The McDonalds Videogame (2005)

The Game Room
1

Back in 2005 and 2006 I played this flash game called ‘The McDonalds Videogame’. The whole game is a satire of McDonalds and corporate greed: it’s a business sim.

  • Grow your cattle and feed in the third-world
  • Expand your agricultural output by corrupting the mayor and demolishing rainforests
  • Fatten your cattle faster with animal flour, industrial waste, and hormones
  • Incinerate cattle that develop mad cow disease before they contaminate your food supply… or don’t
  • Hire, discipline, reward (with a badge!), and fire lowly employees
  • Bribe nutritionists, health officers, climatologists, and politicians to increase PR
  • Market the McDonalds brand by running a fast-food nutrition campaign, donating abysmal sums to fight third-world poverty, advertising directly to gullible children, and with product placement in cartoons and movies.

Did anyone else play this game? It was re-released with a better English translation in 2019.

~Max

2

Yes, I did. I was not huge into it, but I remember it.

3

Is it worth noting here that McDonalds grows all of the beef used in its US locations in the US?

4

Yep.
The game sounds intriguing, but I always think these attacks on McDonald’s fall flat. Like people just lazily picked the most famous name without researching it.

Because, in terms of how they source the meat, how much they give to charity, how unhealthy the food is etc Mcd is generally a lot better than their largest competitors.

And in terms of employee satisfaction, anecdotally everyone I know who has worked there has a suspiciously positive image of the company, and, less anecdotally, McDonald’s UK is very public about how favorably their pay and promotion prospects compare.

5

Also one aspect that doesn’t make sense is McDonalds marketing to children by putting product placement in TV and movies. Now McDonald’s does have a lot of actual commercials in children’s TV, but paying for movie advertising? That’s way more Burger King or Taco Bell.

6

I’d like to leave this here:

Producer R. J. Louis had previously worked on advertising campaigns with McDonald’s and had an association with their charitable arm Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC). He explained that at the time Ronald McDonald was “even more [well-known] than Santa Claus”, but that E.T. was close behind and thus felt that the next “generation” needed an E.T. of their own. Louis was required to negotiate the rights to use the McDonald’s brand and its elements within the film. He pitched the project as a cross-promotional endeavor which could be promoted at its restaurants, and with its profits helping to support RMHC.

I can’t think of a more egregious example of fast food product placement than what McDonald’s did in that film. The closest I can think of is Taco Bell in Demolition Man, but even that wasn’t nearly as blatant.

7

I knew somebody would bring that up lol, but I was referring to stuff past that.

In terms of most blatant there is Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, since you know it’s in the title.

8

That’s not the same at all. White Castle just gave permission to use their name. Mac and Me was created with McDonald’s as a promotional endeavor.

9

Let me add too, I know that McDonald’s was interested in promoting their Ronald McDonald House charities and not the business. And the promotion of the brand within the film (including the choreographed dance scene within a restaurant, including Ronald himself) was an “artistic” decision and somewhat went against the wishes of the corporation. But the film was financed by a supplier of McDonald’s and there were cross-promotional plans between the film and the restaurant. So to me that’s a heavier involvement than there was with White Castle and the Harold and Kumar film.