On Facebook's Board Game Revolution Community page, someone wants to know if the board game pictured in a television ad is a real game or a jumble of game parts.
Video ad #1: https://youtu.be/P4C8do6cj8U
Video ad #2: https://youtu.be/hVr4ZShwnpA
asked Mar 25, 2020 at 16:07
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3The lack of a border on the board definitely looks questionable.– ConManMar 25, 2020 at 22:16
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5@Cohensius That does only mean the people (actors) shown are not gamers. It might still be a really existing game (even though I don't recognize it).– Volker LandgrafMar 27, 2020 at 0:52
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1Related thread on BGG: boardgamegeek.com/thread/2402569/mcdelivery-mcdonalds-tv-ad– The Chaz 2.0Apr 6, 2020 at 23:01
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2Ask yourself this: if you're making a McDonalds commercial and wanted to show kids playing a game while eating your product, are you going to go secure the rights to use a game from a game company? Or are you going to have your props guy make up a fake board and a few fake plastic pieces?– ruffdoveAug 29, 2020 at 5:59
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1@ruffdove Unless they identify it I doubt they would need to pay royalties. I don’t believe the mere sight of the game on screen triggers royalties. In the movie E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, the kids are clearly playing Dungeons & Dragons at the beginning of the movie, but the game was never actually named, and no royalties were paid to the game’s owner, TSR– Stephen RMar 18, 2021 at 20:03
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1 Answer
This is a fake game.
I reached out to Cosette / OPC who was the agency for this ad campaign, and it is NOT a real game. They had their art department make a quick board and collected random pieces from either existing board games or 3D printed some of their own.
They made a comment that they were aware that the board game community would quickly identify which game they were using, and this was a small burst of ads where securing an actual license would be too much hassle.
Component-wise, one could assume that this is a version of the first edition of A Game of Thrones, with a lot of other random components added to it, but the board is created from scratch, with some elements from Shutterstock thrown in.
Quote: "The important thing was to resemble a modern strategic board game, where unit placement was a key thing since that would make it easy to express that they were cheating (moving pieces, passing cards, etc.)"
One can assume the ad-makers in postproduction will have ensured that nothing about that game is identifiable as an actual product, even if a component used ended up in the final cut.
