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."
I don't get whats so shady about it. (Score:2, Interesting)
They staged something at E3? It's cute and a good technique. Considering you get the odd Cosplay at E3, why the hell not...
They paid writers to write about it? Isn't that like... their job? If someone pays you money to write something, you write something! I only consider Bribery truly immoral if its to commit an immoral act. To write? Writing isn't immoral under any circumstances, you can write as much as you bloody want and it won't hurt anyone physically, and if its hurts them in any other regard its their own fault.
Seriously, I'm not a fan of EA or anything, but people are making it to be a contraversy because they WANT it to be a contraversy. I mean, God forbid SOME marketing executive realized that when something goes Viral its free advertising...
Guerilla Marketing (Score:2, Interesting)
Is all plublicity good? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if anyone has actually done the research to find out if the old adage 'any publicity is good publicity'.
Marketing seems full of these 'of course it is true!' rules that they never bother to find out if they are actually, well, true. And some of the biggies are not.. for instance, throwing sex into an existing series usually results in a drop of sales/viewers, not a gain.
Then again, they would probably keep doing it anyway. The above example also applies here since even though at this point the numbers are out there and known, many marketers and execs STILL think that sexing something up will lead to larger profits.
I really do not think advertisers actually think through the effects they have.. only how to convince the people above them that they had an effect. Since no one bothers checking, it really just comes down to force of personality and ability to sell yourself to people like you, i.e. your bosses/clients.
Re:"Outraged Christian bloggers" ? (Score:3, Interesting)
More like EA's competitors write a check to the local pastor of the loudmouth fundie church, he preaches, tells them what to do, and suddenly you have the media bending over backwards for the opinions of these nuts.
Works with pastors giving political endorsements or are we still too naive to accept corruption in the church?
The Christians are just pissed because... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Christians are just pissed that their "moral" outrage seems to so consistently coincide with extremely popular titles.
So much so, in fact that marketing firms are now going so far as to stage 'faux Christian outrage' in the hopes that the outrage itself is the thing that contributes to the hits. This of course must be very annoying for the Christians who were hoping that the world was actually listening to what they were saying. It turns out that marketing departments haven't really been listening to the Christians at all, but instead -- happily noting the simultaneous occurance of increased revenues with the angry mobs of yammering Christians.
Which is as it should be of course. Trying to ram one's morality down the throats of others is generally regarded as poor form.
Re:The reason for EA's existence (Score:2, Interesting)
That is because there is absolutely no direct relationship between game play and the graphics quality.
Yes there is - an inverse one.
Re:I don't get whats so shady about it. (Score:5, Interesting)
They paid writers to write about it? Isn't that like... their job?
They pretty much bribed writers to write favorable reviews. Thats why people started flocking to the internet rather than print for all their gaming reviews because just about all the paper magazines were written to have a favorable bias on some truly terrible games. No one wants to be ripped off when they buy a game, and some publications were even owned by the company that made games (such as Nintendo Power) that even went as far as to put in propaganda through the years of the evils of GameSharks and Game Genies, the evils of old ROMs and why you should always make sure that all of your games had a Seal of "Quality" on them.
Re:Gay Blogger (Score:2, Interesting)
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'.
Um, dude, i really hate to say it but its been my experience that gay people either WANT to be different, or they want to 'stick it to someone', or they want to be part of the "culture" of gay people. I have yet to meet a gay person that didn't fall into one those categories. Im sure they exist, but i've never met one.
Stupid People, Untie! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, you are gay, bi, or just some sort of feminist who is offended by anything with a penis. Whatever. The contest is just asking for you to take a picture of yourself with a booth babe. That's it. Take a freaking picture.
Now, last time I checked, a lot of people take pictures of booth babes. in general, its a pretty acceptable practice (except in England, where cameras are only used by terrorists...) that has been going on for years. Now, you can complain that there isn't equal representation of 'booth beefcakes' (or whatever else you might want), but that really has nothing to do with EA's contest, does it? You might be a transgendered feminist lesbian hemaphrodite, all you have to do is stand next to a booth babe and have your picture taken. IS THAT REALLY SO AWFUL?
Pretty much anyone complaining about this PR campaign are idiots in my book.