You gotta spend money to make money, said some billionaire company owner as he warmed up his house by throwing dollar bills into his fireplace. And no better way to spend your money on a game than to pay your employees, if we were talking about saints. So the next best thing is to advertise your games. Sometimes, these can be as little as a commercial or a Youtube ad, but there are times where they go even further beyond and set up a big event to get people excited. And then there are times where the companies fail at doing that and create more problems for themselves than anyone could imagine. And that is what I am talking about today. Video game marketing campaigns that just failed completely. I can't think of many rules for this list, so screw it. Let us just get into the list.
~#10~
Skyrim, a franchise that was known as one of the most amazing games of the last year and a game people wish would just die already so they can make an Elder Scrolls VI already. But you know it in your hearts and Todd Howard's wallet that Skyrim is here to stay. But there did exist a time when Skyrim was new and people were very much excited for it. And then, the marketing attempt came along. And it involved babies.
#10: 11/11/11 Baby for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Before the game was to be announced, a contest was made by Bethesda to grant people a chance to win free Bethesda games for life. To do so, people would have to name their baby Dovahkiin. Yes, really. But there's a catch. The baby would have to be born on November 11th, 2011, the day Skyrim was released, for the parents to get the rights to free video games. First off, just the contest alone sounds really stupid and unfair, as if they did this just to trick people, thinking that no one in their right mind would actually go through with it. Second, is it really worth the ridicule and bullying the kid would probably face years later due to this. Well, low and behold, a couple actually did name their child Dovahkiin on November 11th, 2011. The babies full name was Dovahkiin Tom Kellermeyer. I just want you to remember that this baby is six years old now. Boy, time sure does fly fast. Granted, the parents did say that the child would have the name, regardless of the contest, due to them liking the name, and that he was given the middle name Tom in case everything inevitably goes to shit. Well I guess that, of all the marketing campaigns, this could have been worse, but honestly, is getting a free copy of games like Fallout: New Vegas and DOOM really worth it... actually, don't answer that question.
~#9~
Dante's Inferno, a God of War clone that, just like every other God of War clone, manages to have a better protagonist than God of War. But jokes aside, it was a pretty fun game, despite being forgotten by EA like they do everything once they screw them over in marketing. That's not to say there was no marketing for Dante's Inferno. Because... there surely was.
#9: Christian Protests for Dante's Inferno
Okay, so there were actually two marketing campaigns for this game. One was with EA bringing in women into the E3 conference and told the audience to "engage in sins of lust with these women", or just shake their hands, as it really was. But nothing caused more of an uproar than when EA started a fake Christian protest for the game. Many people waited outside the E3 building, protesting about the evils of the game and how it is damning the souls of those who play it, and just, in general, yelling at passer-bys that buying the game will get them sent straight to Hell. As stated, EA later admitted that the protestors were hired by them to start the marketing for the game and to get people talking. And boy did it. Preferably, Christians who viewed the fake protest as a very offensive treatment towards actual Christians. Instead of protesting the game, EA was hit with numerous complaints from Christians who were furious over this. And eventually, some Christians did protest the game and demand that it not come out, as it would be better than let EA release it and then pretend it never happened. If anything went to Hell, it was Visceral Studios.
~#8~
This is a special category for a multitude of ads, and I'm sure, at some point, you've seen them somewhere
#8: Sexy Ads
This category goes out to all the advertisements that try their damndest to be erotic with gaming equipment, because if anything should prove that sex sells, it's video games. Let's just go down the list of some examples. Dead Island: Riptide's Collectors Edition containing a bloody decapitated torso with large breasts just for full grabbing. Hitman showing a picture of a woman with a bathrobe... and a bullet in her head. Because nothing is sexier than a dead body. Showing animals having sex with Gameboy Micros. Sega covering up a woman's naked body with Sega Saturn games. And then we get to Sony, don't even get me started on that. When it's not making you uncomfortable with creepy girls and evil baby dolls, it's making you sexually uncomfortable. Using Playstation buttons as innuendos, having the controller look like a pair of legs, barely clothed women on the cover of magazines advertising the Playstation 3, and then there are the horrifying John Carpenter's The Thing-esque creations, from having a women with two sets of breasts on each side of her body, to... A man... with a thumb for a penis.... This was an advertisement for the PS3... I wish I was making that up.
~#7~
Nice to see you again, EA. When you can easily get screwed over by journalists just for the slightest mistake, you really want to kiss their ass harder than an EA employee. So naturally, EA did what they could to market their games while pleasing the journalists. It went as well as you'd expect
#7: Bulletstorm, Dante's Inferno, and Godfather II Mailing
We don't have just one, but three games that all fit into the same category. When Bulletstorm was released, EA sent out to each journalist a piece of raw meat with the games logo on it. I mean, I don't know why. It's a large chunk of meat that was just placed on their doorstep. What if that stuff came out in the summer and was left there all day in the hot California sun. Ugh, I hate to think of that. Next, we come to, yet again, Dante's Inferno, where EA sent a very creepy looking check to the developers to, as they put it, test their greed, sending them a check for two hundred dollars with some skeletons on it. Cool looking check aside, isn't this technically bribery to keep the journalists on their side? Then again, it's EA, why am I surprised. Finally, the Godfather 2 Video Game, and in the mail, journalists found something that finally went to far. They were given a box, containing golden brass knuckles. That's right, EA sent journalists actual weaponry to promote their licensed game. This did not go over well with police as you can imagine and EA did everything they could to get the brass knuckles back. I'm sure that there are still some out there, but I couldn't find any.
