Slashdot Mirror
Gravestones Advertising Video Games?
An anonymous reader writes "In an insane bid to drum up publicity The Guardian tells of Acclaim Entertainment who are seeking to enlist the help of the recently bereaved, well the poorer ones anyway, to help promote their latest game." My favorite comment is a spokesman for the
Church of England who said they wouldn't allow it saying "There was enough fuss with plastic flowers in churchyards."
Anyway, I just found this really surreal.
Well, why not?
I mean, its not like the person is going to be offended by it.. they are dead, they dont care.
no
"You too can have a body like mine."
I have trouble with passwords among other things.
How low can some people get?
Oh, six feet, apparantly...
Jeremy Baumgartner
This, I fear, is what happens when people take being fragged in Forsaken far, far too literally.
This really won't take off. Cemeteries will most likely put a ban on the gravestone advertising, as it would really detract from the visiting experience -- even if it wasn't on the gravestone you're visiting.
mailto:<?=implode("@", array("chris", implode(".", array("php", "net"))))?>
I think that they should also put ads on the gravestones of first posters...
If Acclaim was able to put their adds on gravestones they wouldnt get much benefit out of it.
People that go to graves are usually not young and even if they are they usually associate the experience with sad feelings.
Who would want to be reminded of that when playing a game?
Thats one of those marketing tricks, where the purpose of the whole excercise is to get denied and get in the papers.
Yeah I smoke pot, but this is really fucked up!
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
First I wasn't fast enough to get an advertisement driven PC, then I couldn't get a dot-com to give me a VW Beetle painted with their colours... now I'm too alive to cash in on this...
back to exchanging goods and/or services for money for me
John Smith
born 11/12/1980
fragged 5/15/2002
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the loss of Frank Jones, who in his life-time, talketh and layeth the smack down like in WWF Smackdown. While troubles seemed to come his way like chairs at the Undertaker, he handled it gracefully, like those fine manager chicks...."
Fun stuff. Liven up any Eulogy...
JoeLinux
This seems amazingly appropriate right now after just reading that disgusting article (the article itself isn't disgusting, but Acclaim's advertising intentions are):
:: Welcome To The Revolution.
I've been targeted right out of the market.
I've had it. I can't take any more advertising. Television, radio, magazines, billboards, even the Internet for Christ's sake. Everywhere. Why do they keep targeting me? I never did anything to them. I don't even buy anything! They're wasting their time! Fast food makes me feel like shit, soft drinks make me dizzy, candy is disgusting, chips make my stomach hurt, I don't smoke, and any band that has ever been advertised anywhere sucks unequivocally. I eat tortillas and vegetables, I drink tap water. I ride my $40 bike for entertainment. I buy a new pair of Dickies at the army navy store every year and I get all my other clothes at Costco in 3-packs. My car works fine, I use my Internet connection for long distance, I've had the same boots for three years and re-sole them when they wear out. As far as booze goes, well, as long as it's wet...
Read the rest here.
m o n o l i n u x
This really is going too far. This is not just insulting to the one buried beneath the gravestone, but it is offensive to many of those that are visiting a graveyard.
According to the article,
"However, Matthew Carrington, chairman of the Outdoor Advertising Association, said that any attempt to advertise on headstones would require planning permission from local authorities whether the land was public or private."
That's not gonna stop them--all it takes is a few bribes for these local authorities.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Ultima was a great series until EA got a hold of it and ruined it.
Ver amo cor
PS: When you say "the guardian" wrote it are you talking about a big giant red guy who wants world domination or the english newspaper?
Veramocor
You know, I've always wondered why people didn't sell the walls of their houses to be used as billboards. I guess this article explains it all:
"It is illegal to put any advertising up outdoors without planning permission"
- which is really a pretty good law, I think, since the last thing I want to see while driving down the street to my home is tampon ads in my neighbors' windows.
In the U.S., though, I can't help but think that these laws can't possibly apply to political campaigning, since there are picket signs all over half the lawns in the country every two years or so.
Could politicans use that same loophole to do graveyard advertising? Could I legally replace my great-grandmother's tombstone with one that said, "If I were alive, I'd vote for Nader!"
