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Video Game Advertising Reaches New Lows
Anonymous Coward writes "The Guardian is reporting that Acclaim is attempting to purchase advertising space on gravestones of the recently departed in order to promote its new game ShadowMan 2. This certainly takes the encroachment of commercial messages on public space to new levels." I understand RockStar is looking for a molotov cocktail partner...
Well, ok, maybe they said they wanted to buy space on graves, but let's face it, it wouldn't happen (unless Eminem's mum died I guess). It's just good publicity - hey they've just pulled in a few thousand nerds if nothing else!!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3
:^)
And, as mentioned in their news for the comic, this itself is old news. They've since taken up the cause of promoting a Irish lad who has been waiting in line for Turok 2. Why? Only the boy himself could know, apparantly.
Ryan Fenton
Last posted to Slashdot in March. Same article.
I dunno, the way I see it, the person willing to sell billboard space on a grave is really the one commiting any form of 'wrong'.
When I die, if my family can make money off of my gravestone, I say have at it. If it were against my wishes, and my family did it anyway, I'd be mad at them instead of being mad at the company that wanted that spot.
Nobody blames the RIAA when somebody 'sells out'.
"Derp de derp."
The phrase "pop-up advertising" could take on an all-new meaning...
~Ahem~ Ok. I'll go home now.
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They have been talking about this for at least two years. I seem to remember them talking about the same thing for one of the Resident of Evil games. This is obviously just a publicity stunt where they will do maybe 5 or 10 to get themselves in the media and get exposure for their lame game without having to pay. The company should just learn from its mistakes. The last time they tried this they didn't make it into a single newspaper except for one or two articles online, and I doubt if it will work this time. Maybe if they are lucky they will make it on Larry King Live or Crossfire with Wolf Blitzer, as this is the kind of thing that could potentially drive up ratings a notch. I wouldn't take it too seriously.
.. but the advertising is already working. I doubt they'll even get it on headstones. Someone will make enough fuss to prevent it. But all the while, guess what, they're getting free advertising off this fuss. Now everyone on Slashdot knows about the game. People reading the news will know, eventually more people will go, "Hey did you hear about Acclaim, they're trying to advertise video games on graves."
Thats the advertising they want, they could care less about having a little plaque on a grave. Seriously, how many people are going to see that headstone other than family members and grounds keepers? The pay off is in the shock and hype. We're feeding it right now.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
I can't believe the number of sites that have fallen for this. The amount of game players that'll see an ad in some corner of a graveyard is rather miniscule compared to the amount of people who'll read about all the hubub on thier favorite geek or regular news site. When Acclaim backs off the idea as they were planning to do all along we'll all know all the initimate gory details of Shadow Man 2 because we've read dozens of articles about their "despicable advertising plan", now who here can say they knew there was a Shadow Man 1? Not me.
Bad publicity is better than no publicity at all.
This has less to do with the video game company and more to do with advertising in general. In order to get heard above the increasing din of pitches and advertising, companies are resorting to ever-increasing and controversial tactics.
Today I sat through 13 *previews* and 8 ads in the movie theatre. More than 35 minutes of captivity in the theatre alone. Now the broadcasters want to devote the lower quarter of my screen to advertising, I caught a cable station (TNN) doing pop-ups for American Express and Time-Warner cable just won't leave me alone about their AOL high-speed access.
The issue is that the guilty parties have to make more money each quarter to keep Wall Street off their backs. Wall Street better get ready for a consumer revolt, because I'm getting tired of it all.
You think that's bad?
Try this!
(Mostly work safe -- strange for rotten.com)
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
As I was driving along recently, I noticed there was no advertising in roadside gutters. All that bare concrete screaming for attention. Looks like Acclaim now has achieved that, metaphorically.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
i cant believe you guys fell for this.
... its a shame that in the majority, games are rewarded with mainstream publicity only when they are offensive or go for outlandish publicity stunts like this, instead of being innovative and well designed.
a company releases a second grade tomb-raider-but-with-dead-people ripoff, destined to disappear into the archives of me-too crap gaming, and to try and save themselves on the way down, they come up with something that will offend all the right people and get them all sorts of publicity even in places where gamers really arent part of the target market.
they could have saved themselves the trouble and just gave the lead character a massive pair of boobs.
read the article if you have to, see it for the cheap publicity stunt that it is, move on, and hope that this game doesnt become more popular than it deserves
acclaim want to make you their bitch. maybe it worked.
erm... *everyone* knows that carrot-top does CALL-ATT commercials. does that mean i will ever use that service? hell no. on principle, i might add.
it's not really "free advertising", it's more like "free bad publicity"...
p.s. i have to say, though, i did see ONE funny carrot-top commercial. incedentally the little f*ker wasn't in it (thank god). it was a Spaceghost commercial where he was supposed to interview carrot-top etc. catch it on the cartoon channel sometimes.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
What happens when the game is out of date? Imagine walking thru a cemetary in 30 years, and seeing ads on Gravestones for 'Mary Kate and Ashley: Sweet 16' or 'Ecco The Dolphin'
It's bad enough in modern day, when actual bill boards get outdated, (IE bill boards for Politicians still up months after the end of the election, or Movies which are already past the cheap seats)
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
My friends would hack the display to read "All your base are belong to us", of course.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
You know, I'll bet that kid who commited suicide after an Everquest binge was sponsored by... Nevermind. That was too easy ;)
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The best place for advertising would be on the dollar bills themselves.
