Okay, so I am in game development, and I talked to Porsche for a licensing agreement (among other car brands) because I wanted to have real life cars in a racing game. Most of the appeal of a racing game is being able to drive cars that laypeople could never afford. As an independant, it is not financially possible to obtain a license from any of them. Even the cheapest brand is multiple millions of dollars with odd stipulations, including but not limited to such requirements as: “you cant show our cars getting damaged,” “our cars have to be faster/better than X brand even when statistically this is not true,” and “you cannot allow the player to customize any part of the vehicle and it can only be displayed in the specific colors we tell you.” The only way you can get around such stipulations is if you can find a company like RUF that buys cars like Porsche, changes them very slightly, and then get the license from them instead since they will usually not have the same requirements. They do not pay you, no company pays you for brand licensing like that. Contact any brand and ask them for a licensing deal where they pay you and they are going to laugh at you. The way Kojima was probably able to get Monster to pay him was either he has a friend at the company/ a friend is a shareholder or he was somehow able to convince them that the deal was film product placement, which is a different kind of license and comes with different rules, but often means the brand does pay the prodution studio. I am going to assume he just has a friend that works at or owns stake in Monster.
If the problem was a woman lead, how come The Witcher 4 also didn’t get brigaded? Screamer also featured a woman as its main character in the trailer and that was not brigaded either. Even if what you are implying is true, the same thing happened to Concord, people brigading it for being “woke,” and we both know how that ended. This isn’t a stat you can just handwaive away because “some people are brigading it for being woke,” literally the same thing happened with Concord.
Also consider TLOU2 had mixed to negative reception among fans, especially by comparison to the first game. Players will be more skeptical in such a situation. They couldn’t have known when they bought the game how they would feel by the end, and people who felt negatively certainly will be less likely to buy the next game from the same studio, regardless of whether it is related to TLOU or not.
For all we know, there may be no way this sci-fi future Porsche gets damaged, because it may not even be part of the game’s loop, as opposed to a driving game where we know for a fact you’re going to drive. When the appeal to a driving game is to be able to drive whatever brand of car you want, the car brand has the power in the negotiation. This is a game that takes place in retro future 80s sci-fi and doesn’t feature the actual real world car.
The way Kojima was probably able to get Monster to pay him was either he has a friend at the company/ a friend is a shareholder or he was somehow able to convince them that the deal was film product placement, which is a different kind of license and comes with different rules, but often means the brand does pay the prodution studio. I am going to assume he just has a friend that works at or owns stake in Monster.
Does he also have friends at CalorieMate, PlayBoy, and Apple? Sure, we know he has at least one friend at AMC, but this is a long line of product placement in Kojima games, and they do it for the same reason they do it in film; it’s an advertisement. I think it would be pretty absurd for an already expensive production to then license Porsche for their story when they could have easily, in 20 seconds or less, established a fictional car brand to plaster on the back on their space ship.
If the problem was a woman lead, how come The Witcher 4 also didn’t get brigaded?
It did.
Even if what you are implying is true, the same thing happened to Concord, people brigading it for being “woke,” and we both know how that ended.
People did the same for The Last of Us II, and that game sold over 10 million copies. A lot of its negative reaction was even pre-release from people who hadn’t played it but read the script. Concord was a game no one wanted from frame 1, before we even saw pronouns in a character select screen.
Okay, so I am in game development, and I talked to Porsche for a licensing agreement (among other car brands) because I wanted to have real life cars in a racing game. Most of the appeal of a racing game is being able to drive cars that laypeople could never afford. As an independant, it is not financially possible to obtain a license from any of them. Even the cheapest brand is multiple millions of dollars with odd stipulations, including but not limited to such requirements as: “you cant show our cars getting damaged,” “our cars have to be faster/better than X brand even when statistically this is not true,” and “you cannot allow the player to customize any part of the vehicle and it can only be displayed in the specific colors we tell you.” The only way you can get around such stipulations is if you can find a company like RUF that buys cars like Porsche, changes them very slightly, and then get the license from them instead since they will usually not have the same requirements. They do not pay you, no company pays you for brand licensing like that. Contact any brand and ask them for a licensing deal where they pay you and they are going to laugh at you. The way Kojima was probably able to get Monster to pay him was either he has a friend at the company/ a friend is a shareholder or he was somehow able to convince them that the deal was film product placement, which is a different kind of license and comes with different rules, but often means the brand does pay the prodution studio. I am going to assume he just has a friend that works at or owns stake in Monster.
If the problem was a woman lead, how come The Witcher 4 also didn’t get brigaded? Screamer also featured a woman as its main character in the trailer and that was not brigaded either. Even if what you are implying is true, the same thing happened to Concord, people brigading it for being “woke,” and we both know how that ended. This isn’t a stat you can just handwaive away because “some people are brigading it for being woke,” literally the same thing happened with Concord.
Also consider TLOU2 had mixed to negative reception among fans, especially by comparison to the first game. Players will be more skeptical in such a situation. They couldn’t have known when they bought the game how they would feel by the end, and people who felt negatively certainly will be less likely to buy the next game from the same studio, regardless of whether it is related to TLOU or not.
For all we know, there may be no way this sci-fi future Porsche gets damaged, because it may not even be part of the game’s loop, as opposed to a driving game where we know for a fact you’re going to drive. When the appeal to a driving game is to be able to drive whatever brand of car you want, the car brand has the power in the negotiation. This is a game that takes place in retro future 80s sci-fi and doesn’t feature the actual real world car.
Does he also have friends at CalorieMate, PlayBoy, and Apple? Sure, we know he has at least one friend at AMC, but this is a long line of product placement in Kojima games, and they do it for the same reason they do it in film; it’s an advertisement. I think it would be pretty absurd for an already expensive production to then license Porsche for their story when they could have easily, in 20 seconds or less, established a fictional car brand to plaster on the back on their space ship.
It did.
People did the same for The Last of Us II, and that game sold over 10 million copies. A lot of its negative reaction was even pre-release from people who hadn’t played it but read the script. Concord was a game no one wanted from frame 1, before we even saw pronouns in a character select screen.