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
On related news, Sierra is advertising in underwear, Blizzard buys text adds on life-saving medication and Valve buys pays to temporarily tatoo ads on newborn babes.
-----
Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
I am appalled. Is nothing sacred ?!
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
are cooler than heck and should
advertise when it's best to do so on the
side of moving van morrison
I can just see ID software jumping all over the parents of the Columbine-Killers to advertise for fps's
Marketing Manager: Ok team, we need to promote this new product.
Marketing Drone: What's our budget?
Marketing Manager: Nothing. Come'on team, think outside the box!
Marketing Drone: We could propose to do something so ridiculously profane that the media will pick up on it and do all our promotions for us.
Marketing Manager: Hmmm... that's good. Your on to something. But what would disgust people so much as to make a stir in popular media outlets?
Marketing Drone: We could rent space on Harry Knowles' tummy rolls.
Marketing Manager: *gag reflex* Good god no... Less horrific.
Marketing Drone: Ummm.. How about advertising on grave stones.
Marketing Manager: Ok. Leak it to the press.
Marketing Drone: On it. Maybe even slashdot will pick up on it. They are our target audience.
Marketing Manager: What's a slashdot?
Check out my podcast: DreamStation.cc Video Game Show
Man! What a bad taste! I already have enough ads on my life so please dont force me to take more to the other world... This is a fucked up idea, this guys are really sick, i mean, games are games and just that, people goes to the cementeries to remember life, this just dont mix, we are getting closer and closer to those old science fiction books.
Sigs are for morons... Wait a minute...
Jesus Christmas!
:: The Few, The Proud, The Linux Hackers.
Why not just embed a fscking LCD screen into the cement tombstone along with a small camera to identify the age/sex of cemetary visitors? I mean, if you'll go low enough to engrave on the damn things, you might as well go one step further and dynamically change your ads to target specific individuals (i.e. 8-year old girl -- show an ad for the latest Mario game; 15-year old boy -- show an ad for the latest shoot-em-up game; etc...).
m o n o l i n u x
I'm not in marketing, but I always thought the goal was to stick signs and billboards somewhere that LOTS of people would see them. I don't think graveyards fit that description. People go there, quite often only on holidays or anniversaries or whatever, to visit a couple specific graves and then leave. I know of no one who actuallys says, "oh gee, while we're here let's go look at all the other graves." I highly doubt this would become widespread enough that you would be forced to encounter tens or hundreds of advertising graves on the path to the one you were visiting, so the only people seeing one of these posters will be the people who the companies paid to put it there. That sounds like a lot of negative cash flow to me.
You played right into the hands of the marketing dingbat that thought this up. You think they are really going to do this. No, but you just handed them more hits and advertisement to there target market than they would have ever had any other way.
They tricked you, you tricked us, they got the word out. How many people clicked on this, and now know what shadowmanII is, what it is for, and who made it.
Nice job, you should charge them for click throughs....
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
This seems like a really neat idea. I don't understand why people are all in a fuss over it. Dead people don't care what is on their tombstone. And if the family wants to do it, why not? I think it is much more outrageous how much people are expected to pay for funerals and things of that nature.
Good taste has officially died and has been replaced with morbid curiosity.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Acclaim is synonymous with garbage games. Acclaim's exists soley on the principles of licensing and marketing.
/. can't hurt.
They know what they are doing and several thousand impressions of the their latest title via
this is really fucked up.
It's amazing. Even when these sensationalist so-called "journalists" have a legitimate chance to take a slam at an insane move by the gaming industry, they have to step over that line of sane journalism to get just one more ounce of sensationalism. They could very legitimately slam Acclaim for what they're doing, but they have to go over the edge and go after Sony for creating an "edgy advertising culture", as well as the content of the game. Par for the course for Guardian Unlimited...
Somehow if this is "Stuff that Matters" I'd hate to see what DOESN'T matter. I know I'm a troll with this post.... hrm.
"This gravestone brought to you by the fine folks at Microsoft"... (Shudders in fear)
.
Me fail English? That's unpossible!
