Commentary

Forecast: Heavy Branding

Call me a purist, but my conception of online and PC-based video gaming doesn't include bad weather so much as it does aliens, bazookas, and mercilessly pimped-out Aston Martins. So it was with great consternation that I checked out the pair of weather-centric online games created by Skyworks Technologies and The Weather Channel Interactive.

Don't get me wrong -- I prefer mucking around in a four-wheeler, as experienced in The Weather Channel Driving Game, and cracking nine irons into a stiff gale in The Weather Channel Golf Game, to actual work. And I'm willing to take the designers at their word when they promise, in a breathlessly worded press release, that "expert weather data" was integrated into each game. But throwing weather components into the video game mainstays of driving and golfing absolutely screams "branding" in a way that's likely to irk savvy online gamers. Subtlety, it seems, remains in short supply in the world of online gaming.

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