Real Ads for Fake Truckers 

I'm a truck driver and I played a lot of ATS when I was in driving school. That game does teach you how wide you need to turn and roughly what backing trailers is like under good conditions. Other than that, I promise you it isn't a great representation of what the job is like. ATS wont give you a driver manager who thinks your scheduled vacation is more of a suggestion, or a maintenance department who things AC isnt necessary for working and sleeping in the Carolinas to name some examples

The Duracell in Pikmin was actually a piece of world building. In the game, you’re stranded on an unknown planet. After a while, you start finding generic household items like a Duracell battery or a Dr. Pepper bottle cap, implying that the unknown planet is actually Earth. I found that a very clever way to use product placement.

Hopefully game devs get the message: Gamers are okay with in game ads as long as… 1) The ads are not on the HUD or in the menu, but actually *in the game* 2) They do not distract or attempt to draw the attention of the player. They only exist in the periphery of the game world (same as IRL) 3) They market things that might reasonably exist in the game world or at least things that are directly related to the genre/subject matter of the game. But not the game itself as that would massively break immersion

I play euro truck and I always have a mod installed to ENABLE real ads on billboards that would normally have fake ones on them. It's just more fun seeing a real company's ad like mcdonalds

i have no issue with ads. THIS is one of the few times that ads totally and absolutely make sense... IF the ads help a small developer continue to drive development of niche games in a way that makes sense.

Their subreddit did have a few stories of ATS gamers turned real truckers. This is pretty in-line with what's already happening, just accelerating it.

It's a good idea anyway, many veterans in ETS2/ATS is already a truck driver IRL 😂

I worked for schneider for about 4 months... I never worked so many hours for such a small paycheck in my life

the pikmin one has a reason that makes the product placement make sense pikmin is suppose to be set on earth that has been abandoned and the aliens you play as value earth objects high. so pikmin includes product placement and they make sense in the story they want to tell. As for uncle sam poster I'm pretty sure people just assumed they were innuniverse canonical posters that the people in the world would have instead of a meta reason for them being there.

There is an option in the game to disable the real billboard ads and replace them with the usual fake ones, too.

Honestly the idea isn't a bad one and doesn't seem intrusive or anything. The only problem I have with this whole story is the 48k a year. Where I'm at in the USA you can barely afford to pay rent on that, much less raise a family. Should be closer to 60k for a livable wage.

Missed the best part of the Alan Wake Duracell product placement. There were generic batteries in the game as well, but generic batteries wouldn’t power your flashlight for as long as the Duracell ones

Smellable billboards got be one of the most dystopian thing I've heard all week.

I agree that the ads are not much of a big deal since they fit with the game world of this particular game, as it's a driving sim. I just hope ubisoft or whoerever doesn't get ahold of the concept and starts putting bilboards in ancient egypt.

The problem with this is the way it’s being implemented now is fine. The issue is later when companies are like hmm they were ok with it let’s make it obnoxious, go too far and put it everywhere.

I personally actually really like the Duracell battery in pikmin because it makes it feel more like you’re exploring the actually earth as an outsider with real items

I actually don't mind the pikmin duracell battery at all. If I recall correctly, the "lore" of pikmin 2 that is heavcily implied is that olimar is finding objects on a planet of extinct humans, so its IMO a pretty diagetic example that doesn't detract from the experience or setting.

My favorite games were always racing games. Both sims and arcade style. They always had ads for tires, fuels, manufacturers. It’s never bothered me one bit. Built it into the game world and I think it’s ok. Take the player out of that immersion just to sell something, and that’s a problem.

I was not bothered by the Duracell battery in Pikmin. The main character, Olimar, is a 1in tall alien exploring earth on a micro scale and bringing items back to his planet to sell. The Duracell battery is not at all out of place with the other objects he finds in my opinion. I found it funny in game that the computer has wild speculation about what is a commonplace object for us.

I played ATS for a few hundred hours. I Decided to go to CDL school IRL, cost $4,000 USD. I passed my CDL on my first attempt but then decided to go back to school for I.T.-Networking. Quite the adventure.

The cans of Monster energy drink being displayed front-and-center in _Death Stranding_ were bad enough, but then came the ads for Norman Reedus's role in _The Walking Dead._

I drive trucks in the US, about a year in. 80-90k is what the short runs can bring in. The longest run we have is about 145-150k a year. You just have to get on with a good company.

The Army recruitment centers have a suspicious tendency to be right next to Gamestops too

The AXE one is the least bad, it's a billboard that's integrated well into the level. You could stand next to it and still not realise it's branded content.

I worked on a DLC for a different simulator game and insisted we put real ads in the game for immersion, even personally walking around town taking pictures of different ads and billboards that you can still find in the game to this day. We were obviously not paid by any of these companies, that would've been even better.