"Don't eat at Joe's"
Think about it, how many people are likely to see this ad, repeatedly?
is it the target demographic?
I can't see anyone imagining you'd be able to sell these ads for more than a few dollars (no more than 5, I think).
No one would see them, no one who saw them would care,
and, anyone cheap enough to put these on gravestones wouldn't be getting a gravestone,
The ONLY reason I can imagine putting one of these on a gravestone is to spite the dead. I can think of a few people's gravestones I'd like to take out ads on...
Like another poster said, the only object of this is to get it into the news, free publicity.
Parts of the article sounded enough like an ad to surve the advertiser's purpose...
"On the ShadowMan 2 website, the game is described as incorporating "fierce and gruesome" fighting. It involves users playing a New York policeman who has a "living dead" alter ago who is seeking a confrontation with the devil. He has magic and voodoo weapons to help him."
Anyhow, imagining trying to buy an ad in every graveyard in the country...
Disclaimer:The "Human" attached to this account is unresponsible for anything unless it wants responsibility.
I have to belive this is an april fools joke let out of the bag two weeks early. Nobody in their right mind would do something THIS STUPID.
just advertise on slashdot's comments page and piss off the same number of people!
(Sorry, I just had to. An HP ad just plowed down my screen on this pageload)
symetrix. We are building a religion, a limited edition.
It's amazing what you can find on some grave stones
Is this a case of Play Hard, and Play SO HARD, that Play-Till-You-Drop-AND-THEN-YOU-STILL-PLAY-IT-SIX
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
Our game is a hit
But our ads are a bust
Someone you trust is one of us.
The other day I was at the cemetary paying my respects to my dead grandmother when I thought "This is boring. I'm gonna go buy a video game." But I couldn't think of one that I wanted, so I just went home.
c-hack.com |
They're trying to target the new "walking, flesh-eating zombie" audience. I'm sensing commercial tie-ins with Resident Evil.
I quite Like the idea of having just a nice simple:
/.
;)
on my headstone
I didn't think it was possible but I guess you can get lower than spammers!! I think we may have a late entry for the 101 Dumbest Moments In Business!
I stole this Sig
This was in the same issue.
Didn't you get the memo?
Taste in video game advertising died with Daikatana.
How about removable placards on gravestones that McDonald's, Starbucks, or any big company could use to advertise.. for the audience of the sermons of the recently deceased, or for people who casually walk to their beloved ones for a cry on a Sunday afternoon. Or maybe, local M.D.'s could use them to advertise their early-warning cancer detection services, blood tests, MRI scans, etc. Sounds to me like like a major marketing event. Why not park a McDonald's stand right in the graveyard? Don't people get hungry during those things? eek..
Quoth the Raven, "Everquest".
Don't know why that just popped up...
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
A spokeswoman for the company... said: "It's a dark, gory type of game and we thought it was appropriate to raise advertising to a new level."
Who is the target audience here? I wonder how many people are going to say to themselves "Wow, I think I'm going to buy ShadowMan 2 now!" after going to see their mother's or father's grave who passed away a few years back, possibly from being shot to death.
Ya, economy is low and I don't blame Acclaim for trying to be original, but this is plain ignorance. I'd like to kick the person in the ass who thought up this absurd idea, and two kicks to the CEO or whoever put this plan into gear.
Advertisements draw attention to themselves and take it away from other things. When you take attention away from something as personal as mourning the death of a loved one, it's simply rude. There are times to buy a new game and there are times for mourning. They should never intersect.
ObDisclaimer: The first bit of this may seem to wander a bit offtopic, but it'll be relevant by the end. <UsedCarSalesGrin> Trust me.</UsedCarSalesGrin>
I once had my best friend tell me I was morbid and quite possibly insane when I detailed what I want done with my corpse.
It's not all that terrible, I think. For the past three years or so, I've really thought that it would be cool to have a webcam mounted inside my coffin (powerlines and networking cable and all that run to it too, of course). After I die, I want people to be able to log on to a website and check my decomposition.
