McDonald's Video Game

McDonald's Video Game is a Flash online game published and developed by Italy-based La Molleindustria in 2006. It is described as an "anti-advergame", meaning a satire of various companies and its business practices.

Description
McDonald's Video Game is a parody of the business practices of the corporate giant McDonald's, taking the guise of a tycoon-style business-simulation game. The game presents the player with four views: The farmland, the slaughterhouse, the restaurant and the corporate HQ. Through each of these views, decisions can be made which will affect the fate of the player's company. In the game, the player takes on the role of a McDonald's CEO by choosing whether or not to feed the player's cows genetically altered grain, plow over rainforests or feed the player's cattle to other cattle (a practice known to spread mad cow disease). The player can also choose advertising strategies and public official corruption to counteract opponents of the player's actions.

Some choices within the game, such as the opportunity to demolish villages, clear rain forests, or bribe public officials, paint the corporation in a negative light. These aspects of the game are unflattering to McDonald's, who issued a statement saying that the game "has no association with McDonald's and is, therefore, a complete misrepresentation of our people and our values."

Burger Tycoon
On some websites, La Molleindustria released a version of the game called Burger Tycoon which is exactly the same except that it eliminates all mention of McDonald's such as the franchise logo and a bear replacing the Ronald McDonald mascot. This was done in order to avoid copyright sanctions.

Translations
The game has been translated into nine languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Finnish, Danish, Turkish, Portuguese, French and German.

Theme
The main menu theme is a song titled "Quality, Service, Cleanliness, and Value" by Hamburglers for the Happy Meal album, which was made sometime between 1979 and 2005. The song had a sample from a 1979 TV advertisement "Nobody can do it like McDonald's can".