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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.

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Video ad #1: https://youtu.be/P4C8do6cj8U

Video ad #2: https://youtu.be/hVr4ZShwnpA

Nils Munch
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Robert Miller
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    The lack of a border on the board definitely looks questionable. – ConMan Mar 25 '20 at 22:16
  • they let the fries to touch the board -> fake – Cohensius Mar 26 '20 at 12:00
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    @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 Landgraf Mar 27 '20 at 00:52
  • @VolkerLandgraf of course, i was just joking – Cohensius Mar 27 '20 at 17:57
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    Related thread on BGG: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/2402569/mcdelivery-mcdonalds-tv-ad – The Chaz 2.0 Apr 06 '20 at 23:01
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    Ask 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? – ruffdove Aug 29 '20 at 05:59
  • @ruffdive There are many copyright-free games out there. Why go to all that trouble? – Robert Miller Aug 29 '20 at 15:26
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    @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 R Mar 18 '21 at 20:03
  • @StephenR: Even if everything you do is fair use, that doesn't prevent the rights-holder from sending C&D letters and filing lawsuits, which would interfere with the ad campaign. Remember that the legal system has lots of goofy edges in it where you can get cut, even if you did nothing wrong. – Michael Kohne Oct 27 '21 at 16:13

1 Answers1

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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.

Cohensius
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Nils Munch
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