10 Ridiculous Ways Adverts Were Built Into Video Games
9. Burnout Paradise's Obama Billboards
The brilliant Burnout Paradise was littered with in-game advertisements from companies like Gillette, Burger King, and Vizio, but its weirdest inclusion was definitely a series of huge Barack Obama billboards, which popped up to promote the then-Presidential candidate's White House campaign.
Starting on 6 October 2008 and running until 3 November of the same year, the Xbox 360 version of the game played host to several of these Democratic party billboards, urging players to vote. The ads were paid for by the Obama campaign, and only appeared in ten U.S. states - including Iowa and Ohio - which traditionally went to the opposing Republican party.
While EA did issue an official statement to clarify that this was not an endorsement of Obama or his policies, the publisher was clearly happy to earn that extra bit of money, and reportedly, they even approached Republican candidate John McCain, who passed on the proposal.
Funnily enough, Obama won all but one of those ten states in the end, so who knows? Maybe Burnout Paradise was what swayed the vote.