The University of Tennessee, I believe it is, maintains a forensic "Body Farm" where hundreds of corpses are decomposing in various conditions. It's closed to the public (for obvious reasons), but I think there should be a little more openness in society about the mechanics of death. It's fascinating because it's so secretive. I think by mounting a small light and a webcam inside my coffin, it might give the world a fresh perspective on thanatology.
Of course, maintaining the site would cost some money, and I won't exactly be around to earn any. Thanks to Slashdot, I now know that Acclaim will be the first company for whom I'll do a salespitch. Any other takers?
They that would sacrifice their
There should be advertisements on gravestones for LUNIX! LOL!!!!!
I want a video game on my gravestone! That would be sweet...video games in the afterlife, w00t.
Successful, productive people and slashdot just had an article on 101 dumbest business misteps. Savor the irony.
To each his own i guess. Though, IMHO, it's a bit tasteless. This culture views death a little too seriously for a tombstone to be a billboard.
If i *WERE* to be buried, i'd want to be put under in a photon torpedo tube. Is that geek, or what?
I'd want my vault to be a Sun E5500 rack.
a) like it'll ever happen b) if it did how many young ppl with PS2s hang around in graveyards c) its all just 1 great big marketing crock which has already been said, all the news sites popup with stories about it, if it reaches the tabloids then they really have got free advertising (by the way i did click the link, not cuz i believed it though ;)
{TheT3chfreak}
Another example of how the people who work in advertising and marketing not infrequently have absolute no sense of taste, morality, or dignity.
Some of these guys make lawyers and politicians look like saints in comparison.
This company has no real plans to go through with this, because it's stupid and pointless - how many gravestones do you see in a day? Zero? They would only be advertising to the family and friends of the dead person, and then only on Memorial Day or whatever other anniversary date that they force themselves to drag their asses out to the cemetery.
It's obvious to me (and should be to anyone who isn't a mindless reactionary) that they proposed this so that the news media would pick it up and they could get tons of free publicity. Don't give it them. Fuck them. They want to advertise, they can pay for it like everyone else. My granny's tombstone has a lot of prime space...
...and now for the ultimate camper... (tombstone epitaph)
Generally speaking, one does not anticipate being *Buried* in Britain. Cremation is vastly more common there, and burial in a conventional cemetary is virtually unheard of for the common person.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"If any of you [in the audience] are in Marketing, or Advertising... kill yourselves."
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Don't prejudge; some people might want to be remembered for "hours of unstoppable, hot blazing action".
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Didn't you see the !
The guy was trying to be funny, NITWIT I'm at the cap so mod away.
Then that would assure me that my grandchildren and thier children will visit my grave. Plus the revenue from the quaters will help pay for my spot in the cemertary.
Imagine playing Ghouls and Goblins in a cemetary.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
At least I hope X-10 pop-under don't start appearing on graves.....
www.Beyond7.com Insane modern art water sculpture.
The boundaries of bad taste are really being tested with this.
What makes it worse, is that this game, if good, might be popular for a couple of years. Do these ads come off after a certain amount of time, or will your gravestone be forever marked with an advertisement long after the game is history?
I think there should be a little more openness in society about the mechanics of death.
Agreed.
When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his disciples planned a big funeral. He asked "Why not just leave me on the ground?" They said "Because then crows and kites will pick apart your body."
"So?" he replied. "Above ground, I get eaten by crows and kites. Below it by ants and worms. What have you got against birds?"
c-hack.com |
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BSD is dead, we don't miss him, he was just some crappy nerd program that no one used died 01.01.02
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It got the story on slashdot didn't it? How many other sites covered it? And of course they deny it is a marketing stunt. If they admit that up front, then the story becomes much less interesting. Its just not as shocking when someone admits they just want to shock you.
[news for me, stuff that doesn't matter]
A LOT of people click the links.
Granted they may not have the attention span to read all the words though :) but they would have probably read abouut the game scenario.
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
"They can have my joystick when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers."
Please tell us how you know what ass tastes like.
The phrase:
"You can't escape advertising even when you're dead."
came to mind.
Yet another sig
Video Game cheats, hints a
...after all, only the dead would be bored enough to like Shadow Man.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Shadow Man 2 for Playstation 2 will begin shipping to North American retail on March 7th.
