You may remember Left Behind: Eternal Forces as the Christian videogame where you are charged with saving souls after The Rapture. The game got a fair amount of press for its controversial content, but now reporters are pointing out this game for another reason - its ingenious advertising strategy. Left Behind will feature music by composer Chance Thomas (who has also done scores for the Lord of the Rings and King Kong videogames), but the true innovation comes in the fact that, at the end of each level the game will feature links to the iTunes Music Store so that you can download any tracks you like.

Currently, it’s not clear whether the game will feature only snipets of longer tracks that can be downloaded from iTunes, or whether the full music will be included in-game. If it turns out to be the latter, one might wonder whether “frugal” users will work out a way to simply extract the tunes from the game libraries. Still, it’s a clever use of in-game advertising and I personally think it sounds much less obtrusive then some of the tactics companies like EA have tried (such as in-game Axe billboards in Need for Speed or Honda Elements that you snowboard through in SSX). Especially with licensed music in games becoming such a phenomena, it’s a wonder a major company like EA hasn’t thought of incorporating links to digital music distribution before!