Slashdot Mirror
EA Comes Under Fire for Shady PR Stunts
EA has come under heavy fire lately for some deliberately shady PR techniques. You can't argue with the result, however, that has pretty much everyone (including us) talking about it. The question is: will extensive discussion, and the resulting widespread anger that seems to accompany it, actually help their game sales? Stunts have ranged from their "win a date with a booth babe" contest to paying game site editors a faux "bribe" to fit with their sin motif. "Outraged Christian bloggers, complaining female and LGBT gamers, editors being sent checks made out directly to them — all of this makes for delicious copy, and much of the gnashing of teeth seems to be centered on the fact that the gaming press continues to fall for the contrived controversy to give the company exactly what it wants: coverage. The campaign has been childish, daring, and borderline tasteless. Writing checks directly to game writers is cheaper than advertising on a site, with a much better result."
all of this makes for delicious copy, and much of the gnashing of teeth seems to be centered on the fact that the gaming press continues to fall for the contrived controversy to give the company exactly what it wants: coverage.
Submitter and the editor didn't actually see the ironic thing here?
For that matter I didn't actually had heard or read about this game, but thanks to slashdot now reporting about this, I think I will just google it. Just to know what it is about. Maybe I even buy it - after all everyone is talking about it. Good work Slashdot!
So what kind of game it is? Does it look good? What features are there? Is it fun? Is there multiplayer, and how is it? Is it fun to play with friends?
In the latest chapter of this fun tale, EA has finally decided to simply send editors of prominent gaming sites checks for $200. The point? If the checks are cashed, the gaming press is greedy. If they're not, the gaming press is wasteful. "By cashing this check you succumb to avarice by harding filthy lucre, but by not cashing it, you waste it, and thereby surrender to prodigality. Make your choice and suffer the consequence for your sin," the included note stated. "And scoff not, for consequences are imminent." The sin theme remains, if nothing else, on-topic.
This has to be one of the first times money has been sent directly to reviewers and editors with the hope that the story is broken publicly, and that's what makes the stunt so devious; of course it's going to be written about. Joystiq cashed the check and donated the money to charity, Kotaku posted video of their check burning. Without having a list of sites that received the faux bribe, it's impossible to tell if anyone actually cashed the check and kept the money.
Cheapy D, who runs the popular deals site CheapAssGamer, weighed in on the check. "Kotaku charges an $8 CPM (cost per 1,000 banner impressions) for their standard advertising banners. Their news post about this PR stunt will likely surpass 40,000 views," he explained. "To err on the safe side, let's say the total cost of the check and fancy box is $300. Since [the post's author] burned the check, EA basically spent the equivalent of a $2.50 CPM for a front page news post on Kotaku. That is an incredible value. Nice job, EA Marketing!"
This sounds like a fun stunt. And now it continues on slashdot too. Someone is going to get a nice christmas bonus!
The hell you say!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"Outraged Christian bloggers"?
Boy, remind me not to get on their bad side! They may pray me to death with their eerie powers...
Trolling is a art,
It got posted to the front page of slashdot, to be discussed endlessly. Total direct cost to EA to do this - $0, assuming ScuttleMonkey wasn't a recipient of one of the $200 checks.
I wonder if there might be a better place for creative, unconventional thinking, for risk taking, and for the willingness to not water down an idea because it might offend someone. Oh, at EA? Nevermind!
The current economic model for games means that there's a few huge winners, and a lot of games that ultimately lose money. In this environment, the selective pressure is massively against smaller independent studios. A small studio has to publish a hit every time, and this is becoming nearly impossible to do because of the expense involved in making a game with modern graphics. There's only a few success stories, and many failures. EA, on the other hand, can cash in on it's big hits and can afford to finance a variety of game projects, some of which will fail. Still, they want to make money : so EA game projects are going to be lower risk sequels whenever practical.
It's basic economics that created EA and gave it all it's power. We can hate them for what they are, but that doesn't change anything.
