Army’s New Recruiting Tool and in game ads make me sad

Happy Monday and I hope you are gearing up for a great Thanksgiving…I think there will be 5 turkeys at my celebration this year, my intestines are quivering in nervous anticipation.

Got some disturbing news about the US Army earmarking $50 million for game developement. This is a double-edged sword, in my opinion. On one hand, its great to get more funding for developing come cutting-edge shooters, and you can assume that anything coming from the US government should be pretty authentic. But I played America’s Army before we invaded Iraq and it really was a thinly veiled interactive recruiting video. My main beef with AA was not the poor multiplayer gameplay (especially dated when compared with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare) or the annoying training missions, it was how glorious the game made the army look. From the beginnings of Boot Camp to the Ranger School expansion, America’s Army even got me to think “hey, this wouldn’t be so bad.” Of course a few months later the bombs starting falling on Bagdad and I couldn’t trust anything coming from our government. Call me a little paranoid (its true) but I’d rather spend the 60 bucks, get a quality shooter, and pretend that I’m not being recruited on purpose.

Venture Beat has a scoop about a THQ’s new deal with Microsoft’s in game ad network, Massive. What I didn’t realize was that President-Elect Obama purchased in game advertising for EA’s Burnout, which I think is pretty cool and forward thinking for one of the most succesful and well-run campaigns of all time, in my personal opinion. But even that gets to me a little. I realize some of the bigger publishers are struggling and need more revenue streams, but the consumer in me feels that if I’m paying 60 bucks for a game, I don’t want to be bombarded with commercials. Especially subliminal ones, because if I all of a sudden get a craving for hot pockets after a four hour session, I’m going to blame Marcus. I’m torn though, because I want to see the industry succeed, but I think rather then looking for a few extra bucks profit per game, spend some of the marketing money on improving developement to release some more genuine inventive titles, rather then recycling the same war games (COD: World at War) or the same “save the world from unspeakable evil/aliens/mutants (Gears of War, Halo, Resistance.) Alas, this seems to be an unstoppable force, so just keep your eye out for it and don’t buy Bawls just cause the Man tells you too, but it because its delicious.