The Gun and Videogame Link

I'm surprised you didn't link this:

I wonder what that makes someone who was listening to Wagner while playing Jagged Alliance 2. You could really rack up your "I am complicit in various atrocities due to my leisure activities" score in just one night of music, gaming and movie watching.

Please do not feed the hamfisted troll.

No, I really think Barrett is super bullsh*ting here. I suspect the premise of the article is totally around the wrong way - gun manufacturers will be paying titles like Call of Duty to have their stuff prominently featured in the game, with more paid to be the "best" most popular gun.

No WAY does Activision pay other companies to have their products FEATURED in one of the world's largest* entertainment franchises.

Do you think Aston martin gets paid a royalty fee by the James Bond movie makers? Hell no, Aston Martin (or whoever it is now) pays up big time to be in the latest Bond movie. Call of Duty is a bigger franchise than Bond.

You can quibble that more people see a given movie franchise because takings don't equal viewers given the lower movie ticket prices, but when you add up cumulative eyeballs / hours it is a wash I would suggest.

"The reporter somehow got the relationship completely backwards" seems implausible.

Why?

The P90 is awesome looking. I am in no way affected by how awesome it was in Goldeneye on the N64, because that was a completely different gun, the RNP-90 or something like that. I am guessing you must have gotten owned a lot though in the split-screen by someone wielding 2 of them at a time.

I have nothing against the gun itself! I've used it plenty of times! I just think it looks dumb as hell.

The only reason I'd even consider it is that it's "gaming journalism." How often do regular reporters get a detailed bit of reporting 100% backwards?

Fair enough, but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility, considering no actual sources gave him any real concrete information.

Isn't that the entire point of the article; that video games increase gun sales because of their normalizing guns?

I'm too Canadian for guns in media to serve as advertising. Just the thought of owning a gun feels illicit, like it would violate the essential nature of our society.

Last fall EA decided to drop all weapon ads in their Medal of Honor games' website.

The executive producer of Warfighter had written a blog for each weapon manufacturer

Look again, it's diamonds a sling.

Ahh you're right. It just got demoted to below the P90 as far as stupid looks. It looks way better with a stock.

Here's the question to ask next time you see such a person:

"And how much time did you spend with a .22?"

I linked the pistol version when the guy at the range had the short-barrel rifle version. (By definition pistols don't have stocks).

Er, but the article says:

Brand awareness can be a important in a competitive market just to not lose market share.

And what reason do we have to think there isn't a marketing firm doing research that proves this is a good way to move guns? It's not like that research would be any more public than this was at the time.

So nevermind advertising, there's nothing saying that they can't view the licensing as a successful marketing effort--one they just don't have to pay for.

But ok, here's a different angle on it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/us/selling-a-new-generation-on-guns.html?hp&pagewanted=all

Not the same thing, obviously; it's their own game, not a generic videogame. That's probably the real "candy cigarettes" of this scenario.

THQ's Homefront could have just gone with a generic M-4 carbine but they used PWS Diablo, a 7" barrel AR-15 (I have the 10.5" barrel version). To the average player the PWS Diablo is just another short-barrel rifle but to a gun owner like myself the real firearm specs makes a difference. I bought a PWS because unlike almost all other AR-15s, the PWS AR-15s uses a gas piston-driven system, a proprietary operating system utilizes an operating rod that is attached to the carrier and a floating head piston. The PWS rifles also has a piece construction eliminating the castle nut and ensuring that when installed, the buffer tube cannot become loose. These differences wouldn't be noticeable in a video game but would be in real life.

So either THQ approached PWS or PWS approached THQ.

In any case, there happens to be licensed Airsoft versions of the PWS Diablo.

Or, they could go to another gun manufacturer. It's not an M16: it's a C7, or a CQ, or a T65 / T86 / T91, or a SOAR, or a S-5.56, or an ARMADA, or a Terab.

Was it that hard for the Al Jazeera journalist to get an editor to fact-check her script to see that EA is called "Electronic Arts" and not "Entertainment Arts"?

This makes me nostalgic for the time when games would just call them "pistol," "shotgun", or, if they were feeling particularly adventurous, "Sahara Falcon."

Additionally, the gun company likely wouldn't want to see other companies' guns in the game, which would likely be to the detriment of the game. Sort of like the exclusive deal that Harmonix made with Fender, which meant that Rock Band didn't include any Gibson guitars, which was pretty lame.

Black was unabashed gun-porn, with buildings blowing up from stray bullets, and the depth of field focusing on the weapon during the reload animation. It was unapologetic in the worship of guns.

I am going to bow to your obviously superior first hand knowledge on the subject, but I I'm still going to harbour some suspicion that the black heart of bobby kotick willingly hands over cash to other corporations so THEIR products can be prominently featured in his multi billion dollar entertainment franchise.

The stuff Eric posted re the Warfighter blog sure as hell sounds like someone paid for some "exciting social media cross promotion synergy marketing efforts" to me.

Quite a lot.

There's about a dozen knock-offs or licensed variants of the M16 rifle made by companies not under direct control of Colt, not counting AR-15's. The gun company doesn't have all the power in that relationship.

Which you could have figured out with Google and the names I provided, incurious man.

I had to Google your quote...

They included other guitars in the game but not Gibson because Gibson had an exclusive deal with Guitar Hero.

It's been over twelve years since working on Jagged Alliance 2 so my memory is a bit fuzzy on the details. I think the Jagged Alliance games were some of the first games (JA1 came out in 1994 and JA2 in 1999) to use and represent real world firearms. I don't know about the licensing (if there were any) of the firearms used in JA2 but as far as I know we just used their military designation without using the manufacturers' names. Instead of the M-16 we used the C7, which is the Canadian version of the M-16 (the C8 is the Canadian version of the M-4).

Forbes has a follow-up article in response to the Eurogamer's article on video games licensing deals with gun manufacturers.

The 15-year-old who plays the latest Call of Duty game may not be able to afford the top of the line $2000 AR-15 (plus the $500 to $1000 red dot sights) but he can save his allowance to buy a $300 Airsoft licensed replica with a cheap $100 knock-off red dot.

Magpul, which is an AR-15 accessories (such as back-up iron sights, magazines, and stocks) manufacturer has an Asian division that makes (sub-par) versions of their real accessories specifically catered to the Airsoft market. For example, a real Magpul BUIS would cost at least $40 to $80 whereas the licensed Airsoft version (with cheaper plastic) goes for about $30 for a pair. Besides catering to the Airsoft market who can't afford the more expensive higher end real products, Magpul's accessories are regulated by the US State Department, which prohibits the export of AR-15 parts, such as sights (including iron sights, scopes, and red dots) and stocks. This affects their bottom line as it costs a lot of money to apply for export permits (this is why genuine Magpul parts and sights/scopes are very expensive in Canada). They went around this by having an Asian division to sell their stuff outside the US.

EA says to firearm industry "HEY remember when your nutbag leader called us a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people? WELL GET FUCKED"

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/07/videogames-guns-idUSL2N0CS2A220130507

"That's right - we will be keeping on using all your stuff in our game AND not doing a licence deal. Why don't you try suing our our callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry arse for some money and see how far that little contradiction gets you in the public debate?"

one other interesting titbit:

(Also I seem to have very thoroughly contradicted my own previous opinion on this subject)