Official Off-Topic Thread

[huZba]

The production costs have skyrocketed in the past 10 years, so where do you think that money comes from? Magic? It has to come from somewhere, but not just advertising. Companies either make money or they die, you go to work to make money or you die. We've seen a lot of big gamedevelopers wither or join with others to survive. A game doesn't make profit just by being good. Okami and God Hand are hailed as masterpieces, yet the developer is no more. Also big companies don't just sit on their money, it goes somewhere as well.

As for what determines what games have in them? Well that's the people who buy games. If you don't like the ingame advertising, don't buy the game, simple as that. Don't want more sequels? Don't buy sequels. Companies make what people want to make money, that's what companies do. And you don't "usually" make big hits with low production values. When a company just wants to make a fine game no strings attached, reviewers go like LOL WTF production values HELLO. Personally i haven't come across that much of it anyway, maybe Dante wearing a Diesel jacket in Devil may cry, which fits there. If it was something like dante suddenly going HEY I'M USING AN IPOD, IPOD ROCKS, it would be REALLY weird.

Nintendo seemed ready to give up around when there was the first news of the follower to xbox. I think iwata said something about not liking the situation at all, where game production becomes too expensive to be reasonable, so that's how they came up with something like the wii and ds, probably long before the news for these new next gen consoles. And well, the wii and DS are a remarkable success, which might steer the evolution of videogames to a more stable situation.

Now Dusty, if you were the head of a videogame company, would you not try and do everything you can in order to ensure your company's survival? Most likely, since if you didn't some other company suerly WOULD use whatever means and leave you second. That's how the world works and that's why 80% of the world is ridicilously poor and making us  all these nice toys we have around us.

[LoTekK]

Holy shat, that dance was insane. Talk about some cool pixel art and INSANE coordination. :O

[Zolthorg]

let's not forget product placement is nowhere near a new concept
http://www.encyclopedia-obscura.com/gamesprodplacement.html

heck; licensed games like all those movie games are pretty well just advertisements themselves, aren't they?

[bengo]

I don't think Gears of War had any in-game advertising in it and Splinter Cell is a very good selling franchise, so what the hell? Video Games aren't like TV shows, where they need ads to survive, you know what? Instead of putting in-game ads into the game, how about they actually make the game fun? Tell you what man, making a game thats fun as hell will sell alot more than if you make a half-way decent game that has a bunch of ads in it. For movie games, I'll agree, its just advertising the movie, but hell, thats all its doing and guess who will buy that game? The people who like the movie, hell dude, you think anyone who doesn't like Madagascar will have Madagascar the video game in his collection? Probably not, also, the Wii isn't doing too well, look at its game selection, see anything other than nintendo games getting good reviews? The one most likely to make the game business better is the 360, mainly because it has the most power(if you can name a game that looks better than Gears of War, tell me), has a great game selection(Dead Rising, Gears of War, Armored Core 4, XLA etc.) and multiplayer is amazing.

[LoTekK]

There's good product placement, and there's shitty product placement. I thought that for the most part, the product placement in Transformers wasn't too bad, in that they tended not to shove it in your face (eBay and Nokia being notable exceptions). Then there's bad product placement, like in Bay's earlier flick The Island (USE MSN! OMG CADDILAC!), I, Robot, Blade: Trinity (yeah, she needs her iPod to kill vampires), all examples of movies that took a product or brand and slammed it in your face just because they could.

Besides, if you think about it (and yes, I'm siding with Bay in this case), he shaved a shitload off his relatively meagre budget simply by going with GMC (what was it, 3-4 million USD worth of hot cars?), money that went towards vfx, for example. Basically, I'm fine with product placement as long as it fits with the movie or game. I have no problem seeing a billboard for Coca Cola in, say, GTA (yes, I know they make up their own products), though I'd have a big problem with a Coca Cola health potion in WoW (unless they did a major rebranding push purely for the game in order for it to fit the period/atmosphere/etc).

Also, "fun" is a piss poor way of trying to ensure sales, considering the consumer market. How many well-made games, fun games, beautiful games, etc etc, got piss poor sales in the last year alone and doomed their dev houses to getting shut down? How many shitty budget titles sold a metric assload of copies?

