Master Chief ordering take out at Burger King? Solid Snake wearing Speedos? These are just some hypothetical plugs that gamers might be seeing in the near future with the way in-game advertising has grown into a phenomenal industry nowadays.

As far back as the early '90s, we've seen games that have plugged, advertised or even coerced gamers into taking a gander at their real-life sponsors, as well as the products tied-in with them. The full article awaits after the jump!

Bunnyfoot, a behavioral research consultancy has conducted an independent study that reveals a lack of engagement between videogame players and in-game advertising in sports titles. The consultancy announces that their Sponsor Fixation Index (SFI) metric, reveals that there's a dramatic fall in consumer engagement ratings in some of the leading sporting games.

Bunnyfoot claims that the key to their approach is their ability to passively observe and capture gamers' visual and emotional response during gameplay. 120 players participated in their study, all aged 18 and above. Each person was selected with specific regard with their gaming preferences and experience. Players are then assigned to a particular title spread across eight sports. The consultancy then used its measurement tool to monitor player behavior and correlated player engagement and receptiveness with game events and game play dynamics.

The results? SFI scores were comparatively low, especially when in contrast with the saturation of product/brand placement. There were some high scores, but the recall and recognition figures were low. Basically the results demonstrate that there is a poor level of engagement with the advertising in the game and that advertising in games apparently have a weakness capturing consumer attention.

The advertisers' take on all this? Alison Walton, Head of Visual Engagement had this to say:

These results reflect the industry’s concern relating to brand value and return on investment. Understanding consumer interaction at a deeper level of analysis allows us to measure the value of advertising investment.

Perhaps the players are just to occupied with actually playing the game to take time to be amusing by the clever advertising. Yet another example of amazing things you run into when you troll press releases.