Massively OP reader Sally Bowls pointed us to a fun piece on Frankengadget this week about Final Fantasy XV and its overt product placement. “Final Fantasy XV tricked me into buying Cup Noodles” through a “beautiful, devious combination of empathy and nostalgia,” the author laments. The story content promoting the noodles seems like the sort of cheesy fake marketing you’d get out of a Mass Effect game — I’m Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite X on the Citadel! — only it’s real.
Sally suggests that we’re all still fighting the lockbox gambling battle — and losing — while the marketing departments of online game studios are already dreaming up their next trick, which might just be an old trick that never took hold in MMOs, at least not yet. “I think the next outrage is going to be ads and product placement,” Sally writes. What do you think? Is in-game advertising the MMO genre’s post-lockbox future? And if it is, do you prefer that to lockboxes?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
