There’s a nice “scratchpad” entry over on the Brands In Games blog culling quotes from a recent article in the International Herald Tribune concerning branding inside Atari’s “Test Drive Unlimited”. Of particular interest to me is this quote (Link):

And, unusually for a genre in which car crashes generally count for more than fashion splashes, gamers will also be able to select their on-screen drivers’ wardrobes.

The ability to customize the racers’ attire comes courtesy of Ben Sherman, a clothing brand popular among soccer fans in Britain and urban hipsters in America. Realizing that many young men spend more time with their Xboxes, Playstations or Nintendos than their televisions, Ben Sherman joined a growing number of marketers who see video games as a promising new frontier in advertising.

There’s plenty more, so either get some of the juicier bits over on Brands In Games (Link) or read the full article.

As an aside, I checked out the game’s website. Very nice. This image, however, caught my attention –

I’ve not seen tool icons like these. And at the top of the screenshot, too small for you guys to see here (it’s on the game’s website under Media>Screenshots), the application name is Twilight II. Never heard of it. I did, however, find a site for Twilight 3D the game engine.

Now I’m curious. As are others I’m sure … the game’s forum has plenty of people asking about customizing their cars. Most are interested in simple in-game customization, but this does seem like the kind of external mod/content opportunity videogame developers should be chasing by using tools commonly available to content creators everywhere: Max, Maya, SoftImage, aso.

I’ve only seen a couple videogame developers go to the community for content. If they’re having trouble with budgets (see my recent post on this issue – Link) why use a relatively unknown, proprietary tool … especially when there are sites that sell models of this quality for $100?

I don’t get it.

Back to the original article:

In-game advertising also solves a problem for game developers and publishers. Games being created for a new generation of consoles from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are far more complex than previous titles, and can cost more than $10 million to produce. Ad revenue defrays some of these costs, as consumers balk at paying higher prices for games.

Maybe game developers are keen to discuss rising content costs while advertisers start showing them some love. If I were a developer, I’d be justifying high advertising rates by pointing to those costs while meanwhile starting to look at overseas content providers. No reason Twilight II can’t import models from other applications.

That makes more sense.

{Image Copyright © 2005 Atari Interactive, Inc.}