According to this article EA is planning on introducing dynamic advertising into their online video games. One of the games that is being considered is Battlefield 2142 (as pictured on the right). This game is a futuristic action game that pits the European Union against the Russians over North Africa due to an oncoming ice age. It is hard to imagine advertising in a game such as this, and a poster gave this humorous anecdote:

The year is 2142, cyborgs are taking over the world. The shattered caracasses of hyperscrapers lie horizontally amongst the rubble.

BUY A SOFA NOW, DON'T PAY UNTIL 2007!
CHILDREN ARE STARVING IN AFRICA, DONATE NOW!
VOTE BUSH!

Your eyes pass these abstract words, plastered on the billboard. Perhaps your mind is playing tricks on you....

Sighing, your concentration sharpens enough to wonder why this billboard is pristine and perfectly maintained whilst structures around it are in smouldering ruins. Could this be a trap? The hairs on the back of your neck prickle and you bring the IR scope of your plasma rifle closer to your eye.

Perhaps the heiroglyphs on the billboard are a code, instructions for planetary domination that you must decipher at all costs. The enemy is using this against you, It's the one rational explanation for the preservation of this object.

With an odd, jerking movement - unnatural in the smooth 60 frames a second of your eyepieces HUD-enhanced view of the world, a detpack appears magically in your hand. There's a "whoosh" noise as your rifle is dematerialised into your infinity belt storage device, where you keep your wrench, handguns and 8 heavy weapons and ammo crates.

Setting the timer for 90 seconds you place it at the base of the billboard and run behind cover. There's an almighty explosion as 30microgrammes of dark matter reacts with the antimatter fuse and obliterates everything in a deci-click radius.

Job done, you brush the dust off your stator shields and sprint away from the rubble before the enemy can pinpoint your location. Something catches your eye in the dissipating dustcloud though, the billboard, unharmed, floating mid-air in the middle of a crater bigger than a harvesting pool. Enemy technology is immune to dark matter reactive bombs! Nothing the alliance has can touch it, surely our nation will fall. Determined not to lose sight of your objective - the Royal Flag of Team OMGWTFBBQ - you run on towards the glowing haze of the enemy compound in the distance.

Lesser men may have given up in desperation, but you come away from this experienced ready for the next hurdle the enemy puts in your path. (Oh, and also, you think that maybe a new sofa would look good back at the barracks rec. room. Odd that. Very odd.....)

While not surprised that advertising is creeping into games, this is after all a capitalist society, I guess it is still a hard pill to swallow as I grew up without having to be force fed advertising as well. Even with people feeling unhappy with the advertising, I doubt that there will be an organized effort to boycott games/companies that use this technology.

-Trevor