 | Eww – ads on XBLA achievementsJuly 3rd, 2007 |
Joystiq has the scoop. I don’t actually care that basketball is already riddled with ads. I will go out of my way NOT to get an achievement that is a car or aftershave logo.
Not that I play basketball games anyway.
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A friend of mine linked me essentially the same thing, and I just don’t get it. If you watch sports, you’re see stuff like ‘the Chevrolet players of the game’, etc.
So honestly this just adds to the realism of the experience. Now, avoiding EA sports games entirely because they’re always released as a mixture of brilliance and half-finished dog crap, that’s a different story.
If you consider those televised filler “achievements” on Sports TV programming as the metaphor/model for the Xbox’s achievements, then we’ve basically seen these achievements come full circle (or 360, if you pardon the bad pun). When I first read these achievements on Kotaku it took me a few minutes to get what the big deal was. I was thinking “I’ve already seen these achievements”… Then it hit me that I was reading them in the voice of a sports television broadcaster.
It only *really* adds to realism if the sponsorships are the same between the real sport and the sim (e.g., a Home Run Derby Achievement being sponsored by State Farm, who sponsors Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby). Otherwise, you’re diluting the brands of both sets of sponsors, the sports league, *and* the game maker. Not to mention pissing off your players, who don’t want to put a bunch of work into more or less declaring their allegiance to a brand not of their choosing. Everybody loses!
(also: it looks like the sponsored achievements are for a college football game, not basketball. 
)
I think I remember reading that sponsors pushed the issue of advertising in all markets, some time ago. I’m pretty sure that games were mentioned too. The article was about, basically, the possible complications between team sponsors, league sponsors, and individual athlete sponsors.
I think we’ll hear more about this as time goes on and the conflicts arise.
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with advertising in games where it actually fits. In MMORPGs, for example, I wouldn’t think twice about modern day adds in City of Heroes. Adds like that actually enhance the “world” in modern era type games. But I don’t want to see them in fantasy game worlds that are a serious effort in the “world” view.
This brings up some heavy implications on profit structures.
That reminds me of some of the Test Drive Unlimited achievements from last year. In that, you got achievements for buying a certain number of pieces of Ben Sherman or Ecko clothing. It didn’t matter what you bought, simply that you bought ten from that brand.
There were also achievements for owning a certain number of Ferraris, etc, but that made perfect sense for a driving game. 
At least the NCAA achievements in this case (appear to) actually involve gameplay somehow.
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