Some of you may remember when McDonald's UK CEO Steve Easterbrook took a stab at the video game biz last week, relating it to child obesity.

Daily Star writer Paul Vale had a snappy comeback to the McDonald's bigwig saying that the fast food franchise should look at itself first. Read more about this in the full article after the jump!

Over at Smarthouse, they've written an interesting article on sodas and how it affects gamers. It's funny how that works though, since the information they've put in is applicable to most soda-drinkers.

The strangest thing about this article is how soda is presented much like a drug. While specifically mentioning Coke and how there used to be cocaine in it a very long time ago, they may have taken the angle a bit too far, even while trying to explain the problems with having too much sugar in your system. That being said, the article is insightful for showing what happens in one hour after grabbing that soda, but also makes it somewhat alarmist.

For instance, they mention that you take in your daily recommended allowance of sugar within the first ten minutes of drinking that one soda. "You don't immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness," the article continues, "because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down."

Even more interesting here is their description at the forty-minute mark:

Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dialate (sic), your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.

So, are gamers taking drugs? Maybe, but then so is everyone else as far as this article is concerned. The sugar and caffeine crash they talk about here should happen to almost anyone who drinks a soda, but is probably more noticeable in people whose butts are parked around a PC or console, such as ourselves.

Still, it kind of explains why some gamers fall asleep during those eight-hour raids through Molten Core and still don't mind having gaming marathons. Maybe we should get more exercise besides DDR. What do you think?

"The best things in life are free," as the saying goes, and while we're still waiting for it to rain Coke (The drink, silly) and PS3's like mana from heaven, we thought this other news would suffice: Starting January 4, 2007, no further subscription payments will be required to play ArchLord, with December 4 to January 4 being the last billing month for this MMORPG.

As Codemasters Online Gaming">Adam McGowan, Product Marketing Manager for Codemasters Online Gaming had to say about this latest development:

We are extremely pleased to offer gamers the chance to play ArchLord for free. With both the switch to free to play and huge new forthcoming content updates in the form of the free new Episode 2 expansion, we hope to see many more players joining ArchLord, taking their opportunity to raise an army and rule the world.

In relation to this, Codemasters Online Gaming also announced the release of free in-game credits items for both old and new players to to allow them access to the Chantra shop and to help get them started in this MMO.

Players with three, six or 12-month subscriptions are eligible for a refund in light of the new free to play policy, and guys who've just purchased their copy of Archlord without having to pay for a subscription, and can expect to partake of the freebie play when their initial 30 days finishes. Lastly, expect to still pick up your daily dose of updates, including the much-awaited episode two expansion. For more details on this move, click on the read link below.

Hmmm, it seems that over in China, there are MMO Cola wars instead of a next gen console war. You see, China's local online game company The9 said that they have a tie-up with Pepsi for their Guild Wars promo, which will start closed beta testing on the 29th.

The more popular Coke also had its share of MMO tie-ups in the form of gaming giant World of Warcraft. Recently, Coke had a WoW- themed commercial which featured Taiwanese all-girl pop band, S.H.E.

Pepsi also signed a deal with Shanda, another company and The9's competitor, which opted to launch its latest MMO, Magical Land at around the same time. Unfortunately, Magical Land wasn't much of a success, and Pepsi didn't renew its partnership with Shanda after that.

Now, Guild Wars is another thing. Although it's not as massive as WoW, the MMO's quite successful in its own right. Will this partnership give Pepsi an edge in the MMO/Cola wars? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, check out the S.H.E./WoW commercials we found in Youtube, thanks to 477605598 and miaming, respectively.

Check out the other video after the jump - click on the "Full Article" link below.

We think we've posted our befuddlement regarding advertising seeping into our gaming experience before. Anyway, what follows is perhaps the ideal win-win scenario when it comes to the topic of in-game advertising.

Netamin Communications Corp's UBO, or Ultimate Baseball Online, will be implementing the advertising business model in the coming month instead of charging its players for monthly subscriptions. With the aid of a leading in-game advertising agency, players will start seeing ads from leading consumer companies get featured in Ultimate Baseball Online. This will allow characters of non-subscribers to remain intact without level downgrades.

