As video game budgets spiral into the hundreds of millions, one veteran developer is suggesting the industry borrow a page from Hollywood: product placement.
Mark Darrah, who spent nearly two decades at BioWare as executive producer on the Dragon Age franchise, argues that in-game advertising could offset the financial pressures crushing studios and pushing them toward live-service designs that don't always work.
In a video examining gaming monetization, Darrah pointed to the live-action Smurfs movie as a case study. The film essentially paid for itself through product placement deals, meaning studios covered production costs without relying on ticket sales alone. Games, he noted, have largely ignored this revenue stream.
"Product placement is a very small part of video games right now compared to movies and television," Darrah said. "Maybe it could be a larger part of development."
The underlying issue is clear: when big-budget games fail to generate ongoing revenue through traditional live-service models, studios struggle to recoup massive development costs. Subscription services like Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus add another complication, providing minimal returns for many titles while potentially encouraging what Darrah calls "degenerative design" aimed at addicting players rather than engaging them.
"Everything can't be a live-service," Darrah said, warning that over-reliance on this model threatens creative diversity. "If monetization is coming predominantly from live-services, we run the risk of living in a world where there are no AAA games that aren't live-services."
The conversation comes as major publishers walk back their live-service ambitions. Sony abandoned several online-focused projects including planned games tied to The Last of Us and Twisted Metal franchises, while Xbox cancelled an unannounced MMO from ZeniMax Online Studios. The failure of Concord accelerated that retreat, though skepticism about live-service games had been mounting long before.
Even Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which Darrah worked on, illustrates the tension. The game originally launched as a live-service project before being rebooted into a traditional single-player experience, yet still underperformed commercially. EA later suggested the game might have succeeded with live-service features, a take that sharply contradicted fan sentiment.
Darrah has since departed BioWare, which is now focused solely on developing the next Mass Effect game, a project still without a confirmed release date.
Author Emily Chen: "Darrah's idea isn't radical, but it highlights how gaming's business model has become rigid compared to film and TV, where mixing content and commerce is routine and accepted."
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