Half the fun of the trucking sims IS to go crazy and drive 100mph down the highway and try to keep it on the road. I feel a sense of pride and accomplishment every time I flip a truck in AMS

Old need for speed games had billboards that had real adds, it added to the immersion somewhat. Eventually they ended up putting banners and billboards throughout their entire maps (nfs undercover I think) which got annoying

The games I played the most that had blatant product placement were the Need for Speed games in the mid-2000s. NFS Underground 1 & 2, Most Wanted (2005) and Carbon are some of my favourite games of all time but the product placement for Cingular and T-Mobile every time you opened the in-game messages was always in your face. I also remember UG1 had ads for McDonalds, UG2 had literal Best Buy stores in the world, both UG2 and Most Wanted had multiple Burger Kings in the worlds, and I think Carbon also had the Obama campaign ads as well.

John Oliver did a great piece on the state of the trucking industry. It is brutal. Long story short, after law changes a few decades ago, the american trucking industry literally raced to the bottom in terms of wages and rights. A lot of truckers aren't even considered "employees".

Crashes truck, phone starts ringing for SWIFT.

I love still playing the original PC release of burnout paradise, because the support is long gone and EA doesn't care, some of billboards are still advertising EVGAs top end X58 motherboards lol

My uncle works for UPS and makes a shit ton of money. But... He does multi-day non-stop drives, is qualified to pull triples, works mostly nights, works lots of overtime, etc... For all of that he will be able to retire nearly 10 years early, which is in a year or 2 from now. He also didn't get married until 2 years ago. Meeting a woman is kind of tough when you're always working and sleeping during daylight hours.

From more recent examples, there were Monster Energy drinks in Death Stranding.

Surprised they didn't talk about Roblox. Probably the most popular game among marketing companies. It has actual virtual billboards that can be bought in featured games by either other users to advertise other games, or companies to advertise products or services. Also there are often events and actual games made by conglomerate companies where you can earn free avatar items for completing tasks in those games. Some examples are: Gucci, H&M, Spotify, Taco Bell and of course Walmart Land.

Can't believe I'm saying this, but this is the one time ads are a benefit. - Player gets more immersed in game without being intrusive - Company gets the advertising space that may actually work - Devs get increased income to put back towards the game

In Pikmin all hte characters (especially the Pikmin) are just very small, so it's not a giant battery, it's a regular-sized one

11:37 I think another major difference between the truck, simulator billboards, and a U.S. Army billboard in COD is the truck simulator seems to be a decent approximation of the real profession. for example, I feel like a lot of people wouldn’t be happy if GrubHub started advertising in GTA.

I can see a future where they hook truck simulator players up to robot trucks in order to avoid paying truckers.

Rush 2 on n64 had SO MUCH Mountain Dew product placements and advertisements. Collectables, and billboards etc

Signing bonuses are common, but Schneider would try to compete with my previous employer where I managed a few dozen drivers. My drivers bumped docks around Boston, when home every night, and could park their truck at home if they had space. Most of them made $80-100k. A few of my old employees called when the ATS ads became news because we poached people from Schneider, half the time they'd apply in my office after chatting with one of our drivers. down in the warehouse, etc.

This is genuinely the one time I think ads are good. Like, it just adds to immersion.

I like the realness of it and it's a good recruiting tool as a former driver and a father who drives for Schneider.

It's like everyone forgot about all the ad placement in sports and racing games, or hell, the fact that ads were literal ENTIRE NES games (Noid the Void, McKids adventure or whatever, etc.) given away to young children.

Valve tried putting in-game billboard style aads into Counter-Strike in roughly 2006. They just plastered them on random flat walls on popular maps. Don't forget one of the best product tie-in-games ever: Chex Quest.

I really appreciate Linus not following the mass media trend of calling it a "worker shortage" when it's a wage shortage, because almost no company has actually kept up with inflation since the 80's.

7:40 "No! that is not solid snake!"

I 100% agree with Luke. The billboards were there anyway. It doesn't hurt anything to make them have real ads. Devs get a nice extra revenue source, the players get a more immersive experience without it interfering.

my favourite are the Red Bull advertisements from Wipeout 2097/XL from 1996, perfect product placement 🤘

I actually run a ton of mods that add in real billboard ads, real gas station chains, real pickup and delivery outlets. It'd be a licensing nightmare, but I don't have an issue with real brands in games that are trying to simulate/replicate reality. Keep the Nissin cup noodles out of my Final Fantasy games, but do give me modern and up-to-date billboard ads, trailer skins, and storefronts for real brands.

My guy the plot of Pikmin two is you’re collecting treasures from a ruined earth. The battery doesn’t power your ship they sell it for money. It has a bunch of different products like pickle jar lids and Nintendo game paraphernalia, it’s good product placement. It’s probably the only product placement in a video game that doesn’t make me hate it.