Why, its horrible that they are sending out money, and hot babes, and... wait, where can I sign up?
Bill Hicks sums it up quite nicely:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo
Who cares what they think. If it isnt "The War on Christmas" its "Creationism" or stuff like this. If there's any group whose opinion I couldnt care less about its this one.
This is all just political correctness gone mad. As much as I think these things are borderline distasteful, companies and people should still be able to do them. The overly religious and overly feminist opinions arent really affecting EAs bottom-line, its just making press and letting people who dislike EA have something they can also whine about.
Heaven forbid we allow adults to do such things or have games with some nudity. Funny that slashdot is in an uproar over the lawsuits over hot coffee, yet PC crap like this also makes the front page.
I've RTFA, and they don't even tell us which IRC Network!
CtrlAltDel covered this nicely
[off topic rant]
Could somebody in charge of this site please read a book on programming and then fix the site. I can't stay logged in half the time in any browser and pretty much nothing works right under IE. (And no you can't play this "IE doesn't support standards" card. This site fails validation.)
[/off topic rant]
It sounds to me like EA has some madly-ambitious marketing executive who gets paid based on the number of sales, so he has authorized any wacky stunt imaginable to drive sales to their target audience (young men).
If additional sales could boost your yearly bonus check by $1,000,000.00, would you give a shit if you "offend" someone? No. Money talks, and it does so a lot louder than angry bloggers.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
They staged something at E3? It's cute and a good technique. Considering you get the odd Cosplay at E3, why the hell not...
They paid writers to write about it? Isn't that like... their job? If someone pays you money to write something, you write something! I only consider Bribery truly immoral if its to commit an immoral act. To write? Writing isn't immoral under any circumstances, you can write as much as you bloody want and it won't hurt anyone physically, and if its hurts them in any other regard its their own fault.
Seriously, I'm not a fan of EA or anything, but people are making it to be a contraversy because they WANT it to be a contraversy. I mean, God forbid SOME marketing executive realized that when something goes Viral its free advertising...
this is outrageous. Please, don't fall victim to this EA marketing ploy. It is unethical and EA should be shunned for this.
Please, as a show of unity against this marketing scheme, please send me all of the $200 checks. Once I have received a substantial amount of them I will take these checks and show EA where to shove them. It's the only way we can get our point across.
If you didn't get a check and would like to make a donation to the cause, please feel free to send that to me as well.
GAMERS UNITE!
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
They are marketing a game called Dante's Inferno and they are having fun with the deadly sins. This is just good marketing, plain and simple. People objecting need to get their funny bone tweaked.
Seriously. I think that although it could have been done *better*, this has been a fantastic marketing scheme. And to be honest, I don't really care if the Christian bloggers are freaking out, they're overreacting.
While I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, this stunt projected a view of your target demographic as lustful heterosexual males, when in reality a larger and larger portion of the gaming population are women and LGBT people.
I'm pretty sure a lesbian would be happy with that reward too. I guess they could have had two male models on hand for a gay guy/female winner, but to portray it as anti-homosexual is pretty unfair.
Not totally related but - why would you even make a 'gay gamer' site - do tastes in games really vary that much with sexual orientation? Seems like his whole job is built around being controversial and 'different'.
In theory, the best response of the media and industry should be the timeless wisdom of the net: "Don't feed the trolls". Ignore the faux protestors. Throw away the checks. Disregard the stupid "contest".
Alas, however, the mere fact that we have to keep repeating "Don't feed the trolls" is proof that EA will come out on the winning side of this, because the majority of fools in their target demographic either (A) enjoy being trolled, or (B) don't recognize a troll when they see it.
The only proper response is to allow their trolling to fall, and fail, unnoticed. Their game doesn't work unless others play along.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
and now that EA has grown a sense of humor, it's kind of tempting. The fake protesters idea is hilarious.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
I don't know about you guys, but I don't even notice advertising. I'm a bit interested in this story because of the marketing techniques they're using - I'm not interested at all in their games, btw. With there being so much noise and promotions out there, to get your message across these days you have to resort to things like this.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Quick ! Tell me where I can sign up for that !
