Intergalactic’s product placement heralds the end of AAA art games

The grand finale of The Game Awards was a product placement collage made by the gaming industry’s top arthouse studio. We’re doomed.

In a world where Rocket League tournaments are sponsored by Snickers and Perfect Cell can rock Jordans while hiding in a bush, gamers have come to tolerate advertisements in their games. Video game developers prefer to call them crossovers, but what they really are is product placement. The goal is to raise brand awareness for another IP and give the studio a payday.

Sure, there’s some fun to be had playing a Walking Dead antagonist in Tekken or cosplaying as Nicki Minaj in Call of Duty. But there’s always been a tacit understanding that in-game advertisements are for “lesser” games. Collaborating with personal or corporate brands belongs in live-service titles where nothing is being taken too seriously. Well, there’s whatever Kojima was doing with Monster Energy in Death Stranding, but we’re always willing to make an exception for him.

And this imaginary divide is why it’s tough to grapple with Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. Announced at the 2024 Game Awards right before Game of the Year, the project is the first new IP from Naughty Dog since The Last of Us in 2013.  Our shade isn’t aimed toward director Neil Druckmann, protagonist Jordan Mun, or the hilarious fact that a game called Intergalactic takes place entirely on one planet. That’s low-hanging fruit. Instead, we’re beefing with multiple corporations involved.

Intergalactic has a Porsche spaceship, and that sucks

After three hours of awards and much hype from Geoff Keighley, the first thing fans saw of Intergalactic was a Porsche logo sprayed across the rear of a vehicle that doesn’t exist. After two minutes of mysterious exposition, the camera shifts to a stereo system plastered with the Sony logo. A CD rack spins, landing on a Pet Shop Boys record from ’87. A closeup on its oh-so-cool ’80s EQ and boom, Adidas sneakers highlighted bright red. Naughty Dog wanted you to see those stripes so bad that it broke its own lighting engine.

“Hey, gamers still like feet, right?”

Bear in mind, Naughty Dog is among the most well-funded game development studios on the planet. Sure, it’s owned directly by Sony, so we can give that a reluctant pass. But Porsche and Adidas? Whatever checks they wrote likely had little impact on whether Naughty Dog made this game or not. The studio is estimated to bring in over $270 million a year in revenue. This wasn’t a desperate attempt to secure funding. The developers legitimately thought that this was optimal. They pictured gamers, eyes glazed over and clapping at their monitor, saying “Woah, Porsche spaceship! Mmm, shoes…” while reaching for their wallets.

Games are products designed to make money. The Game Awards is a pageant designed to make money. Guess what else was designed to make money? Undertale, the subversive RPG that warped the internet and completely upended indie game design for a decade. Alan Wake, the critical darling that went underappreciated only to surge back with a sequel and kick everyone’s ass at last year’s Game Awards. Metal Gear Solid 2, the beautiful disaster that, for better or worse, inspired an entire new genre of gaming journalism.

And all three of those titles have paid product placement! Undertale’s worst side character So Sorry only exists because a furry vore fetish artist tossed Toby Fox a band to make it happen.

Hidden away for a reason

Alan Wake featured Energizer batteries that last minutes at best and Verizon billboards that bolstered the game’s sense of ironic Americana.

How many customers did this attract?

Metal Gear Solid 2 has copies of British pinup mag For Him Magazine stashed in guards’ lockers. These were altered in the remaster.

Modders had to restore Kojima’s vision

The difference is that these are easter eggs at best and mild annoyances at worst. The magazines in MGS2 absolutely induced grins from English teens. Alan Wake’s billboards are a wry smile and an eye roll before being forgotten. Toby Fox hid So Sorry so deep in the game that he’s borderline impossible to find on accident. These products are not the selling point. They do not take center stage in the reveal of a AAA game in development from the industry’s biggest arthouse studio.

Naughty Dog is supposed to be a flagship developer for the entire industry, pushing the medium forward in everything from storytelling to writing to graphics. This is its first new IP in 11 years. It was announced during the grand finale of the biggest third-party event in the industry, and the studio wanted a Porsche logo to be the first thing fans saw. Neil Druckmann thought it was the single most important thing in the trailer. A flashing Adidas logo will make you buy his game.

The AAA art game is no more. If Naughty Dog of all companies is leaning this heavily into product placement and recognition marketing, it’s sending a signal to the rest of the industry to get on board. Expect to see Kratos teach Atreus how to pack snus in the next God of War and Red Dead Redemption 3 to feature Carhartt jackets.

“Don’t spit it out, boy.”

This is the same studio that made The Last of Us, a game that stood tall enough on its own merits to spawn a multimedia franchise. It was likened to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and brought reviewers to tears. A decade and change later, Naughty Dog thinks gaudy product placement is what games need.

Your favorite AAA franchise will either die out or become something akin to Fortnite. So here’s hoping you like Porsche and Adidas.