It's no secret that game budgets are ballooning. Just earlier today, it was reported by a Danish public broadcaster that 007 First Light cost $200 million dollars and took seven years to make. The question is, how do studios recoup those costs? Increasingly, the answer has been to jam-pack in microtransactions or support games with expansions and a steady stream of post-launch updates, adopting almost live-service lite models. If not pivoting to live service altogether. BioWare veteran Mark Darrah, who was a long-time producer on the Dragon Age series, has another idea.
As reported by GamesRadar+, in a new video posted to Darrah's personal YouTube channel, he broke down the differences in how movies and video games turn a profit. Movies make a huge chunk of change in theaters, with DVDs, digital pay-per-view, special editions, and streaming services extending 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 extend the shelf-life. Darrah, however, suggested that there's another option developers could pinch 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 struck a deal with Coca-Cola, and you'll find vending machines filled with the stuff across 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 partnered with Mercedes-Benz for an in-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 argues that publishers could take it even further. "Product placement is a really small part of video games right now, compared to movies and television," he said. "Maybe it could be a larger part of development. Maybe there are relationships that could be formed.
"I think that the over reliance on microtransactions is overemphasizing certain genres and preventing other genres from flourishing," he continued. "So is it worth a think? I think that it is. Do I have a great model? I don't. Not yet. But it's something the industry should be considering because everything can't be a live service as we've, I hope, proven quite definitively over the last year and a half. And if our monetization is coming primarily from live services, we run the risk of ending up in a world where there are no triple-A games that aren't live services."
I'll certainly take Leon Kennedy drinking Red Bull over another desperate attempt to ride Overwatch's coattails.
- Released
- November 3, 2009
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood, Intense Violence, Language, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content
- Developer(s)
- BioWare
- Publisher(s)
- Electronic Arts
- Engine
- Eclipse Engine
- Cross-Platform Play
- n/a
- Cross Save
- n/a
- Franchise
- Dragon Age
- Steam Deck Compatibility
- no
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- RPG