In "Death Stranding" there's a blatant ad for Norman Reedu's TV series he was in at the time on the door of the shower/toilet when he goes to the bathroom and it even plays a motorcycle sound to when he poops. Also, in the original version of the game his drink of choice was Monster energy.

The Duracell battery is great, but it's NOT Novelty-sized! The character is the size of bugs. He can't even lift a bottle cap without a dozen helpers.

When I see real stuff in game, I take it as a joke; poking fun at companies who's ads aren't working out in life

Re: games as secret testing and recruiting tools - Does nobody remember the movie "The last starfighter?" That was basically the plot of the movie.

No! That is not Solid Snake!

I've never really had any issues with the inclusion of ads in games provided they: 1. Aren't invasive to the gameplay 2. Aren't repetitive or otherwise distracting 3. Don't force internet connectivity when there otherwise shouldn't be any. I remember back when Battlefield 2142 was a thing, they had billboards EVERYWHERE that advertised the new Intel CPU at the time. But it was like on every single wall with an open space. It was incredibly distracting.

I’m a truck driver, and I like my job, but I HATE my company. I think the reason why there’s such a trucker shortage is because the pay has stagnated and companies will treat you like shit until you have more experience and tenure, which isn’t easy when most well paying places won’t even look at you until you have 2-3 years experience. You also get abysmal home time. If I’m actually doing runs efficiently, which is always up in the air because again, they don’t care, I get 36 hours a week to be home for my “reset”. Most of the money in trucking is for owner operators, people that own their own truck, but not everyone wants to do that either. It’s just a mess tbh.

In Australia inter-state truck drivers start at around S61k (USD), but go to a mine-site and a truck driver gets about $92k. I was getting $50k working in a hotel valet parking cars, and that didn't even include the tips we got. Pay good money, and you'll get employees begging for a job. Over here people beg for mine-site jobs because they pay stupidly well

6:50 can't believe they didn't talk about Need for Speed Underground 2. You received messages on a Cingular phone, there were Best Buy stores and ads, there were ads for Autozone, and whenever you bought an upgrade, most of them had you chose a brand. For example, you could chose to buy an HKS turbo, or a Turbonetics turbo. I never really minded, and I still don't, but it's definitely worth mentioning.

i have a class A CDL. delivered for a beer distributor. i was salary at 800 a week for a quoted 40 hours. realistically, i was working anywhere from 35 to 65 hours, most of that was spent outside of the truck stacking beer on a hand truck. snow, rain, scorching heat, didnt matter. i had to run my route. my boss was actually angry at me for skipping 2 out of 23 stops in the middle of a literal blizzard on december 23rd... i make more money in half the time delivering pizza at one of my former stops. realistically, i probably wont get back in a commercial truck.

Anybody else remember that Battlefield 2 had a plug-in that allowed you to upload jpegs to the billboards on various maps? We mostly used it to wish server regulars a happy birthday, but we got paid ads occasionally too, once we had one from Overclockers.

Like The Last Starfighter, if you get the high score in Truck Simulator you get to deliver interstellar cargo.

I figured I'd throw this in here in case someone is interested in this: Trucking pay can vary greatly depending on company, your experience, and especially the type of job. For example, I have a local truck driver job, they pay hourly ($36.85/hr) and I get paid overtime (1.5x) after 40, but our job is very physical, you have to carry/throw/wheel 50lbs bags at most deliveries, yeah we have electric pallet jacks and lift gates, but most places you're delivering to local mom and pop shops with regular sized doors to get through. My place requires a minimum of 2 years experience and want drivers with no accidents and etc on their record. Yeah you're average new over the road (OTR) driver probably doesn't make as much, and it sucks really. But if you can find the right place, you could make like $93K like I did last year, I'll probably hit $100K this year. I've been working at my place about 15+ years, my starting pay was less than $20/hr.

You can definitely tell neither of them have ever played pikman.

This kind of advertisement is so tongue and cheek it's allowable. The day it becomes the Ready Player One " blocking x% of the screen before inducing seizures or brain hemorrhages" that's when we burn down the means of production.

America's army was such a good game. I played it so much from 2005 to 2008, then discovered proving grounds on ps4. Made so many long lasting friendships on that game. Almost the whole group upgraded from ps4 to PC and now we all still game together.

Chaos theory has always been my favorite tom Clancy game And the axe sign has always made me laugh my ass off

I like the Pikmen battery placement, at least that make sense. The Alan Wake one is hilarious because of how fast you burn through them, basically saying don't buy our batteries, they die in seconds.

“That makes perfect scents” :)

In game advertisements when they make sense in the gameworld are actually awesome when done well.

4:05 is the plot to "The Last Starfighter"

One of my best friends has over 4000hrs in American Truck Sim and Euro Truck Sim combined...... And he's actually a real full time trucker 😂

man... this is the first time i ever advocated for ads.

