EA Encouraging Playing Hooky from Work?

WebGangsta writes "Electronic Arts has proclaimed August 10th to be National Madden Vacation Day. Why? That's the day that MADDEN 2005 is being released, and they want everyone to stay home from work to play football all day. They've even gone so far as to publish fake jury duty summons and sick notes for you to give to your boss." I'd think the giant Madden logo on each form would be a dead giveaway, but they're still fun to print out and adorn your workspace with.

Reminds me of something

[Killjoy_NL]

a sig someone on a bbs had

"Used up all my sickdays, calling in dead"

Loved that one :D

Re:Reminds me of something

[drinkypoo]

I used to have a coworker who would call in blind. "I just can't see coming in to work today..."

It's like visual crack

[Lovedumplingx]

My brother and I got Madden 2004 a few months ago and since then neither of us have gotten goddamned thing done when we're at home. It's like some ridiculous visual crack. I may have to quit my job for Madden 2005.

Why would you do this?

[Mike Hawk]

When Sega Sports ESPN NFL 2k5 is already out and the superior game?

Re:Why would you do this?

[zuba_inverse]

I thought that was the one with the bugs in it?

Re:Why would you do this?

[Rethcir]

Only in MP.. they're patchin it. Single player is great.

By the way, I'm trying to see if i can hook up my xbox to my PC (windows xp) so I can get on xbox live. I have an Intel Anypoint 10mbps phoneline network card(aka Broadcom iLine - really flaky drivers on XP unfortunately) which i use to connect to my downstairs computer and then to a DSL connection, and an ethernet port on my mobo which i'd like to use to connect to the xbox. Any ideas on how to configure the ethernet port to connect to the xbox and s

Re:Why would you do this?

[MBraynard]

Try the network bridge again. On the back of my last PC setup I had 4 NIC - spare computer, friends computer, XBL, and DLS in.

Re:Why would you do this?

[EddieBurkett]

When Sega Sports ESPN NFL 2k5 is already out and the superior game?

Well, you don't know its the superior game until you've played Madden, do you?

I'll concede that 2K5 is probably the better game. I have that and Madden '04, and I think Madden will be hard pressed to prove itself better this year.

But unless 2K5 is much worse than Madden (which I would say is impossible), how can you justify spending $50 + for Madden vs. $20 for ESPN? The only way I can think its worth it is if you are THAT excited

Re:Why would you do this?

[CapeMonkey]

It's entirely possible you just hate ESPN Football. Not me, personally I'm not as fond of Madden. Been playing the Sega Sports version since NFL 2K1 on Dreamcast, unless you count NFL 95 for Genesis.

Rats

[NanoGator]

My boss reads Slashdot. Watch, that'll be the day I really am sick.

August 3.

[2megs]

Any geek worthy of the word knows which game he'll be missing work for in August.

Doom 3, baby!

Re:August 3.

[hibiki_r]

Quite the opposite. We'll all have to spend the day working to be able to afford both the $55 game and the $600 Video Card Upgrade

Re:August 3.

[RealityMogul]

Any geek worthy of the word will have already gotten approval for "misc. system upgrades" weeks earlier and will be playing deathmatch on the corporate network all day. DUH!!! =P

Re:August 3.

[geminidomino]

Eh, I have to put in my vote for Star Ocean 3... or is that September?

How about "Madden is $20" Day?

[superultra]

Sorry EA advertising agency, this pales in comparison to as Sega's NFL 2K4 Beta-7 [beta-7.com] campaign.

So lame advertising gimmicks are newsworthy now?

[darkmayo]

and these aren't even as good as the fucked up gimmicks Acclaim has been doing. Come on now don't forget the "Stuff that Matters" part.

Calling sick august 10th? of course!

[hsoft]

But that will not be for madden! It will simply be your 8th sick calling for doom 3 (aug 10 - aug 3 - weekends = 8)

Re:Calling sick august 10th? of course!

[hsoft]

oops 6th calling.

Karma or very cool coincidence?

[cmdrwhitewolf]

With Madden 2004 coming out in the same month as DOOM 3, I *know* my >sports freak boss likely won't be in on that day - Can you say DOOM 3 LANPARTY?

I just called EA

[Foo2rama]

You know what I just called over there and it seems that almost everyone is at work... POSERS!!!

Why?

[IMarvinTPA]

But I'm already going to be on my 7th day off! If I get brave enough to touch the computer, I might order some underwear online since by then all the ones I have would be ruined...

Why do people bother telling me that I'm paranoid when I'm in the middle of a FPS? THEY ARE OUT TO GET ME!

Marv
(PS, Doom 3 comes out on the 3rd.)

The question is...

[FortKnox]

... what will EA do if all THEIR employees call in sick???

Clarification on this question...

[Demon-Xanth]

...using the forms they printed out or not?

helpful answer to articles posed as questions

[dan_bethe]

To answer the question posed in the article's title, "yes".

How's this different from any other day?

[bluemeep]

The people I know that play Madden (or any other sports titles) never go to work anyway. They'd just look suspicious about it if they tried to give me an excuse other than "Dude, chill."

You know it's going to happen

[ALeavitt]

Someone, somewhere, is going to try to pass one of these off on his boss. He will summarily be fired. He will sue EA for either coercing him to miss work or for providing what he thought was a valid excused. God bless the US legal system.

Re:You know it's going to happen

[Ramses0]

Hey, if you're already training Neeraj, Ravu, and Dilpreet as your replacements, you might as well make the end run, play some football, and go for the Hail Mary of the U.S. legal system and jury awards. :^)

--Robert

Now there's an agreement...

[Axem]

Does this happen to anyone else? I click on the link, then the some agreement comes up. Okay, then I see it's a PDF, so I want to decline. I click Cancel and it comes up anyway.

Not much of an agreement is it? =P

vacation day

[linuxgnuru]

My older brother's work is declaring November 9th a vacation because more than half of their employees will be "taking a sick day" to play Halo 2.

ea day off!

[andy_fish]

Hmm, I think what EA is saying is that they're giving all their employees the day off on August 10th! That's the impression I get anyway. Have fun, EA employees!

User Agreement

[blacklily8]

Hmm...I clicked on one of the forms and got this really scary user agreement that said I couldn't copy, distribute, transmit, semaphore, or read it aloud without violating EA's proprietary rights. The buttons at the bottom said "AGREE" or "CANCEL," so I hit "CANCEL." Then the pdf showed up in my browser anyway. So...Does this mean it's all fair game? If not, I'll put away my flags now.

Re:User Agreement

[johnkoer]

Same thing happened to me, I clicked cancel out of pure habit and boom the thing still popped up. They either have some really lazy programmers, or the manager felt noone was going to read it anyways.

Part-Time Sports Fans

[alfredhayes192000]

I can't wait until August 17th when Madden 2004 drops another $20 and I can get it for dirt cheap. Been doing this for many a year now. Yes, I don't get the "new" game, but I do get a very good game for very cheap. As I don't get a lot of time to play video games, new ball physics or face engines really don't matter to me.

These things really work!

[weeboo0104]

They've even gone so far as to publish fake jury duty summons and sick notes for you to give to your boss."

I just gave one of these to my boss and he told me not to bother coming in the next day or the day after that. Isn't that awesome?!

Oh...crap.