FEATURE
How do you step into a world where someone else is already lost in play?
For a long time, games were tricky territory for advertising. Players are deeply immersed, and barging in tends to get you hated. These eight ads can be read as a record of how that wall has been broken down, little by little. Making a game as a bonus extra. Placing a product naturally within a game. Messing with a game's own rules like a mischievous intrusion. Turning a small, struggling club into the star of the world. Using a game as a venue for a live concert or even a wedding. The journey moves from outside to in—and the very last one is, fittingly, a story about leaving the game world behind.
8 articles
BURNING HEART RECORDS | 2002
In 2002, putting a CD into your computer launched a game. Looking closer, I was stunned. This was basically Guitar Hero, three years before Guitar Hero existed.
BURGER KING | 2007
Burger King's agency made three Xbox games. They sold them for $3.99 as an add-on to value meals. They sold 3.2 million copies. The company's quarterly profit went up 40%. This is the story of an ad agency that made a product instead of an ad, and made the company money.
NIKE | 2012
There's a game where you live a footballer's life in the first person. Nike was woven into that story as if it were simply part of life — and over 400,000 pairs of boots got sold inside the game. It never feels like advertising, but that's exactly what it is.
WENDY’S | 2019
A fast food chain spent nine hours destroying freezers inside Fortnite, and the game's developer ended up removing freezers from the game entirely. This stunt beat Nike's "Dream Crazy" to win the very first Grand Prix in the Social & Influencer category at Cannes Lions.
BURGER KING | 2020
An English fourth-tier club averaging 3,000 fans a game, rated one star in FIFA 20. The moment Burger King became their sponsor, gamers around the world started transferring Messi and Ronaldo onto this team.
EPIC GAMES | 2020
April 2020. The world was still stuck at home. Travis Scott grew to giant size and danced his way across Fortnite's island, trampling everything in his path. 12.3 million people watched at the same time, and 27.7 million joined in over five days—the biggest live event in gaming history.
Battleground Mobile India | 2025
Meet in the game, marry in the game. On BGMI's battleground Pochinki, a couple held a real three-day Indian wedding, complete with Mehendi, Sangeet and Phere. Two hundred million people watched what became "India's Biggest In-Game Wedding."
COINBASE | 2026
During the live broadcast of the Academy Awards, the screen was interrupted by a blocky, low-poly town. As NPCs wander back and forth, one man struggles to break free from the system and runs toward reality. This has zero CGI. It's all live action.
Fictional People Started Working
Five people who don't exist — and reality answered back anyway.
Ads That Reached Into the Law
Breaking rules, slipping through loopholes, rewriting statutes — eight ads, ordered by how far they reached.
Alone, You Can't Reach It
An ad that isn't finished until one more person shows up.
What Was Already There Became the Medium
From chalk to banknotes: 11 media nobody had to buy
The Product Is Nowhere to Be Seen
How choosing not to show became the boldest statement of all
Putting 'We're Broke' Right at the Center of the Idea
Six ads that turned a shortfall into the raw material itself