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Great Moments in Games PR History
Games Radar has a piece up entitled The Top 7 PR Disasters. Focusing mainly on the last few years, it highlights things like 'All I want for Christmas is a PSP', Hot Coffee, and (of course) Uwe Boll. Daikatana makes number 3 on the list: "Daikatana could have been just another mediocre shooter that passed silently into obscurity, leaving no imprint except a valuable lesson for Ion Storm's developers and a vague bad taste in the mouths of gamers. Unfortunately, Romero and his big mouth had to go and hype the s**t out of it, and as a result Daikatana is blamed not only for sinking Ion Storm, but also for sending Romero's career plummeting from stardom to relative obscurity." Though it's not mentioned on the list, elsewhere 3D realms is owning up to the embarrassment that is Duke Nukem Forever .
I'd say it's the most successful unreleased game ever. Perhaps the greatest moment in PR history.
In before the Sony fans asplode with hate due to the number one gaming PR fiasco of all time.
I don't think you can really argue the top spot. Unless of course you wanted to make it "Sony"
Lucky for Sony, the vast majority of consumers aren't combing internet gaming forums and websites to read about the latest "fun" from Sony.
First, they admit that they were aiming too high with Duke Nukem Forever. And then, in the same interview, they say that they've got lots of new hires and they are increasing the scope of the project to include multiple platforms.
They just don't learn, do they? I bet in the next interview they'll tell everybody that they are switching engines again.
I'm sure everybody's already seen the list, I'm just wondering if it's worth placing a bet of whether humanity will achieve interstellar travel before 3D Realms finishes DNF. I wonder what it would take to convince Fred Brooks to visit Broussard and smack him around the head with a copy of The Mythical Man Month? I'd pay good money to see that.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
...is that Ellen Feiss?!
/thread
Hey, if STALKER and Daikatana were both eventually released, DNF can be, too. I've heard that STALKER is actually not a bad game, either--just that it was way overpromised as far as features... kinda sounds like what they've admitted with DNF, come to think of it.
I know that I'll be buying the PC version of DNF no matter _how bad_ of a game it is. For one thing, it's Duke Nukem, and Duke Nukem 3D was just too good of a game for this not to follow in that tradition (I'm blindly hoping). Secondly, this thing has become an iconic piece of gaming legacy. I bought Daikatana (for $5) and even played a good bit of it. Daikatana had its moments, I'd say! Hearing Superfly cry like a little baby when I stumbled my dumb ass into a deathtrap gave me a pretty good laugh. I hold out _at least_ that much hope for DNF, whenever it comes out.
Honestly, I'm not sure that the whole Hot Coffee thing was Rockstar's fault. Sure, the minigame is stupid as hell, but to Rockstar's credit they didn't put it in the game. Unless you knew what you were doing and since it was rated to adults, it seems that the whole fuss around it was for politicians needing a scapegoat. If Hot Coffee wasn't applicable, they would have used 'Bully' and all the Columbine connotations that it could have contained if the game itself wasn't so Dennis the Menace-like.
Why not Top 10? Unless I miss my guess, Top 7 == Only 7 (or at least, the only 7 that everyone remembers). But then, The Only 7 PR Disasters doesn't have the same ring to it.
Karma police, arrest this man. He talks in math. He buzzes like a fridge. He's like a detuned radio.
I know it's out of their date range, but... selling a game with an inverted, flaming pentagram on the box cover for Christmas. Oh, yeah, THAT went over well...
A friend of mine says he will give up PC gaming once he's finished DNF. To be sure he's able to experience DNF to the fullest, he has to keep his hardware up to date at all times.
Fair point, it certainly isn't in the same league with Daikatana.
