Madden's Swagger -- cheap advertising ploy or legit attempt at a rating? - RaychelSnr's Blog

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RaychelSnr's Blog

Madden's Swagger -- cheap advertising ploy or legit attempt at a rating? Stuck

Posted on June 29, 2010 at 02:27 PM.

(24)

It finally happened -- sports gaming has jumped into the present day where anything is fair game for advertising.

Enter Madden's swagger rating.

Supposedly, the rating does nothing more than determine a player's likelihood to celebrate on the field. It doesn't progress and it doesn't effect gameplay in any other manner. Oh and the rating is brought to you by Old Spice.

So is this is a positive trend for sports gaming, where even ratings are fair game for advertising influences? Could there be a moment in time in the not so distant future that Nike goes all in with a Madden sponsorship deal and requests the athletes that pitch Nike products have higher ratings to make them seem more elite? I'm not sure, but to say it's an impossibility is to deny the ever growing presence of advertising is invading every corner of sports games -- much less society in general.

Perhaps it's not so bad, and perhaps it should have been more anticipated. Besides, what else did we expect? Most sports which are worthy of being depicted on the digital screen are huge advertising festivals anyways, so in a lot of ways it's more realistic to actually have legit products being marketed to gamers. I'm totally look forward to the day commercials begin to filter into games for the truest to life broadcast presentation possible -- I'm kidding about that, but only in a 'this might actually happen someday' kind of way.

So what do you think about the swagger rating and advertising in games in general? Should we embrace advertising or should there be a gamer led revolt against it?

Chris is the Executive Editor of Operation Sports and maintains this blog on the site. He is also a native Oklahoman and avid storm chaser. You can follow him on Twitter @ChrisSnr.

Comments

# 16 R9NALD9 @ Jun 30

Typical EA, adding some stupid **** that doesn't make it a better football game. Just some smokescreen stuff to impress the sheep, and to take away the attention from the major shortages of Madden.

It's official, Ian and co have dumped the hardcore fanbase and went back to concentrate on sales numbers

# 17 Lecrae @ Jun 30

As long as I don't have to purchase a box of Old Spice in order to buy the game I don't care about advertising as long as it doesn't hinder the game play itself.