Greetings, faithful Spwug readers!

We’ve got a new writer, a young lady by the name of Mei Ling. She’s going to start with a short, to-the-point intro, then shoot straight into her main topic. Take it away, Mei Ling!

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My focus is going to be TV and occasionally other media, and being nitpicky about what I see.

This was last week’s CSI:NY. The story revolved around Second Life. When I saw the preview, I thought, “Oh, another online community case.” There have been a couple cases on different shows that deal with various aspects of the Internet. Law & Order: SVU did a virtual reality one earlier, too. But this CSI:NY episode was different than the previous ones. For one, it used a real site: Second Life. Previous cases had entities that were clearly modeled off of something real, but never the real thing. Two, it featured the site A LOT. I swear, 25% of the footage was in-game footage (this number is totally not based on any statistic). And three, previous cases almost always involved going to the office of the entity and demanding information on its users. This CSI:NY episode never even contacted Linden Lab.

The reason for all of these differences is clear: CSI:NY and Second Life have partnered up to offer some kind of CSI experience in Second Life. Thus, they allowed CSI:NY to use their real name and wanted to be heavily featured in the show to promote the site. And yet, they didn’t want to be seen divulging their users’ private information. But really, did that have to involve going through avatar creation, including explicitly pointing out that you can choose whatever gender you want to be and that using a generic model would mark you a n00b? And a gratuitous, lengthy gladiatorial battle to get into some restricted area? On a huge wall-size screen in a darkened room with a hand-held controller? And tracking down IP addresses of the players they met in order to track down their geographic location?

But wait… can you actually just track the IP addresses of the people you run into in Second Life? Wouldn’t you need access to the Linden Lab servers? Does that mean they were hacking into Linden Lab? Was that really better than just showing that if you do criminal things involving Second Life, that they will cooperate with law enforcement (given appropriate evidence and warrants), thus making Second Life a safe environment? Or perhaps they don’t want to seem too safe…

Personally, I tend to find product placement in TV shows and movies rather amusing. I like spotting somewhat subtle, but clearly displayed product placement that doesn’t intrude into the story. Like the Bravia ad in the web browser in Casino Royale (okay, that one was really fleeting, but it definitely didn’t intrude on the story). Even more blatant ones like the Minis in The Italian Job are okay. But this was like the epitome of what not to do with product placement. Not only was this product placement prominent, it basically took over its host show and ran amok, like some parasite… Aliens comes to mind.

So, what do you think about product placement? Love it? Hate it? Necessary evil? Any examples that you thought were particularly clever or disgustingly blatant?

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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 at 8:54 pm and is filed under Guest Writer, Television, games. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.