I thought the placement of Porsche in Cyberpunk was pretty creative, just seemed really organic minus the mission status saying *Get in the Porsche*

I have considered being a truck driver like my dad did for 6-7 years if only to have the CDL so I can do a diff job requiring it. But truck drivers don’t make much at all compared to how much they used to 30-40 years ago. Truckers USED to make really good money when our parents and grandparents did the job (mostly 2 generations back and on), but now they make above barely minimum wage. I was making the same wages a trucker was by driving a taxi cab, but for that job I got a Tesla and went home every night.

Dirt Rally is a game that comes to mind that also puts real ads where they'd be in real life anyway. AMD is one of those ads for that game. As an avid ATS player myself, I'm not sure how I feel about this. I think it'd depend on the content. This particular ad doesn't sound too intrusive (I haven't played recently, so I haven't seen it. Maybe I'll play this weekend.) but I could see others being intrusive. The fake ads on the billboards are pretty solid. For example divorce lawyer ads and such. I think my favorite in-game billboards are in GTA games where they've mastered the art of satire.

ATS and ETS (American and European Truck Simulator) games actually have a quite popular game mod that replaces fake ads with real ads. So this is something that the community already did to itself, before the developers thought they may as well.

Thats genius. I know advertisements are taboo in video games, but this is the rare case that it works.

There are mods for real ads on billboards in the game, and they are some of the most downloaded mods

7:43 don't worry, the bag is still 90% air due to "settling"

Surprised that the FFXV cup noodle quest wasn’t included on the list. It’s easily the most egregious out of all the examples, with one of your buddies going wildly out of character explaining how much they love them.

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory also had product placement of Airwaves gum in CGI cut-scenes and Diet Sprite vending machines. But billborads with real ads in nothing new. Valve experimented with it in CS 1.6 back in 2006, Anarchy Online had billboards advertising Fanta, Batman Begins premiere, US Airforce, and Sons of Anarchy.

The worst part of Death Stranding's directors cut was removing the silly and egregious Monster Energy product placement

Schneider taking gameplay video as an application xD

the conversation reminded me the Darkened Skye game which was an action fantasy game in which you played a female wizard that needed to collect Skittles to use her magic.

6:56 Also in Alan Wake were a Samsung phone that he uses heavily in the game that had a specific cutscene to show off that it was, indeed a Samsung phone. Additionally, many of the vehicles are Ford/Lincoln/Mercury, and Alan and his wife specifically arrive in a Lincoln MK-T with Microsoft's Sync Technology as the infotainment That game was full of product placement, but it was subsequently removed in the remake

I remember as a kid having games on roblox get changed to have massive billboards added to them. Always was weird loading into a favorite game and finding the map changed to showcase in game advertisements to children.

One important thing about the ATS ads is that they can be disabled, which makes it a complete nonissue.

Pikmin one had the Duracell in the game but the remake of Pikmin 1 replaces it with a generic battery and I was so pissed. IRL companies in video games makes it feel INFINITELY more realistic. So running irl billboard ads in video games (like they did with that transformers game on the original Xbox) is so cool.

I remember playing Need for Speed: Underground 2 and there being places like Burger King and Best Buy in-game, and the SMS system was Cingular (RIP). It didn't really bother me since it felt a little bit immersive and the stores were uncommon and not actually involved with the gameplay at all.

12:50 I thought the uncle sam posters were all just satire. I never thought they were for real.

"US Army: delivering bullets to a country near you!"

as long as its done tastefully, i actually like it! but it does invite invasive ads in games, its a dangerous gate to open

What's funny is that sports games get the most leeway for advertising because of the nature of the games. Skater XL recently put out a map in collaboration with Dickies that replicates the Fire Station skatepark in Fort Worth, Texas, and then you have Red Bull going haam in both The Crew 2 and Riders Republic

I LIVE in NC and had no idea about those smell billboards

Played farm sim the other day, the ads in game were advertising dlc for the game. The same sign would even change

It could be like the RL Gran Turismo competition except you are trained to drive the Christmas Coca-Cola truck or something.

btw the doritos/chips are non automatic health items. so you actually have to select and use them unlike the rations & curry that automatically refill your empty health bar.

How can this entire segment have gone through with not one mention of Cool Spot? The entire game was an ad for 7up, and it was actually a pretty good platformer. It's probably the best product game in history. The lead dev on Cool Spot was also the lead dev on Earthworm Jim, Aladdin (Genesis version), and MDK.

$48,000 a year seems low. The truckers at my workplace make like $55+ an hour plus really good benefits (coworker’s dad is a trucker) and we still have a shortage. We on the other hand have a top out of $28 atm which is 6 figures a year with mandatory OT.