Naughty Dog Lead Editor: Product placement can be a very efficient world-building tool when done right

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He's right though. Everyone jizzes their pants when it's Kojimbo putting Monster Energy into Death Stranding or Calorie Mate into MGS3. Westerners put in some shit and suddenly it's treated like Brawndo in Idiocracy.

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I never understood the argument against it.
Seeing a company or logo doesn't mean shit for marketing. Nobody is going to run out and buy their product over a logo or fake interaction.
 
I'd argue it only really works as shtick. If someone gets a laugh out of a real-life brand being shoehorned into the game, that kinda works in some cases.

On the other hand, I remember when Ubisoft tried to shoehorn ads into the older Splinter Cell games, and there were posters for "The Hills Have Eyes" plastered on like every possible flat surface in the game world. That was fucking stupid.
 
That's a big "if" but I would agree in principle. But I think it's pretty safe to say that any brand from now will either not exist in the distant future or will have changed so much it won't be recognizable
 
Slippery slope. Ad agencies are always going to want the opposite of creatives. Creatives are going to want smooth and natural integration, ad agencies are going to want their product to pop. Guess who is often going to win, the one being paid or the one paying?

Basically it might start with good intentions from studio management, but will probably end up with product placement minigames, loading splashscreens and embedded competitions. Oh and unskippable ads they lock the camera to....
 
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Sure, when setting a story in temporal proximity, it can be used as a Rosetta stone to demonstrate the differences between our world and the world being depicted. Blade Runner used this to unbelievable success back in 1982.
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When you're in 2025, and all but pause your trailer for zoom ins on existing products exactly duplicated by your artists that shouldn't exist 500 years into the future in a bid to continue the overused mining of 1980s nostalgia, that's not world building - it's the lack of it.
 
People never had a problem with product placement in movies/games until naughty dog decided to do it for intergalactic and then suddenly it's 'Fuck product placement'. The people that hate naughty dog will always hate them and there's no changing their minds at this juncture.
 
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Sebastian1295 said:
People never had a problem with product placement in movies/games until naughty dog decided to do it for intergalactic and then suddenly it's 'Fuck product placement'. The people that hate naughty dog will always hate them and there's no changing their minds at this juncture.
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They had multiple blatant look at me product placements in a short teaser trailer. Quick go take a look at the Death Stranding 2 trailer and see how many product placements you can find in like 9 minutes of footage.
Thought so.
 
Team up with Doritos and make it a plot point that she always has Doritos seasoned fingers.
 
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I mean....it's true and i never understood why it's seen as a weird thing. Specially when you are making something based on a different decade.
 
poppabk said:
They had multiple blatant look at me product placements in a short teaser trailer. Quick go take a look at the Death Stranding 2 trailer and see how many product placements you can find in like 9 minutes of footage.
Thought so.
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They said before that they're taking inspiration from other genres and other legendary adaptations like akira, cowboy bebop, etc etc. I don't see the problem exactly considering we've only seen a tiny glimpse of what the game is even going to look like.
 
ZehDon said:
all but pause for zoom ins on existing products exactly duplicated by your artists that shouldn't exist 500 years into the future in a bid to continue the overused mining of 1980s nostalgia, that's not world building - it's the lack of it.
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I've been waiting for a take that simultaneously, but unknowingly, takes a shot at both anime in general and this game at the same time. Yours comes very close.

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March Climber said:
Either that, or they're essentially doing this, repeatedly:

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I can tell you that the people at Naughty Dog are the exact kind of people I want making games.

They're doing something the Duffer brothers did well with Stranger Things mashing together lots of 80s horror tropes/themes with 80s music.

A lot of people would on the surface accuse ND of doubling down on Stranger Things or worse comparing this to guardians of the galaxy (you know these people are under the age of 30).

But the 80s music which is a peak era of music combined with the love letter to anime and sci fi... You can tell we're going to get references to Cowboy Bebop, Akira, City Hunter e.t.c. All things where you would find product placement or faux product placement.

Kojima was heavily influenced by Escape from NY/LA, The Rock, Bond movies, Die Hard,

Just as the Last of Us was inspired by On the road, Children of Men, and 28 days later. Just as Uncharted was inspired by Indiana Jones, National Treasure, and Tintin.

It's only bad when people you don't like are doing it...
 
bitbydeath said:
I never understood the argument against it.
Seeing a company or logo doesn't mean shit for marketing. Nobody is going to run out and buy their product over a logo or fake interaction.
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It's only terrible if it's the same product over and over. If they're going to do ads, there should be variety so that there's better immersion.
 
Product placement also has to make sense. But we live in a world full of of ads everywhere, the computer you are using is showing the brand somewhere, so it wouldn't be something bad to put a product in a game when done right.

What doesn't feel right though, it's for example, how in the Man of Steel movie, they fight right next to a 7-eleven, or inside an ihop. In Avengers: Age of Ultron they fight next to Samsung store, I believe those feel way too forced and out of place.

But a character drinking a Coca-Cola in a setting where it makes sense (like The Last of Us for example) it shouldn't matter.
 
It doesn't make a difference to me if they use a fake shoe brand or a real brand. If it gives them money I'm ok with it because it makes developing games seem more attractive to investors. More games is better than less games.
 
He's not wrong, he should speak to some of the people who did it right, because they did it all wrong so far.
 
I think there is a time and a place for product placement to make something a little more grounded in our world. Take the nike shoes in back to the furture for example. It sort of gives you a glimpse of something familiar and known in a future setting making you think of what your familiar world has become. The ones in Intergalactic seem to be sort of in the same vain. They try to ground you in the familiar. Tell you that this is earth and the human race and those familiar things in an alternate universe but these are what they've become and look like.
 
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Nowa said:
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Yeah, just zoom in on her feet in the middle of the fucking trailer to show shiny Brand™, it's so immersive
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This. Reminds me of some movies with car chase scenes...

Look I get it, you need cars for the scene duh. But when youre in the middle of the scene and the camera just does a total zoom in almost freeze frame on the cars logo, like come on man lol.

This got same vibe.
 
Negotiator101 said:
Naughty Dog have gone from being top 3 developer in the world to this in one generation 😕
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You can have issues with the narrative in TLoU2, but in terms of gameplay, and just pure technical/graphical achievement, that game is still top tier.

We haven't seen enough from this new game to think they won't be able to do it again.
 
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