Game marketing fail
Jan. 20th, 2011 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
athenaltenaSo I heard about this yesterday:
Dead Space 2 is going to be very, very violent and gory. Most of you reading this know that the upcoming sequel to 2009's sci-fi survival horror games is not going to be for kids. As it turns out, publisher Electronic Arts wants to show that it is very aware of this fact by showing footage of the game to typical non-gaming moms.
At least we think that's what these moms are watching in a new TV commercial that popped up this weekend for the game. We don't actually see what they are seeing; we just see their reactions and hear their comments which, as you might imagine, are not complementary. EA is using this to basically say, "Hey, your mom won't like it which means it's going to be awesome!" This idea could backfire, however, if some mainstream news reporter makes an issue of perhaps having this "M" rated game appeal to kids via this TV spot.
The guys in the linked article hit on the main problem I had with it the more I thought about it, mainly, that if you're young enough that you care what your mother thinks about a game you're playing you're probably too young to actually buy it and play it because you're under 17, and most places flat out won't sell it to you if you try to buy it. It's juvenile, and it really doesn't do the games industry any favors to cater to the lowest common denomonator with the whole "LOL your Mom hates it so you're going to love it!" tone of the whole thing.
Oh yeah, it's also kind of sexist and plays up the whole "LOL women don't like violent games!" (considering my favorite game is Team Fortress 2, where 9 out of 10 deaths involves you exploding into cartoonishly bloody chunks, I beg to differ, as do about half of any given group of gamers because women are, in fact, about half the market despite what these marketing bozos seem to think), but that's a whole 'nother can of worms.
I just realized this is the second time in as many days I've used the words "juvenile" and "marketing bozos" together in a rant. Seems to be a pattern, doesn't it?
Dead Space 2 is going to be very, very violent and gory. Most of you reading this know that the upcoming sequel to 2009's sci-fi survival horror games is not going to be for kids. As it turns out, publisher Electronic Arts wants to show that it is very aware of this fact by showing footage of the game to typical non-gaming moms.
At least we think that's what these moms are watching in a new TV commercial that popped up this weekend for the game. We don't actually see what they are seeing; we just see their reactions and hear their comments which, as you might imagine, are not complementary. EA is using this to basically say, "Hey, your mom won't like it which means it's going to be awesome!" This idea could backfire, however, if some mainstream news reporter makes an issue of perhaps having this "M" rated game appeal to kids via this TV spot.
The guys in the linked article hit on the main problem I had with it the more I thought about it, mainly, that if you're young enough that you care what your mother thinks about a game you're playing you're probably too young to actually buy it and play it because you're under 17, and most places flat out won't sell it to you if you try to buy it. It's juvenile, and it really doesn't do the games industry any favors to cater to the lowest common denomonator with the whole "LOL your Mom hates it so you're going to love it!" tone of the whole thing.
Oh yeah, it's also kind of sexist and plays up the whole "LOL women don't like violent games!" (considering my favorite game is Team Fortress 2, where 9 out of 10 deaths involves you exploding into cartoonishly bloody chunks, I beg to differ, as do about half of any given group of gamers because women are, in fact, about half the market despite what these marketing bozos seem to think), but that's a whole 'nother can of worms.
I just realized this is the second time in as many days I've used the words "juvenile" and "marketing bozos" together in a rant. Seems to be a pattern, doesn't it?