-- null
One of the more interesting morbid articles I have stumbled across lately: Little Men (the subject being a pair of shrunken corpses).
"Mr. Smith loved his family, and enjoyed his work. His two dogs, Yappy and Wappy, were a pride of his. He had great hopes for his children MoonAss, ChunckBuster, and Fillet, hoping they would go on to great deads. His wife of 45 years was the center of his life, kind of like a deadly, evil black hole. He hopes that we can continue his goals of bringing world peace, end poverty, and giving everyone ACCLAIM VIDEO GAMES! THE BEST GAMES IN THE WORLD! ONLY ACCLAIM GAMES TRANSCEND DEATH! Let us pray.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I would say that their advertisement goal has been more than met now because of this article. I had never heard of this game and since never frequent cemeteries I would have never seen it. Kinda funny the way the media works sometimes in that we give the people who are wanting to be heard through weirdness even more attention. My mom always said, that if you don't pay attention to these type of people, they'll get discouraged and just go away.
I can see the ad for the Wheel of Time game now...
NONE CAN ESCAPE THE LORD OF THE GRAVE!
They know (as does anyone with half a brain) that there's no way they'd be allowed to do this.
Yet they hit the bullseye! Free publicity to millions of games playing geeks.
There'll be high-fives in the boardroom of that ad agency.
"He rejected the suggestion it was a cynical media stunt."
If, say, a world champion Quake player gets massive fame and becomes basically identified with Quake, and dies while whichever version of quake he played was still current, then it is appropriate to approach the family and suggest memorializing his quake fanatacism on the tombstone, and offering to pay the entire cost of the funeral, plus however much they would pay for a similar size advertisement in a more traditional location.
One other possibility- if the deceased requested prior to death to put something about a favorite game or game company on the tombstone, by all means allow it.
It all boils down to respect for the deceased. In the first case, you are honoring an acheivement or series of acheivements he/she made. In the second, you are honoring the request of the deceased.
Any other reason, is just disrespectful... and under no circumstances should the family pay for a funeral if the company approached them first.
Assuming the premises of your joke are that you want to get rid of "John.Smith", by moving it to /dev/null you'd end up replacing your null character device with a standard file. This standard file would slowly bloat until the system became unusable or the filesystem got filled up. /dev/null should only be used as a part of a stream, for example in pipes. On UNIX, one does what I presume you meant by unlinking a file, so the command would be rm John.Smith. HTH.
Just went through it... You'd expect a press release about this... not a word on acclaims website about this. This article just seems absurd. There is no way this would actually be done...
I'm hoping that this was meant as an april fools article that just accidentally got published early. Thats what it sounds like...
http://www.elvesontricycles.com/phalex/alex_epitap h1024.jpg
Acclaim is notorious for putting out CRAP games. "WWF Attitude" is the only game I know of that has managed to CRASH my Dreamcast. But this is really, really bad. I'm not going to buy any more of their crap games, either for my DC or for the next console I get.
Let's hope that when the CEO of Acclaim dies he gets an ad for adult diapers on his tombstone. Or worse.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
http://www.elvesontricycles.com/phalex/alex_epitap h1024.jpg
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have a similar request, only
make that a Tomahawk missle and home me in on
Saddam Hussien's ass.
So if anybody with mod points to burn wants to -1 my original comment to hell, have at it.
Cremation is a disgusting method of disposing a body. First it's roasted and burnt until everything burnable is gone. Then the remains are fed into a grinder to reduce the bits of bone and teeth to particles. It's a nasty way to go.
Embalming is even worse. Why would anyone pump preservatives into a body? It's not as though it'll remain unrotted forever.
I think that cremation, embalming and closed-casket funerals are ways for people to pretend that death isn't real. It is real, and it is a fact of life. Corpses should not be destroyed; they were human once. They should not be preserved, but should be allowed to return to the stuff whence they were formed. They should not be hidden, as something to be ashamed of, but given due honour as the mortal remains of men.
John Smith is a process, not a file, since he generated data with every move he made. Therefore, kill -9 John.Smith might be more appropriate.