EA Comes Under Fire for Shady PR Stunts 228
EA has come under heavy fire lately for some deliberately shady PR techniques. You can't argue with the result, however, that has pretty much everyone (including us) talking about it. The question is: will extensive discussion, and the resulting widespread anger that seems to accompany it, actually help their game sales? Stunts have ranged from their "win a date with a booth babe" contest to paying game site editors a faux "bribe" to fit with their sin motif. "Outraged Christian bloggers, complaining female and LGBT gamers, editors being sent checks made out directly to them — all of this makes for delicious copy, and much of the gnashing of teeth seems to be centered on the fact that the gaming press continues to fall for the contrived controversy to give the company exactly what it wants: coverage. The campaign has been childish, daring, and borderline tasteless. Writing checks directly to game writers is cheaper than advertising on a site, with a much better result."
Re:Marketing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:EA doing something sleazy?!?!?!? (Score:5, Informative)
Not in general. On the radio, it's illegal [cornell.edu] unless the payment is disclosed, but that regulation's under the FCC's power to regulate radio. For general websites, newspapers, books, etc., there's no anti-payola legislation.
Re:"Outraged Christian bloggers" ? (Score:3, Informative)
Wow its a Friday night they must all be at home (while their children are with the priest) and therefore have nothing better to do than downmod you :O
Re:Marketing (Score:4, Informative)
You forgot to quote the following from the article: "No matter how upset a few groups may get, this has been a successful way to market the game; we're very much aware we're falling into the trap ourselves. The question is a simple one: are we sinking to EA's level, or is it the other way around?"
So, no, you're not the only one who "gets" it.
Re:I don't get whats so shady about it. (Score:4, Informative)
Even Orwell got this right with "War of the Worlds". It is just that a lot of people tuned in too late for the notice.
Um, War of the Worlds was written by H.G. Wells, and the radio announcer for the famous broadcast was Orson Welles... George Orwell had nothing to do with it.
Re:"Outraged Christian bloggers" ? (Score:2, Informative)
Well, if you RTFA, it says that EA hired fake Christians to stand outside E3 and protest against the game for the publicity (not Christian = cool).
So, for once, the Christian bloggers are outraged for a good reason.
knuth wrote tex (Score:1, Informative)
leslie lamport wrote latex, which is a macro package
sitting on top of tex.