Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Love CoD? Try Guns™!”.
Oh topics, we got a half hour till after I want to talk about Activision’s confidential arms deal yeah. According to the Wall Street Journal Activision made a secret deal with arms maker Remington to feature its adaptive, combat rifle in 2009’s, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare – 2, no money was exchanged, but both parties agreed to keep the deal confidential. So why do we know? Well, the deals that, while the details of the deal were outlined in internal Remington documents that were uncovered during a long suit that was filed by parents of victims of the Sandy Hook, elementary school shooting in 2012, uh Remington settled that suit last year. For 73 million. These documents outline a strategy on the part of Remington to increase its appeal with younger audiences.
This is a quote with increasing urbanization and access to shooting and hunting areas in Decline. A primary means for young potential Shooters to come into contact with firearms and ammunition is through virtual gaming scenarios. That is the most corpos speak way of describing games have guns in them that I think I have ever heard. Uh one memo noted that, while the company would not allow branded weapons in games where players can shoot at non-military bad guys, it wouldn’t oppose replicas of its guns in those games. Because – and this is a quote previous experience tells us – people will seek out the brands of the guns. A lack of direct branding helps to Shield us from implications of a direct endorsement, while still receiving benefit from inclusion in the game. So we have some discussion questions here, but the thing that I really wanted to talk about is in this case: no money changed, hands and um. You know it’s yeah, no money changed hand, so I would say that it’s not the same as other product placements, but the fact that it could go completely undisclosed raises a lot of questions for me about.
I don’t know everything I see in a video game, because certain types of advertising are actually reasonably well regulated like influencer product endorsements, for example. Now are at least from a rules. Standpoint very well-laid out. You can’t say anything, you don’t actually believe.
So. You can’t disguise advertising talking points as personal opinion uh. You can’t disguise paid content as um organic content um there you have to disclose in ways X, Y and Z, at least Y amount earlier in the content, and there there’s all these the there’s all these rules around it. But it seems like somehow whether we’re talking about uh movies or TV or video games product placements don’t seem to have any of the same kinds of guidelines, yeah and sometimes like in this case. I’M sitting here thinking I don’t know like we have. We have LG laptops what about this jerky, that we could eat yeah, that is a, but that was that was disclosed.
That was yeah. We we have LG laptops. Your LG logo is viewable. Is it probably not the most easily? I mean I have oh? Oh, it verifi, I put a verified right before it, but not on top of it. So you can see that you have an LG laptop now. If you had a discussion with LG and we’re like, can we call these LG laptops instead of zp laptops and they were like sure, and then you never talked about it yeah I mean, I guess, that’s no money exchanged hands yeah and like it’s a game with Firearms, so they like, I don’t know, but a clear benefit took place for sure and a clear benefit is happening for LG by you having an LG laptop on your desk. Well, there’s no benefit to me in this case, but in the case of the of the Activision um Remington deal there’s a clear benefit to both sides, especially in modern gaming, where they’re going to sell skins on these guns. So we’re not talking about.
Like an ins, people are going to be way more interested in an officially licensed like like properly model, almost every gun. That has a sorry, almost every game that has a Glock in it sure just calls them like a something ever so slightly different. But it’s obviously a Glock and they sell a ton of skins.
Cuz. Everyone knows anyways, I guess that’s true, but then I’m thinking of uh, like okay uh, you know thinking about like a game like World of Tanks where one of their sticks is the super accurate modeling of of of of the ex that exact. You know model of tank or whatever else.
So I see your point, but I also do think, there’s a clear value to accurately modeled weapons and vehicles um. So you know what I don’t. I don’t think you’re completely wrong.
I I feel like we’re running into a handshake moment yeah, I I I I definitely understand both points. I don’t think it’s completely. I think the value is very unclear, but it’s not measurable yeah, but it’s it’s like an intrinsic. It’S an intrinsic value. I think there is value like I know that I know that the relationship between racing game, uh Developers and car manufacturers is complicated, um in much the same way where some of them there’s deep cooperation and in others, you end up with these sort of unlicensed lookalikes Um and for and that’s a space where I can tell you 100 %, that there is a strong preference from Gamers for the cars to be authentic, that one I do know and handle in an authentic way, yeah for sure that that one is very true. I I don’t know, I know people, okay, here’s an example of a company that just has never cared at all as far as I can tell, and just did it anyways uhr, but no tarov yeah. Isn’T that battle or battle State yeah? Oh Battlefront, sorry yeah! I meant to say battle State yeah, they’re in Russia, so who’s going to enforce it, and – and I do think that Community sees some benefit but honestly, oh that Community 100 % cares. I don’t think it’s talked about that much that the brand is correct. I do well that the characteristics are correct.
Modeling and the characteristics being correct is is very important and hotly debated um, but if it was a smock instead of a Glock Smock, I don’t think any would care. No people would be mad about that. It’S a stupid name, Smock um, I don’t know um yeah anyway, anyways there’s definitely value sure I just I just I just want to. I guess what I’m I guess.
What I want is more clear disclosures around product placement, or I want our team to sell way more product placements yeah one of one of cuz. If? Because, if we can just take money from everyone and not have to disclose any of it, then sure that sounds great guys chill. We disclose things. Okay, I just I just mean it’s uh it just it just seems like okay, fine, I I wish it could be this way.
But if it’s not going to be this way, then I should at least be. I should at least be getting paid too by the way no uh, the answer is no LG does not pay for this placement. The reason these are here is because nobody wanted to use them internally, which is ironic because they’re grams and the main point of them is that they’re super light and they never get sit here and never move and they sit here and never move yeah. .