Just found out it was nothing but a PR stunt. I was hoping for the free dinner in Vegas. Sadly, now all I have is the memory of having lustfully slept with dozens of beautiful women who work for EA. Rats.
I wonder if anyone has actually done the research to find out if the old adage 'any publicity is good publicity'.
Marketing seems full of these 'of course it is true!' rules that they never bother to find out if they are actually, well, true. And some of the biggies are not.. for instance, throwing sex into an existing series usually results in a drop of sales/viewers, not a gain.
Then again, they would probably keep doing it anyway. The above example also applies here since even though at this point the numbers are out there and known, many marketers and execs STILL think that sexing something up will lead to larger profits.
I really do not think advertisers actually think through the effects they have.. only how to convince the people above them that they had an effect. Since no one bothers checking, it really just comes down to force of personality and ability to sell yourself to people like you, i.e. your bosses/clients.
If their contest required you to commit acts of lust on ANY booth babe at the event, that is problem. Especially if general workers in those booths got caught up in these lustful acts. Ironic when out of the other side of their mouth they are claiming that the industry needs to clean up it's misogynist ways.
Their marketing ideas worked astoundingly well when measured w/ the "any publicity is good publicity" stick. But if anyone bothered to RTFAs what they have done is morally reprehensible. A bribe is a bribe whether you admit to it and dress it up as a stunt or not. Having people pretend to represent a group they do not is not right either.
Maybe someone should put on an EA polo start passing out free EA games at NAMBLA events so members can pass them on to those they lust after.
I hope no one else follows EA's lead on this or we could be in for some really annoying and offensive "advertising" stunts in the future as the bar will be continually raised.
those who receive the checks do whatever they do with the check WITHOUT REPORTING ON IT IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER.
If it doesn't generate press they're going to stop doing it.
I heartily approve of these stunts. In fact, I wish it would happen a lot more.
We have already seen 'astroturfing' being done by political organizations to fake grassroots support for candidates, political parties, and political issues. The more of this blatant abuse we see, the more skeptical the world will be of these fabricated events.
I realize I'm dreaming here, but maybe someday, people will learn to mistrust what they see and hear in the 'media'.
Best regards.
'EA has finally decided to simply send editors of prominent gaming sites checks for $200. The point? If the checks are cashed, the gaming press is greedy. If they're not, the gaming press is wasteful.' ..Donate your checks to an art scholarship fund, or some sort of constructive charity/service. No waste, no greed!
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
What if an editor who received one of those checks just cashed it and immediately ceased writing about any EA product? Forever? (S)he would enjoy monetary benefit and would avoid conflict of interest. Meanwhile, EA would have screwed themselves.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
complaining female and LGBT gamers Wait... why are the "L" and "B" gamers complaining? Can't they win a date with a booth babe too? In fact, if they could just have male and female booth babes, couldn't you make everyone happy?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
EA is doing this since... well, I think they are pretty much defined by those methods.
I know that at least five years ago, the German Game magazine Gamestar was the only one not to have a story on some EA game, because they refused to rate it above 90% in order to get access to “exclusive” images etc. I think they even wrote about how EA offered them a pre-written “test” to print practically verbatim.
But this is not the only area where they are shady. If you remember the lawsuit, where the wives of EA programmers (or should I say “code monkeys”) sued EA, because their men never came home. Apparently, the internal rule was, to work until at least 8 PM, and never have free weekends or ask for holidays. If you would go home on the weekend, your boss would tell you, not to ever come back.
I also remember that everybody from Bullfrog (don’t dare to not remember them! ^^) quit the company, to found a new one, as soon as they were bought by EA. That company was again bought by EA. And that time, still 60% of the employees did quit on the spot.
Then their whole process of making games — from my perspective as a game designer — is just disgusting. It’s just like those Hollywood plastic fantastic default movies with ten writers. To them it’s just a production process. No heart, no soul, no free creativity. You just create a mass-product. Never a piece of art, how it should be. They are an insult to the whole business, dragging the reputation of us all down with them.
