With many gamers worldwide spending hours a day glued to a screen, what better way is there to advertise something to millions of people than to unashamedly insert a product into their video games? There have been plenty of instances where advertisers have taken advantage of the video game medium and delivered some awesome campaigns. There's the famous Guitar Hero 5 commercial that combined Risky Business, plastic guitars, clothed Playboy models, and Hugh Hefner into 30 seconds of brilliance. And who could forget the brilliant 'Long Live Play' campaign that featured 'Michael' and all of Playstation's most famous brands and heroes in a bar? But there are advertising campaigns and instances of product placement that are... well... not so good. And that's being generous. Skittles once partnered up with a developer to produce a game in which the main gimmick involves using skittles to perform magic. That was almost as bad as the time Pepsi decided to commission a game that focused on the cola-centric adventures of Pepsiman. Yeah, these actually happened. Some advertising campaigns have been so unsubtle that it blurs the line between video game and playable advertisement. Here are 10 games in which product advertising was shoehorned in such a weird way that you can do nothing but sit back and marvel at the absolute brass neck on the part of the game's marketing team. Before going out to buy whatever they were selling.
My life story is nothing special. I haven't cured ebola, I'm nowhere near stopping terrorism, and I'm still working on that climate change problem.
Instead, all I've done so far is put a few hundred words together in an attempt to make people laugh.
You can follow me at @Fry_ying_pan but don't be offended if I don't tweet back. It's usually because I've spent too long trying to think up a witty response that the reply window has closed.
