La Big Mac

Several thoughts about McDonald’s:

It seems that McDonald’s makes fun of their costumers, take a look at their last commercial video.

Indeed climate changes, point of view changes, culture changes and social changes are equal to stinky fried chicken sandwich. For me it is a little bit too much, I don’t expect McDonald’s to be honest about the quality of their products, and I can totally understand when they try to sell me greasy industrial food by saying that it is healthy and has all the nutritional ingredients I need. But please don’t mess with my ideological issues, and don’t make me believe that by changing my breakfast from a McDonald’s beef to a McDonald’s chicken, I’m going to be a nonconformist or help prevent global warming.

Finding the lost ring is a popular multiplayer web game that combines the virtual and physical worlds. This game began in February this year when a strange package was sent to several people who are involved in the games industry (which also includes educational games). Since then it evolved to a global interaction game that includes hundreds of people all over the world who speak different languages (English, Spanish, Dutch, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese and Esperanto (who speaks Esperanto...?)) and connecting with each other through Wiki and forums. The game will come to an end on August 24^th, the closing day of the Olympic Games. This is an interesting game because it has a very broad background story which contains all sorts of historical and theoretical details. It seems that it caught the public’s attention and people all over the world are connecting with each other, willing to go outside, solve some puzzles, build mazes and even perform some activities inside them.

Well, now I need to push in my big foot and talk about the things that I dislike in this game. First, the game in sponsored (or shall we say invented) by McDonald’s, and this fact is not a hidden secret, the company logo appears at the end of the first movie released, and on the other movies as well. Moreover, McDonald’s is one of the Olympics major sponsors. This small fact does not settle with one of the game’s ideological themes. The game speaks about choices, free will and the fact that every time we make a choice, our path of life changes and we have another branch in our tree like a scheme of untaken choices (“The road not taken”, “Sliding doors” and so on). It is a little bit strange that a discussion about free will comes from McDonald’s, I’m not saying that a company like McDonald’s can’t encourage a discussion about free will, I’m saying that one of the important qualities someone (a person, a company, a corporation) needs to have in life is a little bit of self-awareness. This discussion could have been interesting if it was held in a serious manner, and if it would have brought to the table some real questions regarding free will in a capitalistic world. Instead McDonald’s prefers not to deal with the questions, but to throw an idea, without stating their purpose or making a point, but instead choose to disguise their influence on this game, which in my point of view is a not an honorable thing to do. I have nothing against commercial companies sponsoring cultural events but I do have something against commercial companies trying to pretend their interests are innocent.

Second, at first glimpse the game looks like an underground initiative, something that can be connected to a fringe culture. But then when I took a second look it all seemed too organized, well done and produced. The second look changed everything for me. Suddenly I couldn’t really believe the story because it was too well filmed. In other words, it is made too well, a fact that doesn’t sit well with the fringe or underground feeling that the game tries to give its players. These kinds of games/movies/TV-shows have to have a very reliable storyline, which keeps reaffirming itself. It is especially when the story asks its readers to actively participating in the story. The players have to believe in the story.
Third and last, the story has a few discrepancies in historical facts and dates. That is just a shame, what do we have Wikipedia for?

And to conclude the McDonald’s discussion, try this short game. It’s a very nice flash game that will make you laugh and think about the additional side-dishes you get when you order a “Big Mac”.