Now you’ve got an image of what kind of company EA is. Microsoft’s ethics are a freakin’ joke, compared to EA’s.
I wish I would be exaggerating.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
ScuttleMonkey must have cashed his check!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
This means EA wants us all to steal the game right? Hurray Sin!
As a general rule, the level of fun is directly proportional to how much it pisses off fundamentalists. Reminds me of a sign in a Nevada road-pub: "Eat, drink, and be merry[1]; for tomorrow you'll be in Utah".
[1] "be Mary" for you crossdressers out there.
Table-ized A.I.
I went to the game's site to take a look.. and being honest it is VERY rare for me to pay attention to adverts of any kind.. Well played EA (that's likely the only compliment you'll get from me)
The Christians are just pissed that their "moral" outrage seems to so consistently coincide with extremely popular titles.
So much so, in fact that marketing firms are now going so far as to stage 'faux Christian outrage' in the hopes that the outrage itself is the thing that contributes to the hits. This of course must be very annoying for the Christians who were hoping that the world was actually listening to what they were saying. It turns out that marketing departments haven't really been listening to the Christians at all, but instead -- happily noting the simultaneous occurance of increased revenues with the angry mobs of yammering Christians.
Which is as it should be of course. Trying to ram one's morality down the throats of others is generally regarded as poor form.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
donate the amount to charity in your name and drop EA a note to say thank-you :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
all of this makes for delicious copy, and much of the gnashing of teeth seems to be centered on the fact that the gaming press continues to fall for the contrived controversy to give the company exactly what it wants: coverage.
Submitter and the editor didn't actually see the ironic thing here?
FTFA:
No matter how upset a few groups may get, this has been a successful way to market the game; we're very much aware we're falling into the trap ourselves. The question is a simple one: are we sinking to EA's level, or is it the other way around?
But you know, no need to read the article on slashdot or anything...
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Is it actually a problem with anyone that EA pulled off an incredibly clever marketing stunt? Unadulterated evil is pushing the bounds of hyperbole, surely. They are making a game about the Seven Deadly Sins and exploiting Christitan groups and portals of informartion at the same time. Personally I find it brilliant, and it has definetly gotten me hyped about the game. Writing a final on Dante's Inferno in college was one of the most awesome literatry challenges of my life, I can't wait to see someone attempt to take it past the written medium into the interactive, it was impossible enough to work as a play! I wonder how they are going to go after the others? Pride, Greed, Sloth, Lust, Wrath, Envy, and Gluttony. Hiring beautiful women to attend parties for their CEOs? The possibilities here are ENDLESS. I would love to be handed a slate this large to market. I am also curious if they have the balls to include modern figures in their depection of the punishments in Hell? So many possibilities for endless enjoyment!
E - A - Sports - It's in the mail
How is sending those cheques shady? They didn't ask for a review or a mention on the website in return. Nothing was stopping those people from cashing the cheque and then doing absolutely nothing, or even writing a post on their website (or even just a letter back to EA) like so: "I received a cheque in the mail today from a company for no reason. I cashed it and bought some groceries. Thanks for the donation to my nutrition needs." The End.
The editor gets some free money without keeping it 'secret' and thus feeling guilty or something, and EA doesn't get the plug they wanted.
Geez people need to learn to laugh. It's only a bribe if you ask for something in return.
Anyone else remember how that company bit the dust in '04?
Hype is only useful in the long run, if there's something worthwhile following it. People have a tendency to get jaded with it rather quickly, too. This is probably going to end up as a lot of money wasted when it comes down to accounting.
Cool guys over there. No bullshit.
That tells me all I need to know. When I find a game I might be interested in, if I see EA was involved I won't buy it. Fool me once.
...is there a guarantee that it will go at least as far as second base?
The real question is why are all these people getting bent out of shape over the 'commit acts of lust' contest?