I mean, they're buying the government anyway - why not be honest about it?
. This sig unintentionally left blank. I meant to put something here, but I'm busy.
My new monitor is made obsolete already.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
We think hospitals will love this idea, so we've patented it. This signals a sea-change in American maternity wards. Five years from now all newborns will be sporting ads on their foreheads by default. If a parent is sufficiently opposed to the idea, they can pay $5 to deprive their child of this opportunity to participate in capitalism at its finest.
You know, it's OK for the British to ridicule Americans for our butchering of the language they invented, but when they butcher it it's just sad.
cause I loved destroying the pepsi-golem on level 3. It gave me the mountain dew key which unlocked the doritos-door... you get the hidden points if you ride the camel past the marlboro to meet Benson by the Hedges. Unfortunately my Palm Pilot cannot defeat my Playstation2, though I still have to level-up my Gamecube, where it incubates as a Pokemon, then emerges as an x-box.
As in March 2002...
U TF -8&q=%2B%22acclaim%22%2B%22tombstone%22%2B%22adver tising%22
/., but jeeze, 4 months?!?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=
Yeesh, I know there's a delay between when stories are suggested to
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I'll be more than happy to sell them space in advance. Once I'm dead I don't really care what's written on some stupid piece of granite sunk in the dirt above my casket. My wife and kids might think differently, but hey... it;s my frigging death. Sheesh, get a life, family.
So just send me the check. I got a vacation coming up and I could use the extra bucks.
I'll take one of those ads on my headstone in a heartbeat. Rather, lack of heartbeat.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
This happened three months ago, but I still haven't seen a copy of the game or heard anyone talk about it. This publicity stunt is so contrived and stupid that it is probably barely better than no publicity at all.
The entire world probably reacted the same way I did - they thought, "Wow, the game must be baaa-aaaad if Acclaim is having to pull a trick this cheap to sell any copies" and proceeded on with their lives.
I like a little advertising, it can enhance the realism. But it's very easy to take it too far (see MAC and Me for a good example of when a movie takes it too far), or to pander to the company.
Imagine how cool it would be to drive the weinermobile in GTA3, but Oscar Mayer probably would make it so you couldn't run over pedestrians in it.
I got into a conversation about advertising limits and as an absurd, extreme case someone suggested Coke agreeing to pay for a new born's college education in exchange for tatooing their logo on the inside and outside of the baby's eye lids. Why waste every blink?
What frightens me is that at the time it was meant as a joke, but I could almost see people considering this. A life time of walking subliminal ads and a gauranteed lifetime customer.
I don't think we'll ever see how far the advertisers are willing to go, we'll only see how far we're willing to let them.
In marketing, there's no such thing as bad publicity!
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Googled this because it sounded familiar. Someone tried to publish it on K5 (http://www.kuro5hin.org/poll/1016650972_LbdXJFhi) in late March, just a couple days after some of the online gaming sites caught it. More recently, according to Media Life Magazine (http://www.medialifemagazine.com/news2002/jun02/j un24/3_wed/news5wednesday.html), the program was ended after the death of the Queen Mum. Apparently "deadvertising" suddenly becomes tacky when a centenarian on the public dole kicks it.
He told me they would not be doing this. This was after the last Slashdot story at the last GDC (a day before the game was widely distributed). The Guardian doesn't mention any names so unless someone finds where Acclaim said this I'll file this under "how accurate is the Guardian?"
If I recall correctly, this company used this same stunt to gain publicity for ShadowMan 1. Perhaps they didn't create enough of a stir last time, I want to try again.
Shockwave Flash movies are the greatest thing to happen to non-sequitur humor since Japan.
A spokeswoman for the company, which bills the game as a "journey to the Deathside", said: "It's a dark, gory type of game and we thought it was appropriate to raise advertising to a new level."
I agree with her that it's a new level, but I don't think they'd be raising it to that new level.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
The latest Disney licensed character's need something to make them happy. Unscramble the letters to find out what they need! : HAPYP MAEL.
Taking "Disney licensed characters" to mean "Disney's Pinocchio" (yes, Pinocchio was around long before Disney; that's why I'm specifying a likeness), and "HAPYP MAEL" to descramble to "HAPPY LAME", you get this picture and this story. I have to wonder what kind of Tool thinks this stuff up.
Will I retire or break 10K?