That said, the Wii has plenty of pretty awesome titles, and not necessarily first-party, either. Plenty more third-party titles in the pipeline, too. And remember that it's still doing well in Japan. I could care less how many polies my console is pushing, or how many shader pipelines it's using simultaneously, I just wanna enjoy myself. And I enjoy the hell out of the Wii games I've played.

[huZba]

Did i tingle someone's fanboi nerve by having the word "nintendo" in my post  , i'm joking. 360 is one big advertisement. You notice this when you press the power button and live kicks in. It's all fine for me though. Also Splinter Cell has ingame advertisement, i think it was at least with Nivea and probably some US army recruit posters. There was a big article on gamedeveloper. Also there is no option of making a good or bad game, of course everyone wants to make a game that's fun as hell. I totally don't understand what your trying to say bengoshia. Having ingame advertisement deals during developement provides for bigger budget and allows for a longer developement perioud which in turn will result in a better game. I have a wiistation360 and yeah they all have great games, just incase you were wondering what "side" i'm on. Most of the time a bad game made by an established videogame company is explained by lack of resources and/or tight schedule. The thing is, people with the money sometimes don't know about "good games" but they know about good business. This is why even one of the biggest guys at Capcom, Keiji Inafune (creator of megaman) had to convince REALLY REALLY hard that Dead Rising and Lost Planet are worth investing to. Both of the games were really close to being completely scrapped. In the end they turned out really good, even though Lost Planet has a lot of planned features cut off, due to budget restraints... oh and Dead Rising was perfect for product placement, so of course it had some.

@lotekk
Bay actually did all he could to stay in the 150million budget for the movie. In the end when it was creeping over that sum, Bay himself took a slice off his own paycheck and convinced some others in the team to do the same. There's a load of other stunts in the movie to keep down the costs, big product placements being the most apparent. I almost facepalmed at the Nokia phone part actually. The nokia robot on the other hand was really funny.

Good product placement can work nicely, like those in ice hockey or basketball games, they actually fit there. But like you said, there are times when it's just too much, which is of course due to the fact that the owners of the products want good visibility and they'll pay more money for it.

[bengo]

Also Splinter Cell has ingame advertisement, i think it was at least with Nivea and probably some US army recruit posters.

That was my point, why does a big franchise like Splinter Cell need in-game advertising? Also, Dead Rising didn't have any product placement in it, just made up crap(I think).

[AdamAtomic]

My beef with product placement has nothing to do with the commerciality of it, or budgets, or operating costs, or new marketing trends, or any of that.  The problem to me is very simple.  Advertising, branding, and logos are designed to do ONE THING - catch your eye.  Get your attention.  Distract you.  That's how billboards work, soda machines work, cars work, video game covers, etc etc etc etc.  They're flat, 2d things that don't move, so they've taken hundreds of years of graphic design experience and designed pieces of paper that SCREAM for attention.  And I just hate seeing stuff like that barge onto the screen in the middle of a movie - my eyes go to it INSTANTLY.  Whatever i WAS watching - be it robots or dudes or sunsets or a car chase or anything really, NOW i'm watching some flat colorful thing that 99.9999% of the time has NOTHING to do with the movie.

That's my beef anyways   Maybe I'm just too sensitive...I don't even wear clothing with external brands, haven't for years, bothers and distracts me...

[huZba]

Yeah that's how i felt at the nokia scene, it was like going for a commercial break for 10 seconds. I also use clothes that don't show the brand, pretty much cause i don't want to look like a walking billboard. It doesn't bother me when it happens as if it was happening in the real world, so the ebay thing didn't catch my attention until someone else mentioned it.

@bengoshia
Splinter Cell was moving to Next gen and most likely needed new sources of income to cover for new expenses. This was covered in the article on gamedeveloper and was stated as exploring sources other than just game sales. It's not that the team's life depended on the ads, but it was one part that contributes to the whole. Aaand, in dead rising, bang bang, i'm shooting you with my megabuster.

[bengo]

Oh come on, thats advertising another capcom game, thats like, if you buy axe and they're advertising a new scent of axe on the cover.