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."
Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Submitter and the editor didn't actually see the ironic thing here?
For that matter I didn't actually had heard or read about this game, but thanks to slashdot now reporting about this, I think I will just google it. Just to know what it is about. Maybe I even buy it - after all everyone is talking about it. Good work Slashdot!
So what kind of game it is? Does it look good? What features are there? Is it fun? Is there multiplayer, and how is it? Is it fun to play with friends?
In the latest chapter of this fun tale, EA has finally decided to simply send editors of prominent gaming sites checks for $200. The point? If the checks are cashed, the gaming press is greedy. If they're not, the gaming press is wasteful. "By cashing this check you succumb to avarice by harding filthy lucre, but by not cashing it, you waste it, and thereby surrender to prodigality. Make your choice and suffer the consequence for your sin," the included note stated. "And scoff not, for consequences are imminent." The sin theme remains, if nothing else, on-topic.
This has to be one of the first times money has been sent directly to reviewers and editors with the hope that the story is broken publicly, and that's what makes the stunt so devious; of course it's going to be written about. Joystiq cashed the check and donated the money to charity, Kotaku posted video of their check burning. Without having a list of sites that received the faux bribe, it's impossible to tell if anyone actually cashed the check and kept the money.
Cheapy D, who runs the popular deals site CheapAssGamer, weighed in on the check. "Kotaku charges an $8 CPM (cost per 1,000 banner impressions) for their standard advertising banners. Their news post about this PR stunt will likely surpass 40,000 views," he explained. "To err on the safe side, let's say the total cost of the check and fancy box is $300. Since [the post's author] burned the check, EA basically spent the equivalent of a $2.50 CPM for a front page news post on Kotaku. That is an incredible value. Nice job, EA Marketing!"
This sounds like a fun stunt. And now it continues on slashdot too. Someone is going to get a nice christmas bonus!
Re:Marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess it was money well spent (Score:5, Insightful)
Marketing... (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if there might be a better place for creative, unconventional thinking, for risk taking, and for the willingness to not water down an idea because it might offend someone. Oh, at EA? Nevermind!
Outrage! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Outraged Christian bloggers" ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Outraged Christian bloggers" ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Drop Christian and you have "Outraged bloggers" in general. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the keyboard is as dull as a blunt pocket knife.
not the whole company (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds to me like EA has some madly-ambitious marketing executive who gets paid based on the number of sales, so he has authorized any wacky stunt imaginable to drive sales to their target audience (young men).
If additional sales could boost your yearly bonus check by $1,000,000.00, would you give a shit if you "offend" someone? No. Money talks, and it does so a lot louder than angry bloggers.
Clever marketing, plain and simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:EA doing something sleazy?!?!?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Gay Blogger (Score:5, Insightful)
While I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, this stunt projected a view of your target demographic as lustful heterosexual males, when in reality a larger and larger portion of the gaming population are women and LGBT people.
I'm pretty sure a lesbian would be happy with that reward too. I guess they could have had two male models on hand for a gay guy/female winner, but to portray it as anti-homosexual is pretty unfair.
Not totally related but - why would you even make a 'gay gamer' site - do tastes in games really vary that much with sexual orientation? Seems like his whole job is built around being controversial and 'different'.
EA Marketing: Trolling for Lulz and Profit (Score:3, Insightful)
In theory, the best response of the media and industry should be the timeless wisdom of the net: "Don't feed the trolls". Ignore the faux protestors. Throw away the checks. Disregard the stupid "contest".
Alas, however, the mere fact that we have to keep repeating "Don't feed the trolls" is proof that EA will come out on the winning side of this, because the majority of fools in their target demographic either (A) enjoy being trolled, or (B) don't recognize a troll when they see it.
The only proper response is to allow their trolling to fall, and fail, unnoticed. Their game doesn't work unless others play along.
Re:Outraged Christian bloggers? (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize the bloggers are upset because EA FAKED the protested of their own game and blamed it on christian groups. Most of the 'christian bloggers' probably didn't care about the game or even know it existed until they were slamed for a protest they had nothing to do with. For once I think they actually have something to gripe about, after all the fake protests lead to people thinking exactly what you just posted, when in reality the bloggers were not the ones protesting.
Re:not the whole company (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah, it's just the natural progression when your creative talent realize they can make more money for less work by transferring to the marketing department. You really don't need many writers and such to throw together the formulaic BS story for Flashy Graphics Sequel 9.
Instead of looking at it cynically, though, I think we should all be very excited. Here is a company, formerly known for selling over-priced, often crappy games, that has decided to give away their best work! There's no need to actually buy their games when you can play Media Circus for free! More of an interactive movie than a video game, but still a blast!
Re:Outraged Christian bloggers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Marketing (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. It helps them so they don't have to write great games, and just keep churning out the medeocre sludge that EA's trademark stands for.
Re:The reason for EA's existence (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a self-inflicted malaise as far as the independent studios are concerned. There is absolutely no requirement to use "modern graphics" (whatever that means, I assume you are talking about ridiculously detailed models with megazillions of polygons). That is because there is absolutely no direct relationship between game play and the graphics quality. Some of the most popular games have graphics reminiscent of the 1990s or even 1980s, while some of the greatest bombs sport fancy 3D engines with programmable shaders, deformable environments and what not.
In fact this whole obsession with graphics to the exclusion of everything else seems to me very much like a hardware vendor instigated mass psychosis, helped along by the likes of EA and others who wish to achieve a strangle-hold on the gaming industry by setting up massive, artificial, budgetary "barriers to entry" for competitors. Which also happens to be a pre-requisite to cartel-forming, creation of oligopolies and finally monopolies.
