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Crazy marketing

28 september, 19:24

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First-class designers work on modern games, artists put their vision of the world into them, and together they create original stories with an authentic plot. Therefore, video games have made their way into recognition as the art industry and have strengthened its position in there. However, these are not only masterpieces that you can experience for yourself, but also a multi-million dollar business. It’s no secret that the video game industry brings in $ 150 billion of income a year. Of course, in order to increase profits, it is necessary to increase the audience of interested people as well. Sometimes the race for popularity takes a strange turn, and marketing decisions can sometimes be shocking.

Scandalous advertisements and shocking promotions have accompanied video games throughout their history. Now there is a shocking advance too. Sometimes marketing moves can drop your jaw. Why? You will find many answers to this question below.

Let’s take a look at the already tired publishing company Acclaim Entertainment. Needless to say, its marketing department was famous for its “creative” guys. On the day Burnout 2: Point of Impact was released, they asked all citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain to violate the traffic rules. For the sake of more people’s agitation, they promised that all fines issued by the police would be paid. This marketing provocation was curtailed by the state, and no one was hurt in an attempt to violate traffic rules.

Acclaim has been implicated in another scandalous ad for the Shadow Man: 2econd Coming project. But this time, the connection between gaming and marketing isn’t traceable at all. The campaign‘s highlight was that Acclaimsimply outraged a huge segment of society with a proposal to advertise the game Shadow Man: 2econd Coming on the gravestones of their deceased relatives because the company would cover all the costs of the funeral itself. Self-sufficient families took such a trick with skepticism, but poor people agreed to it, and due to the implementation of the advertising idea into reality, the wave of indignation increased significantly. This marketing ploy was stifled, but the posters on the gravestones still remind of it.

Want to know what other idea has generated the same public outcry as the case of Acclaim? Goat sacrifice. Yes, you read that right – Sonyhas decided to hold a press release for the new God of War in the original style – ancient Greek, like the game’s setting. Everything was in order – costume party, atmospheric scenery – until the real goat‘s corpse was brought in. Naturally, the press, for the sake of which the show was held, made their job very well – a scandal erupted around the event in all well-known news publishers within a day. Sony tried to somehow reduce the damage by withdrawing the issues of various magazines from shelves, but the memory of this “ritual” hasn’t gone anywhere.

While continuing speaking about the gore theme, Bulletstorm is a necessary mention. Right before the shooter’s release, journalists received containers with fresh raw meat, additionally having various human items inside – soldier’s tokens and so on. The developer People Can Flywanted to hint the abundant amount of dismemberment in the game with such a “gift”, and to draw attention to the release, using disgust as a catalyst. Having a similar goal in mind, the London butcher shop Wesker & Sonwas opened in 2012, where the goods were “human” meat – beef or pork, masked as human limbs. Capcomand their Resident Evil 6 were behind this advertising move. In the end, everyone benefited – the game gained the necessary publicity, and the money received for the sold meat was donated to charity.

Television advertising of video games is worth a separate mention, as it makes up an impressive share of examples of “successful” marketing. Let’s just recall the Life is Shortad from the Xbox. Quick recap – a woman in labor pushed too hard, and due to that, the child flew out of the mother like a bullet, breaking the window glass, and went on a long flight. Meanwhile, the child’s body was rapidly aging, and then it finally abruptly crashed into its own grave. The advertising slogan is “Life is short. Play more”, that is, potential users should make up some time to enjoy pleasant things like Xbox. It should be noted that due to its eccentricity, the ad was never launched on TV.

Another instance of “something went wrong” marketing was a TV video promoting Juiced, a racing game. In an advertisement, two teenagers used a controller to force a girl to undress, while making sexist jokes with dangerous sexual violence implication. As it seems, this was an attempt to reach the audience “in the ‘hood”, which the majority of the public didn’t appreciate. And how can we pass by the PlayStation Portablead, where the duel of two children is shown in excessive detail like broken faces and blood. Despite the call for a peaceful resolution of conflicts using a new console, disturbance from advertising remained.

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Sony has often had trouble setting up successful campaigns for new consoles, especially portable ones. For example, the PlayStation Vitahad three such scandalous episodes. First, the publisher tried to illustrate the ability to use the touchpad and touchscreen on the front and back of the console using a drawn woman with an extra breast on her back. Then the company released a video with a sexy female doctor, who encourages people to feel free to “do it”. “It” wasn’t masturbation, as everyone thought, but console games. And the icing on a cake was an attempt to sell a white corpus version of PS Vitausing billboards on which a white woman beat a black one. Guess what analogy the audience easily drew (hint – it’s not Vita’sbody color)?

An interesting thing to note is that the unpopularity of advertising isn’t always caused by its shame, sometimes marketing simply scares or threatens your safety and well-being. Ubisofthas the lead in such matters with two “successful” PR campaigns. First, the publisher hired an actor with a fake pistol to play the spy Sam Fisher, a protagonist of the upcoming game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction, on the streets of Auckland, New Zealand. The actor fully earned his money: he hid behind street elements, pointed a gun at simple passages, and scared everyone as expected. The “spy” was quickly arrested, and the company had to explain itself to the public. Unfortunately, Ubisoftdidn’t learn from their mistakes, because 4 years later they decided to replace the “shooting” with “terrorism”. They thought of reminding the news publisher Ninemsn about the release of their new game Watch Dogs by sending a safe, which suddenly started ticking like a clock. Naturally, panic arose, the personnel were evacuated, and sappers were sent to solve the problem. In the end, there was not a bomb inside, but just a Watch Dogs disc.

The developers of Hitman: Absolution also decided to “scare” users via the Internet, adding a service to Facebookfor sending death threats against the receivers. Yes, it sounds exactly like you thought. You just need to choose a receiver, select a reason from the list of stupid ones (for example, a stench from the mouth), and voila – the receiver gets “Agent 47 will kill you” from you. Fortunately, the social network administration quickly turned off the service and the psyche of people didn’t have time to suffer much.

And the last story for today is neither scary nor outrageous, it is just plain stupid. To create the public’s interest in the new The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, publisher Bethesda Softworkshas announced that they are ready to provide lifetime free access to the company’s games for a couple who will name a child born on 11/11/2011 Dovahkiin. Oddly enough, such a pair was found – so the seller found his buyer.

Summing up, companies often “go crazy” during PR campaigns for their products, however, as the classics said, “black PR is also PR”, so even the craziest ideas from this article drew attention to games, just as promoters wanted.

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