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Explosive approach to ingame advertising in Mercenaries 2
95% of E3 coverage is the same old stuff. Read a dozen write-ups of the same ten-minute demo and each one will list the same three or four bullet points (guilty as charged!). That's how E3 works. But every now and then you come across the other 5%, where someone saw something a different way or asked a question no one else asked. It's even better when the question gets answered.
One such person is a fellow named Sean Hollister at GameCyte (you might have to say the name out loud to get it). During a demo of Mercenaries 2, he noticed placeholder billboards for Massive, a notorious advertising company the streams dynamic advertising into games. Since Mercenaries 2 is being published by Electronic Arts, long a bedfellow of Massive, this is hardly surprising. Most of us have lost the ability to even notice this stuff.
But in a game like Mercenaries 2 where everything is supposed to be destructable, Hollister wondered what we should have all been thinking: What happens when you shoot at the billboard?
By roBurky at 6:38 AM ON 07/22/08
That's devious. Presumably Massive pay EA an amount based on how much players look at the ads. So the devs reward you for looking/aiming at them.
By lukejm at 3:51 PM ON 07/22/08
I'm still concerned about ads in this game. EA has been more tasteless with their in-game advertising than any other publisher. I've read some nasty stuff about overly-aggressive advertising vans and excessive billboards in the most recent Burnout and about everything in Fight Night 3. EA had placed ads on every possible billboard when I played Battlefield 2142 several months ago. Unlike the ads from earlier in 2142's life, these ads glowed brightly and easily overpowered all surrounding graphical elements, regardless of distance.
Making Merc 2's ads destructible is encouraging, but I'm still concerned about the density of the billboards in the game world. One of the pre-E3 videos for the game showed three different approaches to completing a mission. And an uncomfortable number of billboards placed in close proximity to one another.
lukejm:
I'm still concerned about ads in this game. EA has been more tasteless with their in-game advertising than any oth...More »