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.
"You too can have a body like mine."
I have trouble with passwords among other things.
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.
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
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."
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
That's not gonna stop them--all it takes is a few bribes for these local authorities.
Generally, it's best to instead take bribes for nice low-profile illegal activities that won't cause the public to march on your house and set fire to your lawn.
Besides, they want the authorities to reject this. Why pay people to advertise on tombstones when you can get twice as much exposure for free just by having the idea shot down and widely reported?
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
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
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...
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
Our game is a hit
But our ads are a bust
Someone you trust is one of us.
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
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
Shouldn't that be +1, Undertaken?
They that would sacrifice their
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.
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.
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.
Hey, some people really do like to wander around graveyards... ;) Seriously, it can be pretty interesting. I enjoy it myself, though I haven't been to one in a while. However, it's only really interesting with older graveyards, so I doubt this marketing tactic would work on me very well.
;)
I suppose in fifty years or so, I might spy an ad for Quake IV buried behind some weeds in a spooky old boneyard...
DennyK
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 |
"They can have my joystick when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers."
Shadow Man 2 for Playstation 2 will begin shipping to North American retail on March 7th.
-- null
"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 can see the ad for the Wheel of Time game now...
NONE CAN ESCAPE THE LORD OF THE GRAVE!
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...
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.
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.