It's no secret that gaming budgets are on the rise. Just today it was announced by Danish Public Broadcasting that 007 First Light cost $200 million and took seven years to make. The question is, how will these costs be recouped for the studios? Increasingly, the answer has been to block microtransactions, or support games with expansions and a steady stream of post-launch updates that adopt near-live models of lightweight services. Unless you are completely focused on live service. BioWare veteran Mark Darrah, who was a long-time producer on the Dragon Age series, has a different idea.
As reported by GamesRadar+, in a new video posted on his personal YouTube channel, Darrah broke down the differences between how movies and video games generate revenue. Movies will make a huge difference in theaters as DVD, digital pay-per-view, special editions and streaming services extend their shelf life. Games don't have that luxury. You buy it, you play it. That's why microtransactions and DLC are so prevalent: they increase shelf life. However, Darrah suggested that there is one more option that developers could get from movies – product placement.
Product Placement is nothing new, but Mark Darrah thinks developers haven't gone far enough
Returning to 007 First Light, developer IO Interactive has made a deal with Coca-Cola, and you'll find vending machines full of items in the game. Death Stranding famously baked Monster energy drinks into its core systems with cans used to replenish stamina. Metal Gear Solid 4, another Kojima title, featured an iPod, Mario Kart 8 collaborated with Mercedes-Benz on a game car, and Alan Wake had billboards promoting Verizon: the list goes on.
Product placement isn't a new idea for video games, but Darrah says publishers could take it even further. “Product placement is really a small part of video games right now compared to movies and television,” he said. “Maybe that could be a bigger part of the development, maybe there are relationships that could be created.
“I think the over-reliance on microtransactions overemphasizes certain genres and prevents other genres from flourishing,” he continued. “So is it worth thinking about? I think so. Do I have a great model? I don't. Not yet. But it's something that the industry should consider because not everything can be a live service, as I hope we've proven quite definitively over the last year and a half. And if our monetization comes primarily from live services, we risk ending up in a world where there are no live games.”
I'll definitely take Leon Kennedy sipping Red Bull over another desperate attempt to ride the coattails of Overwatch.
- Released
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November 3, 2009
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood, Intense Violence, Language, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content
- Engine
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Eclipse Engine
- Cross-platform play
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on
- Cross Save
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on
- Steam Deck compatibility
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no
