Back in the 90s, when we listened to folks like Naomi Klein and Bill Hicks, “advertising” was a dirty word.  Not so today.  For example, by and large, gamers don’t mind seeing ads in their games.  When ads get in the way or slow your Wipeout HD load times, they raise hackles – but if they’re subtle or better yet, if they’re the reason for the entertainment, nobody will complain.

Not many folks got in a tizzy when Jason Rohrer, poster child for sensitive, independent game making, signed a contract to work with ad agency Tool of North America. After all, many indie games live on portals that depend on advertising and sponsorship.  In fact, last June game blogger Rachael Webster had an idea: what if a hot new indie game on Kongregate was flanked by an ad game?  Players would score two ad-supported interactive entertainments, sitting side by side.

So let’s run with this idea a little.  Let’s say the sponsored game and the ad game are connected.  The sponsored game could be a platformer, and when you beat it, you turn to the ad game for a bonus level.  Or the sponsored game could be Gregory Weir’s I Fell In Love With The Majesty of Colors, and the ad game gives you a new special ending where the monster discovers the joy of – let’s make up a brand –  Diet ChocoCola, and he’s so happy he does a little tentacle dance.  A chiptune jingle would not be out of the question.

But let’s go a step farther.  Say that while you’re playing the Diet ChocoCola ad game, you notice a weird code scrolling across the screen.  Crack it, and you get a phone number, which dials a voice mail system, which reveals a secret message: an attractive teenage girl – let’s call her Brianna - has just discovered a conspiracy in ChocoCola’s R&D department.  The company’s top chemists – werewolves, to a man – are creating a soda that will turn us all into lizard people.  Brianna was inches from the smoking gun when wham!  They kidnapped her!  And now she needs you and around five million of your friends to solve a bunch of riddles, math puzzles and geography exercises, in one month, or – well who knows what’ll happen!

That’s right, our simple little Flash games have led us, Drop7-style, into an alternate reality game – a genre that promises surreal and transportative experiences that take a mob to puzzle out.  It’s also a genre that depends on advertising dollars (and hokey premises).  But there’s no time to think about that: we have a comely teenager to save.

Players will swarm the web, searching for leads and solving puzzles as they try to bring down this soda conspiracy.  Clues will be strewn on websites and text messages.  But they’ll also be placed in other games – via advertisements, of course.

Boot up Burnout Paradise, and you’ll speed by billboards for Diet Caffeine-Free ChocoCola  and Cherry ChocoCola Lite, all strewn with crucial, cryptic codes.  BioShock 2 will plant lore tying Rapture to the birth of ChocoCola.  The drink will even get its own subplot on Heroes.  Talk about brand awareness: this company will permeate our consciousness, tangling both our entertainment and our advertisements until art and commerce are entwined like those frogs that mate so violently you can’t separate them without breaking their legs.  You won’t open a soda can without expecting a plot point.  And every clue you get comes with a tasty, refreshing flavour.

All those clues send you to World of Warcraft, where a new '/burrito' command lets you order a take-out burrito.  The delivery guy arrives.  You open the bag.  Sitting right there in the grease and the salsa is a slip of paper – a piece of a map.  Assemble all the pieces, and you see the location of the final clue: a residence in Potsdam, New York.

Frantically, the players of this ultimate ad game will congregate on the spot, and suddenly they’ll realize who lives there: none other than Jason Rohrer himself.  This whole campaign was his idea!  And there’s Rohrer, and he just set Brianna free.  And now they’re handing out cans of ChocoCola to everyone!

Everyone’s happy.  We won the game!  Until someone noticed that Rohrer has slipped out of the party.  Curious, somebody wanders into his house, and notices… there is no house.  It was a cardboard façade with nothing behind it.  Suddenly it all becomes clear: there is no Jason Rohrer.  He’s an invention of an ad agency.  A fictional character.  And worse, he’s a cover for a secret cabal with a dastardly plan to take over Loco Coco Burritos and fill its meat plants with zombies – unless you can stop them.

Get the hot sauce ready.  It’s gonna be a long month.

Chris Dahlen writes about games, music, pop, and tech for a number of venues. You can find him online at@savetherobot.