As I was strumming along to Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock last night, three distinct feelings came over me, feelings that I…feel I must share you now. Two of them are relatively minor space fillers, the third however, could change the way we look at games forever.

The first is that although the core gameplay is relatively the same from the previous versions, the switch to Neversoft is really noticeable for any vets of the period before the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games went totally off the rails. Anyone like me who’s played THPS 3 through, the one with the laborious career mode where your “best friend” betrays you over a lousy skateboarding trick, can see Neversoft’s influence in GH3:LoR’s arena design and NPC animations.

Secondly, I’m a little disappointed with the set list (Barracuda and Paint it, Black notwithstanding) and correlate that with the finite number of decent rock out there (and the ludicrous addition of ‘Boss Battles’) I feel that the GH series may have jumped the shark.

ANYWAY, the third and final point (The Point) is that I just couldn’t help but notice the digital cans of Red Bull scattered on the stage. A more naïve me would of called it a cute detail, but there was never a ‘naïve me.’ I remember Arch-Rivals for the NES and its British Knights footwear logos on screen at all times. So the real me, the cynical-column-deadline-approaching-me, is calling for action, because it’s not just Red Bull, ads are all over this game, and its predecessors. Ads in game are not going away, so it’s time to draw some lines before it’s too late, it is time for quantification.

The way I see it, we can divide games up by the kinds of penetration that an ad has in a game so that problem titles can be recognized by the community so that an informed choice can be made. To make myself clear, I will not advocate for a ban on ads in games, only for the increased awareness of them to show those who would cross the line that there could be consequences.

Here’s how I’d break it down:

1. Licensed Game. These are titles that have been around the gaming world almost since the beginning: Movie-based games, branded racing games or Pro Sports games like Madden or the 2K series. These are games where the license element is the crucial factor in what make the game playable, or better. For example, Goldeneye for N64, a good FPS by itself, was pushed over the top with the James Bond license.

2. Advergame. The most famous recent examples are the three Burger King Xbox 360 titles. Created to attract gamers in to buy burgers and then keep them coming back with the most burger themed gameplay since Burgertime, their blatancy can be excused. Other types of games that can be lumped into this category include all product-sponsored Alternate Reality Games. Titles like Ethan Haas Was Right and ilovebees were specifically designed to lead a gamer directly into purchasing the target game, and therefore can be labeled as Advergames.

3. Environmental Product Placement. Product placement, the practice of inserting real commercial products into media for promotional purposes, is a mark on gaming that’s sadly never going away. But that doesn’t mean that it is an all around ‘evil.’ Games are expensive to make, and if an indy developer with a great title needs a couple of bucks I don’t know a gamer alive who wouldn’t suffer a placement in exchange for the perfect gaming experience…as long as it’s an environmental placement. Environmental Product Placements are ones that make the game your playing feel more real. Billboards on the wall of a ballpark, the brand name on the cymbals the drummer is crashing, and what would Operation Overlord (aka gaming’s new Hoth) be if your avatar could only carry a generic rifle, and not an “M-1 Garand” as even a weapon of this sort is considered an intellectual property and must be licensed.

4. Obtrusive Product Placement. Here’s were we get back to Red Bull and British Knights, i.e. products placed in games for no other point then to try and sell you something. These ads do nothing but take you out of the zone with an unwelcome dose of reality.

5. Obnoxious Product Placement. I hate to pick on GH3:LoR again, but nothing spells obnoxious like an AXE brand guitar for sale in the career mode store. To have to spend the fruits of your in game effort to buy an advertisement, and in the case of the Xbox 360, you have to do it to unlock an achievement, is egregious beyond belief. The only thing worse is something I have not had the displeasure to see just yet, the loading screen commercial. The idea that a developer could use the “opportunity” of time wasted loading to show a logo or a short video is the kind of bugaboo that we need to keep an eye on.

As you can see a lot of these points can overlap in a single game, and since there is next to no absolutely unacceptable in-game advertisement one must make the above kind of delineations to inform others. I would go so far as to include a separate rating for a game to inform the buyer just how much pitching the gamers are going to be subjected to for the purchase price. At the risk of sounding too much like Andrew Ryan, this will allow the market to shape the how the industry reacts to this issue. Only when game sales go down, will any kind of corrective action in stemming the tide of ads will be taken.

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Back of the Bus is © 2007 by Seth “4:10” Robison, used with exclusive permission by gamertransit.com. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.