Re:I guess it was money well spent (Score:5, Insightful)
But getting a check from Knuth means you found a bug in LaTeX. There is genuine pride in debugging a piece of software like that. Being a video game blogger? Not so much.
I'll be honest... I'd cash it and then not comment about it. Maybe I'd send a private e-mail to EA thanking them for their generosity and informing them how I feel compelled not to comment on this game because of the clear conflict of interests involved.
Re:Outraged Christian bloggers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps considering that EA's stunt caused you to come here and bash Christians their displeasure with EA's stunt is not as baseless and hypocritical as you suggest?
Hypocritical would be EA protesting about something violent (a war perhaps?) that the Christians (hypothetically) agree with and the Christians getting up in arms. I could not, for example,get a bunch of white southern guys, all put black-paint on my face, make a bunch of NAACP banners, and go protest the fictional arrest of some African American while acting acting as offensively stereotypical as possible and then claim African Americans are being "hypocritical" when they get outraged at my stunt.
Why I think this is no good... (Score:1, Insightful)
If their contest required you to commit acts of lust on ANY booth babe at the event, that is problem. Especially if general workers in those booths got caught up in these lustful acts. Ironic when out of the other side of their mouth they are claiming that the industry needs to clean up it's misogynist ways.
Their marketing ideas worked astoundingly well when measured w/ the "any publicity is good publicity" stick. But if anyone bothered to RTFAs what they have done is morally reprehensible. A bribe is a bribe whether you admit to it and dress it up as a stunt or not. Having people pretend to represent a group they do not is not right either.
Maybe someone should put on an EA polo start passing out free EA games at NAMBLA events so members can pass them on to those they lust after.
I hope no one else follows EA's lead on this or we could be in for some really annoying and offensive "advertising" stunts in the future as the bar will be continually raised.
Re:not the whole company (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably less someone getting paid based on number of sales, and more getting paid based off how much impact the people above the exec thing they had.
I've seen execs rewarded for horrible sales simply because they convinced their bosses/clients that it 'would have been so much worse if I had not done XYZ'.
How is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
EA is doing this since... well, I think they are pretty much defined by those methods.
I know that at least five years ago, the German Game magazine Gamestar was the only one not to have a story on some EA game, because they refused to rate it above 90% in order to get access to “exclusive” images etc. I think they even wrote about how EA offered them a pre-written “test” to print practically verbatim.
But this is not the only area where they are shady. If you remember the lawsuit, where the wives of EA programmers (or should I say “code monkeys”) sued EA, because their men never came home. Apparently, the internal rule was, to work until at least 8 PM, and never have free weekends or ask for holidays. If you would go home on the weekend, your boss would tell you, not to ever come back.
I also remember that everybody from Bullfrog (don’t dare to not remember them! ^^) quit the company, to found a new one, as soon as they were bought by EA. That company was again bought by EA. And that time, still 60% of the employees did quit on the spot.
Then their whole process of making games — from my perspective as a game designer — is just disgusting. It’s just like those Hollywood plastic fantastic default movies with ten writers. To them it’s just a production process. No heart, no soul, no free creativity. You just create a mass-product. Never a piece of art, how it should be. They are an insult to the whole business, dragging the reputation of us all down with them.
Now you’ve got an image of what kind of company EA is. Microsoft’s ethics are a freakin’ joke, compared to EA’s.
I wish I would be exaggerating.
Re:Outraged Christian bloggers? (Score:5, Insightful)
The mind boggles. Do you seriously believe that because some Christians are vocal all Christians agree with them? Or that because some black people behave like stereotypes that it's fair to say that all black people are like that?
Re:Clever marketing, plain and simple (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. Staging fake protests undermines the legitimacy of people who are actually concerned about an issue. Were the people who have been interrupting the town hall meetings around healthcare legitimate, or were they just paid for by the marketing departments of big pharma? Are big pharma marketers good marketers, who just scumbags who would take a buck regardless of the effect is has on our country?
Personally, I think you're confusing "notable" with clever.
Frankly, I fed up to here with the notion that "if it gets results, it must be okay." In the same way I don't buy from companies that send out spam, I've stopped spending my dollars on companies whose marketers do this kind of shit. EA, I can say I noticed you for all this.
and I think you suck....
Re:"Outraged Christian bloggers" ? (Score:3, Insightful)
...except that more people will read THIS post than any christian blog.
Re:The reason for EA's existence (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet there IS a correlation between graphics quality and the number of people willing to shell out $50 for the game.
For a disconcertingly large number of gamers, graphics quality is an indicator of game quality when making purchasing decisions -- especially for people who buy games for other people to play (parents buying for their kids, for example).
It's been true since day 1, graphics have always sold games. I believe we're at the point where the relative increase in graphics quality now is outweighed by gameplay factors, but that's just me and some others... and I don't spend more than $20/yr on games. So why would the studios care about me?
Re:I guess it was money well spent (Score:3, Insightful)
Sins are a slippery slope. If I get a check that's personally addressed to me, I'd consider that either a gift or a bribe. Bribes are illegal. Gifts aren't, though you're beholden to report them to the IRS. There's no greed in taking the money. The only greed is in reporting it publicly for your own benefit... which also benefits EA. Thus, the only guilty parties are (indirectly) EA and (directly) the people who blogged about it so they can rake in advertising dollars.
I suppose I'm guilty for commenting in this thread... but since I won't see a dime from either EA or Slashdot I'm clearly not guilty of greed.
Re:The reason for EA's existence (Score:5, Insightful)
So charge less?
I am buying the new monkey island this weekend.
That is not modern graphics, neither are the penny-arcade games.
Quite frankly $50 is too much for any game no matter the graphics. For those I wait a month till it is $40.
UFO:AI is one of the best games I have played in years and is free.
Re:The reason for EA's existence (Score:4, Insightful)