Yeah, you are gay, bi, or just some sort of feminist who is offended by anything with a penis. Whatever. The contest is just asking for you to take a picture of yourself with a booth babe. That's it. Take a freaking picture.
Now, last time I checked, a lot of people take pictures of booth babes. in general, its a pretty acceptable practice (except in England, where cameras are only used by terrorists...) that has been going on for years. Now, you can complain that there isn't equal representation of 'booth beefcakes' (or whatever else you might want), but that really has nothing to do with EA's contest, does it? You might be a transgendered feminist lesbian hemaphrodite, all you have to do is stand next to a booth babe and have your picture taken. IS THAT REALLY SO AWFUL?
Pretty much anyone complaining about this PR campaign are idiots in my book.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I always knew that I was justified in pirating EA games... any other company I will give them the benefit of the doubt and buy the game if I want to give it a try.
Heres some press for you, Electronic Arts: FUCK YOU. You ruined Maxis, you ruined Mythic, and all you can really do is make shitty sport games. I want you, as a company, to die.
I can't really comment on the overall sleaziness of this technique without having seen pictures of the booth babes and/or "Lustful acts". Please provide this information so I can wh...er....whine about how outraged I am!
But seriously....how much were they paying these Booth Babes? Sitting there around a bunch of smelly horny nerds that have been encouraged to be even more obnoxious than usual....and having to go out on a date with the most obnoxious one has to be taxing for any woman.
leslie lamport wrote latex, which is a macro package
sitting on top of tex.
As offensive as they may be, these PR stunts are pretty well thought out... I'm gonna go find out what this game is about now :)
I'm sick of hearing about 'outraged christians'. The christian religion, and all of its dark consequences (including the indoctrination of children - a form of child abuse) outrage me, but I don't spend my time trying to restrict the actions of the christianity cult. I'm sure the sky fairy worshippers would be outraged if I did that.
Game press being bribed? As in they are not being bribed enough already?
If certain high-quality traditional game publications and certain bloggers striving for high journalistic standards are to be believed (and I don't entirely buy this, but I say it's highly plausible and probably true to some noticeable extent), game journalism is already getting plenty enough of real bribes, thank you very much, and game publications that just print slightly tweaked press releases and are easily impressed by generous treatment in expos etc. should not need any additional fuel to the fire.
Is it actually possible that this plan is going to backfire and the journalists don't even pause to think why they've been bribed? Would the irony be that they'd just cash it in, write a "buy the game now, yawn" story, and not think about it in the slightest? Would they see this as business as usual, and not as a marketing effort?
But most importantly, will the aforementioned high-standard journalists ask these same questions? Will we ever see truly reformed game journalism all around?
Electronic Arts are the quintessential evil corporation, populated by soulless, commercialistic, bean-counting demoniacs. They might intend these sorts of stunts to be a parody of their public image, but in reality, they're just confirming what we already know.
As rabid as most of the pro-FSF crowd on this site are about Microsoft, that is more or less the way I feel here.
Burn in Hell, EA. Some of us still haven't forgotten what you did to Richard Garriott...or Spore, for that matter.
There is a difference between viral marketing and stupidity, and there is such as thing as bad publicity. The fact that a major player such as EA would rather not only do things morally wrong but piss off major parts of the customer base just to get people's attention shows how desperate they are (and perhaps much of the gaming industry is).
Why is it that whenever some over-sensitive PC-ified professional grievance monger (like everyone at 'gay gamer', a hilarious site that points up their differences to scream about people who point up their differences) sees anything involving women that they don't like, they dismiss it as 'sexist, misogynist, and exploitive'? It seems our standards for these terms have fallen incredibly far when 'winning a date' with someone qualifies, seeing a woman dressed in revealing clothes qualifies, participating in a beauty contest qualifies - what isn't 'sexism, misogyny, and exploitation' to these tiresome people? Surely this whole thing was embarrassingly juvenile. But give the identity politics nonsense a break. Advertising is objectifying and exploitive. That's the whole point.