a consequence-free environment.
But Pizza Hut in a game? I’ll take a bleeder from Burger Shot, drive home in my Shyster Minivan and dine on fast food and Pißwasser beer on my Swedish Krapea dining table before I endorse that lowbrow product placement.
There are at least five racing games for my console out and most are excellent. There will need to be a real reason to get me to buy this. I think MotorStorm will be the next driving sim I purchase. Or perhaps Gran Turismo 5.
I will add that I was so pissed off about the ads in the EA NCAA football game demo that I didn’t buy it. It was absolutely stupid.
I use a Macintosh, so I don’t get to waste my timeplay games.
–chuck
I find more to object to when the lowered Mustang jumps a curb at 90 miles an hour and keeps going. I did that in my Escort at 30 miles an hour and had to have the axle bent back into shape. =P
Still, if Pizza Hut is so concerned with sales, maybe they should focus less on videogame advertising, and more on making food that doesn’t require nine consecutive hours spent hovering over the toilet.
It’s about context. I never had a problem with ads showing up in Crazy Taxi. I DID have a problem with ads in SSX. It depends on how natural (or at least as natural as it can get in a virtual electron cloud) the placement is. If you drink Pepsi, and you’re character can only drink Coke, you’re pissed. If you’re on the Right Coast, and you can only get a burger at some-thing called Zaxby’s, you go WTF.
That said, it’s back to Soul Calibr IV for me. Which admittedly has an unnatural ad for the next star wars game and Clone Wars movie in it. But slicing & dicing with the apprentice & Darth Vader are cool.
If you ask me, all of these street racing games are just a big palette for product placement. Just play any of the Need For Speed games since Most Wanted.
A) I didn’t even notice the ads in the video, even when you were talking about them.
B) The real world is Festooned with Ads.
I own a Macintosh, too. I waste my time watching others play games we don’t have.
I am not sure this says that much about the game designer as it does about where we are in society.
To elaborate – I think game designers have been willing to whore out for years – it’s just most mainstream businesses didn’t see any value in paying.
Now that there are quite a few 30-something “players”(living in mom’s basement with disposable income (from there job at GameStop) it makes sense that Zaxby’s and the like have noticed them.
As an aside – I own a Mac as well – I keeping all my gaming to the Wii and Atari.
I hope none of you folks have Gran Turismo.
racing (and other) games have been doing this for quite a while. I find it less annoying than product placement in movies, but somewhat annoying. one great game that is free and ad supported is quakelive (quakelive.com) which will be out soon.
It’s even better when the product placements are for a company that has gone out of business. Burnout Paradise is riddled with CompUSA billboards. D’oh. And a lot more than that. Honestly, this is old news… a new game, perhaps, but anyone who has played a lot of videogames in the last few years (yeah, I’m kind of lame like that) has seen staggering amounts of in-game ads.
If playing video games makes you lame, you, and I, and 50 million other people are pretty lame …
Dont play, dont watch,dont give a stuff
No driving games have matched the perfection of the circa-2000 release of “Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed”. So who cares.
I’m with morbo and Matthew Danda here. There’s a boatload of billboards in LA in real life, no? I don’t see the big issue here. And NFS jumped the shark when EA execs became fascinated by The Fast and the Furious and riced out the once beloved franchise. Hot Pursuit 2 is the last true NFS game, IMHO.
But back to Midnight Club. Now that Soulcalibur IV is out, this is my most anticipated game for the rest of the year. Open world racing with insane sensations of speed and the makings of a great community… what’s not to like? October can’t come soon enough…
I’m not sure what the point of this article is, but I won’t complain since it was fully ad-supported and I didn’t have to pay for it ;)
Racing games have had ads in them for quite some time. In case you missed it, real racing has been drenched in advertising for quite a while longer.
if you like racing games and haven’t tried midnight club, you should give it a try. no, it’s not a super racing sim like gran turismo or forza, but it creates one of the best sensations of speed I’ve experienced, and the freeform city driving is really fun. and yes, it’s entertaining to bling out your 300C with giant gold wheels and a PIMPN license plate
Matthew Danda wrote:
“No driving games have matched the perfection of the circa-2000 release of “Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed”.”
Absolutely, that was a great game. Much more a game than a simulator, like the entire Need for Speed series. The last EA game I would ever spend so much time playing.
In the case of Midnight Club, I think Rockstar is using the right opportunity to use in-game advertising. The Midnight Club series use an “open-world” environment in which a realistic atmosphere is key to feeling immersed while cruising the streets, discovering races and other gameplay elements. For me, a realistic Los Angeles without realistic advertising would seem strange. Conversely, Rockstar did an amazing job with all the faux ads that you’ll find in GTA IV, but the whole style of the game is based around that tongue-in-cheek humor. It probably costs a lot to hire writers, graphic designers, etc. to create compelling fake ads; maybe as much as to create real ones. It’s when advertising shows up in a game where it doesn’t belong, like on load screens for example, that it becomes annoying. It’s a fine line, but I don’t think Rockstar deserves to be singled out. At least they are still making great games with their money. (Looking at you, EA)
I would also like to take the time to say that Daytona USA 2 is the greatest racing game… no, the greatest GAME ever, period. If you see it in an arcade, try it and see why.
I would also suggest that TTAC also do more articles on driving video games. The trademark snark could prove extremely useful when EA craps out another NFS game this fall. NFS ranks alongside Sonic the Hedgehog on the “game franchises that got run into the ground” scale.
One more thing. The song in that trailer is called “Royal Gregory”. The band name includes a four-letter word, so I’m not going to say it. It’s on iTunes, though, so search for it there.
I can’t imagine playing a driving game when I have a perfectly capable car in my garage!
ZoomZoom, there’s the whole illegal part of street racing, and I have to ask if you have a Lamborghini in your garage…