Mark Darrah sees room for games to use product placement like movies do
The former BioWare producer said product placement could grow beyond its current niche if studios build the right brand relationships.
Former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah said games may have room to use product placement in a bigger way, especially if studios want another path to recover development costs without leaning so heavily on microtransactions.
Darrah made the comments in a video on his Mark Darrah on Games channel, where he pointed to the live-action Smurfs movie as an example of a project that was helped by brand deals. He said, “Product placement is a very small part of video games right now compared to movies and television. Maybe it could be a larger part of development. Maybe there are relationships there to be formed.”
Darrah argued that games already use product placement in limited ways, but that a closer fit between brands and the worlds they appear in could make those deals more useful for developers. That idea lands while BioWare’s next Mass Effect sequel remains in development and attention stays fixed on how major RPGs are paid for.
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