Pandemic's Mercenaries 2: World in Flames could be very accurately described as an open-world battlefield. You take missions from different sides and wreak a lot of destruction in the South American nation of Venezuela. You can destroy nearly everything in the environment, and yes, that even includes the billboard advertisements.

Not too long ago, these billboards might have been generic or nondescript advertisements for nonexistent companies. However, we live in an era of connected consoles and in-game ad networks, meaning that all of the billboards in Mercenaries 2 have real-world products on them. As a result, the game presents a rather unique option for players: the ability to destroy in-game ads if they so choose.

We talked with Jay Sampson, VP of global sales for Massive, about how blowing ads into smithereens is a 'win-win' for the consumer and marketer.

Destroying Billboards 101
From an outsider's perspective, it might seem unusual to allow in-game advertisements to be destroyed. After all, if certain car manufacturers don't want to see their automobiles damaged in racing games, some brand marketers might be none too pleased to see their brand completely blown up. As it turns out, however, it was never an issue for even a second between Massive and Pandemic that the billboards would be any more or less vulnerable than anything else in environment.

"It's purely a byproduct of gameplay and this notion of a highly destructible environment," commented Sampson. "Sticking to our ethos of 'do no harm to the game,' we tagged the parts in the environment for ads and like everything else in the game, they can be destroyed. It's mirroring what the studio wants out of gameplay and making the most of it. We have experience with this with Transformers and we got great feedback with it, so it wasn't uncommon with us from an integrations point. We'll talk about it as a level of engagement with the creative, and if we did anything that wasn't destructible [in Mercenaries 2] it'd be awkward. It's taking advantage of the full environment."

"For a sports title like Madden or MLB [incorporating in-game ads is] straightforward and it's a common mindset, since it's easy for marketers to wrap their head around that environment. Mercenaries 2 is more on the edge, and we want to stay on the edge a little bit. Part of my work is making things not vanilla; nobody balks at sports titles, but we want to be involved in the burgeoning action oriented audience," he elaborated. "So there were no thoughts otherwise [on having the ads non-destructible]; it would seem very alien to the gamer. If you left an entire level charred with nothing but the billboard standing out like a sore thumb, I think you'd try to shoot them more and more, or you'd get on a blog and type, 'Hey did you notice this?' We're going to do full disclosure with advertisers in every case and I think of it as a level of engagement. There are few bad things if people are engaging with their brands."

Destroy my ads all you want, but at least have it set in the U.S.!
As it turns out, certain advertisers did have misgivings about Mercenaries 2, but not stemming from the destructible ads. Rather, the game's real-world international setting in a war-zone made marketers much more leery. It's all part of the normal process of selling spots on the Massive network, Sampson told us.

Don't like an ad in your game? Engulf it in flames!

'"[Having the ads be destructible] doesn't have much to do with the go or no-go," described Sampson. "It has more to do with the gameplay. Destructible ads actually sell quite well; [advertisers see it] as a way to be engaged with the consumer. [The reluctance] has more to do with being involved with a game set in a foreign war-zone. They have to be multinational brand; they're not going to be a U.S. regional player, they have to be ubiquitous."