So why is there still a subscription you ask? Well, there will be what the developers claim, "heightened services" available for pay. Leagues and Sponsored Tournaments will have low, one-time charges for participation and prizes. Participation in these leagues and tournaments allow players to be eligible to compete in the annual Best of UBO, which features cash and merchandise prizes. So there's a little something for everyone whether or not you do subscribe.

While some of us here at QJ still can't see how in-game advertising will fit in a game like WoW, sports games are perfect for in-game ads. Some think that ads just plain work for games with contemporary settings, where advertising and billboards blend in instead of stand out. In the case of sports games, the adverts actually add to the credibility of the setting. The ads in Battlefield 2142 for example, are a bit weird, but they sort of fit... sort of.

This also makes one wonder if games like GTA or City of Heroes will be cheaper if players saw the game world littered with Coke, Pepsi, and Calvin Klein ads? Anyway, what other games or genres out there do you think would fit with in-game advertising? Feel free to comment.

The real world is seeping through the World of Warcraft as we speak. And seeping along with that reality are The Benjamins. Lots and lots of it.

Just how profitable is World of Warcraft? A multinational company and household name like Coca Cola, has teamed up with the immensely popular MMORPG, with hopes of selling their brand to the 7 million subscribers of the game. In China, Coca-Cola put World of Warcraft figures on 600m Coke cans and even released a series of commercials that stars Taiwanese superstar group S.H.E. There are hats, T-shirts, a board game, seven novels and a movie in the works.

Vivendi's brainchild has also spawned sweatshops packed with 500,000 people "gold farming" or accumulating in-game currency and selling it. These days a level-60 night elf with “great gear, skills and 100 gold to spend” is fetching for $289.99. Most of these players are Chinese, Mexican and Russian players.

If you're not really familiar with the MMORPG world, you'd think it ridiculous how these enthusiasts have become like a slave almost of the game. Professor Edward Castronova, Comolan’s creator explains the phenomenon as succinctly, "The real draw is the map of meaning the game provides. In the real world if you work in a coffee shop, that has no meaning. In the game if you are told to take this box from this village to this castle because something really important will happen, then that has more meaning than making a latte for some customer.”

It may sound absurd but the general consensus is that the success of the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft lies on men in tights. Damion Schubert, Lead Combat Designer, Bioware elaborated on this phenomenon through a talk he gave at the recently concluded Austin Game Conference titled "Moving Beyond Men in Tights."

"I think that we as an industry are very myopic about what people really want, what they're actually looking for in terms of the innovation side of the industry," says Schubert. Adding that too many people are focused on replicating the success of World of Warcraft, that being revolutionary goes out the window.

He pushes the metaphors further by saying that "WoW is Coke," and unless you have some Pepsi money you can never topple this giant. But the biggest question is how did WoW become a Coke and everybody else a Pepsi? Is it really the men in tights?

Before this goes anymore cockeyed, Sony Online Entertainment game designer, Raph Koster, has narrowed it down to five reasons - combat-oriented, classes, grindtastic, men in tights (of course), and gamey games.

Combat-oriented doesn't necessarily mean that gamers are looking for a new way to whack somebody, but that they are looking for something repetitive. And to quote Koster, "People WANT to play these games for hours and hours a month because this is where they spend their social time."

Classes as Schubert pointed out, makes a lot of sense for the developers. As an example he says if a developer were to add a new skill to a system without class limits, the problem would not be easily solved. "You basically have to compare a billion possible combinations to a billion other possible combinations," Schubert said. "Classes help keep that under control."

Probably the most irreplaceable of all the ingredients that make up an MMORPG are the experience points and levels. Not only does it allow players to know where they are in the food chain, but also the promise of new abilities, fame, riches, and glory that comes along with it.

Men in tights embodies the fantasy genre that majority of MMOs are built on. Schubert expounds on this stating that fantasy is suited to MMO games because it's ideally suited to the player's sense of progression. It can start players out against giant rats and move along to orcs, dragons, demons, and other nastier creatures.

An admitted gamey guy, Koster has this to say to developers, "Make a world, but don’t depend on players finding their own fun. Some enjoy it, but most don’t. In the Sims online, there was a way to find the stuff tat was good — you don’t want users to wade through crap."

If men in tights are really what gamers are looking for, should we stick to the successful men in tights formula? "I'm not saying don't innovate," Schubert emphasized. "I'm really not… but I really want you guys to be sure that you're not over-innovating, that you're not going out of bounds. Be sure that your innovations are things that players want."