In what comes as a complete shock and a horrible disappointment to anyone who likes getting drunk and staying up all night, the MillerCoors company announced yesterday it will stop producing the popular Sparks 7% Alcohol by Volume Energy Drink.

Reason being: the City of San Francisco and the Attorney Generals of 13 other states have successfully won litigation with the MillerCoors company on grounds that the energy drink/alcohol concoction was improperly marketed to younger children. These underage boozers were said to be drawn to the products by branding them as ‘an energy booster’ and partying stimulant due to its ingredients of guarana, caffeine, taurine and ginseng.

What’s crazy is that Sparks was so popular but the makers have never produced a television ad or directly sought out underage drinkers to buy its product, but the prosecutors argued that the drink is heavily associated with drinks like Red Bull and Monster which are already popular with the kids.

In my opinion that sounds like a bullshit argument. Is the mere fact that taurine, caffeine, and guarana are contained in the product enough to say that they are ‘marketed to the youth’? Is it possible ‘of age’ drinkers also enjoyed energy boosts and the ability to ‘party longer’.

I’m over 21. I like to party. I’ve drank Sparks once or twice. 

All packaging clearly says ‘contains alcohol’ and 7 or 8% by volume, a malt liquor beverage. And I’m pretty sure liquor store owners are smart enough to stop underage kids from walking out of their store with these drinks.

So whose fault is it?

This isn’t a major blow to the MillerCoors though. It syays it will still produce the drink after reformulating the ingredients and removing all the energy drink-style components.

Sparks is the leading brand in the alcohol energy drink market, with a 60% market share. However, Sparks only makes up 1% of MillerCoors total volume. So even if it was shelved, it won’t hurt Miller who is drunk off profits from Miller Lite, “Good Call”.

Tags: 7% alcohol, advertising, alcohol energy drinks, marketing, MillerCoors, Sparks, worldgaming

Google has their hands on everything and now they’re going after video games. The good people over at VentureBeat wrote an article detailing the process.

Apparently Google has already developed and have started testing an “in-game advertising technology” that will stream ads into popular videogames. A demo of the technology revealed that it’s a simple integration for developers (naturally) and seems to be green lighted for whenever Google wants to unleash it.

Google will call it “AdSense for Games” and won’t leave any type of game out as they will cater to “console games, disk-based PC games, web-based PC games and cell phone games.”

For some people, in-game ads drive them nuts. Personally, I don’t give a shit and actually find it interesting what companies want to shell out money for them. What do all the WorldGaming disciple think? Leave a comment!!!

Tags: advertising, google, in-game ads, VentureBeat, video games, worldgaming

Who says tits, ass and pornstars don’t sell video games? Obviously not THQ, who has given porn star Tera Patrick the massive responsibility of fronting the new Saints Row 2. In the first “dev diary,” Tera Patrick says some shit I didn’t catch about the Saints Row series while taking her clothes off, with gameplay footage edited in for good measure. This teaser is mostly interesting for the fact that you can wear a hot dog suit in Saints Row 2.

Click the link below for the video, ENJOY!!:

Tera Patrick Video for Saints Row 2 hOt!!!

Tags: advertising, pornstars, promo, saints row 2, sex sells, TCQ, tera patrick, video