Speaking of which, much as I will admit that Sony was as inept as it gets when talking about the PS3, and it did generate its own backlash, I still think Daikatana beats that hands down and should deserve to be number 1. I don't know how many still remember it fully, but the backlash was _massive_. Sony so far got a milder "well, fuck Sony and their console, the Wii (or XBox) is better anyway" reaction, but Daikatana managed to create a wave of pure Sith-like hatred. Suddenly everything that John Romero did, or his girlfriend did, or that he even had a girlfriend, was blown out of proportion and presented like an abhomination of such proportions never seen since WW2, and as the work of the Antichrist.
While Daikatana was a thoroughly mediocre game, maybe deserving a 50% score and to be quietly forgotten, the reaction was such that people had decided it's the worst game ever made, in fact a thorough abhomination of a game, before even trying the demo. (Sucky as that demo was.) People were posting venomous anti-Daikatana stuff and demanding John Romero's head on a pike without even having seen more than a couple of screenshots. (And for that matter, how about paying for a game before having any _demands_ from the developpers?) I've personally known a couple of people who were ranting and raving about what a piece of shit Daikatana was, but hadn't actually played the game or the demo, and in fact refused to even try it.
And speaking of the demo, ok, maybe it's not PR as such, but it was a thoroughly uninspired move on its own. See, most of Daikatana's levels were actually fairly nice. E.g., the ancient Greece levels actually looked pretty good. But it started with some thoroughly uninspired swamp levels, which were, well, ugly and uninspired. Bad move on its own, since the first levels are what gets people hooked or gets them to throw away the game before getting any further. The worst move however, was that those levels were chosen as the demo levels. So even if someone did decide to play the demo, it would only help convince them to _not_ buy the game.
Daikatana wasn't just blamed for sinking Ion Storm, it pretty much _did_ sink Ion Storm. The negative reputation of Daikatana and "Ion Storm killed Looking Glass" part of the backlash, also tainted Anachronox. (Not the greatest RPG ever, to be sure, but not quite deserving the "if it's from Ion Storm it's another abhomination" reaction some people had, either.) Even releasing Deus Ex under the Ion Storm name didn't do much, except create a "yeah, but it's the _other_ Ion Storm" reaction. And I wouldn't be surprised if it still sold somewhat less copies than it would otherwise have.
Basically, sorry, even Sony's handicapped management and insulting interviews didn't manage to create _that_ kind of backlash yet. Negative publicity and resentment, ok, they did cause. But nowhere _near_ Daikatana scale.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
No, the pentagram didn't mean anything. Ultima 8 SUCKED. The game was its own PR disaster. Having played the Ultima series since Ultima III I found U8 to be abysmal, especially in gameplay. I had more fun with -- and I can't believe I'm saying this -- Ultima: Ascension. I treat Ultima 8 like I do Galactica 1980 -- it didn't happen. When I do reference it, I unashamedly refer to it as "Ultima 8: The Arcade Game". I don't think that you could be further off the mark by attributing the pentagram to a bad PR move. Just my two one-hundredths of a dollar.
And, by the way, a pentagram is nothing more than a symbol that has been usurped by the symbol-minded. Same thing with the swastika . Both are millennia old. The swastika, for example, was woven into American Indian clothing before Columbus. It's just a symbol.
People who freak at a pentagram must have a hell of a time (no pun intended) with children drawing stars. "I'm so glad that you didn't put a circle around that star or else I'd have to look on your head for a 666!" "You mean, a circle like this?" {draws circle around star } "NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!"
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
For name of justice I have to say that Daikana was not so bad game after all. First episode sucked totally but after getting into second episode it was freaking good game with lots of variety and great story. Of course it had lots of bugs and it was seriously late. But if you don't care graphics and patch it it's great. :)
:)
And it has 4 games in one. All four episodes feature new weapons, enemies, textures, enviroment, sounds, music etc..
Daikana has faults I don't bring up since everybody seems to be aware of em' anyway. But it also has good points. The game was killed by it's hype. Just like Quake I partitially.
-Seeing the problem is ½ of solution-
8th-place, at worst. I'm going to have a t-shirt made.
Jeff Freeman