~#6~
In a post-9/11 world where terrorism is not really something to take lightly, you think that using borderline terroristic threats would be the last thing to do. Apparently, Ubisoft didn't get the message.
#6: Splinter Cell: Conviction and Watch Dogs Scare
Another tied entry, huh. Well, what happened this time? Let's start with the Splinter Cell scare. A small bar in Auckland, New Zealand was met with this scare when a man with bandages around his hand walked into the bar with a gun, aiming it at customers and passerbys, terrifying them. The police were later called in, and the person informed the police that it was, in fact not a real gun and that he was only an actor. This was all a stunt by Ubisoft to promote the new Splinter Cell game. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but why in the name of god would Ubisoft think this was a good idea in the first place. And apparently, after that, they hadn't learned, as they did something just as bad with the game Watch Dogs. We all thought Watch Dogs was bad enough and then we get to this. A safe was sent to an Australian news station, stating that a message was left on voice mail, yet there was no voice mail. When attempting to open it, the safe started beeping. After that, the bomb squad was called in to pry the safe open, only to find a baseball cap, a beanie, and a copy of Watch Dogs. Weather that's more of a disaster than a bomb, I'll let you decide. The point is, this managed to be worse than the Splinter Cell ad due to having the bomb squad called in for something so dumb. Again, you think they would learn, but obviously, that just didn't happen.
~#5~
PSP... Oh, PSP... You were so badly advertised, weren't you?
#5: PSP
I can't possibly think of one popular PSP commercial that was good. You know it's bad when the least offensive of the one's I'm gonna mention is those god forsaken squirrels. A nut you can play with outside, what the fuck? But that aside, that wasn't the worst of it all. It somehow managed to get worse than that. Apparently some people found the squirrels to be racist. Terrible, yes, but I didn't see it. And then Sony did make a pretty borderline racist advertisement. The new PSP White showed a white figure clutching the face of a black person and standing over them. I'm not one to call things racist or sexist due to ads alone, but.... Yeah... This looks a little racy. Then there was the time Sony hired professional street artists to make some pretty cringeworthy art on the wall of an neighborhood, resulting in the residence becoming absolutely lived and desecrating the art that Sony had placed. But it doesn't stop there, because of course it doesn't. When promoting the PSP through a now defunct website with white rappers that would make Vanilla Ice look like the real Slim Shady, the website was found to be run by an advertising agency, with Sony proclaiming it as "too funky fresh". But, if you think we're done, you are mistaken. It somehow gets even worse! Sony then placed ads around cities, with a single space for a person to stand in and some text, such as placing "Escape from your girlfriend's pointless questions here" at bus stops, or everyone's favorite, placing "Take a running jump here" in subways, where people are more likely to commit suicide. Yeah, those shit squirrels don't seem so bad now, huh? Because of all of this, the PSP died with a pathetic squeal and no one cared, including us.
~#4~
Jeez, EA again? I'm running out of ways to insult them now. Well, let's talk about their failure with the Mass Effect 3 campaign, because what's another way to screw people over. Because the ending wasn't enough.
#4: Mass Effect 3 Space Scavenger Hunt
Oh yeah, you read that right. Before Mass Effect 3 was released, EA had several copies sent into space and would eventually fall back down to earth where it would start a scavenger hunt so that it could be found by people before the game was to release in stores. Not a bad idea, until you remember we're talking about EA, the undisputed king of bad ideas. EA had no way of controlling where the copies would land, and instead of admitting their faults, they just decided to tell people not to bother with the copies anyway. That's EA for you. Some copies were stuck in tries and had to be knocked down with baseballs, others landed in private properties and in wetlands. There was once a situation where a person stepped onto private property to get the copy and the landowner ran up to the kid with a loaded gun aimed at him. Some time later, that same guy was almost arrested for doing this several times just to get a copy of the game to auction off for money. While no one was hurt, there was actual threat to getting this game, as proven when a guy was almost killed for trespassing. And in the end, after all of these trials and tribulations, Mass Effect 3's ending still sucks.
~#3~
You'd think that after the atrocious incident with Splinter Cell, Square would probably not scare people by having a bald guy walk into their house with silenced pistols. Well, they didn't... But they did do something equally as bad.
#3: Hitman Facebook Assassinations
The morning following the near release of Hitman: Absolution, Square Enix released an app on Facebook that would allow people to be able to send death threats to their Facebook friends. This would allow a person to send a hit on a person for any small number of reasons, including, but not limited to, a person's hair color, a person's laugh, and the size of a person's breasts or penis. Yes, I am dead serious about that last one. That is an actual reason to kill a person. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, how in the hell would sending death threats to your friends be successful? It wasn't. This made a lot of people upset on Facebook, and after only a few hours of the app being up, Square Enix took it off, and pretended that the whole thing just never happened. As much of a cheap move as that is, they have not been able to forget about this mistake. And I can assure you, we won't let them.
~#2~
Sony, why the hell do you keep doing this?
#2: God of War Goat Sacrifice
Once again, you read that right and probably were as memorized as you were the space scavenger hunt. Sony started a launch party in Greece for the release of God of War 3. The party started out alright enough, with food and alcohol and conversations amongst the party goers. Nothing too bad, you know, until Sony decided to bring out a dead goat that was sacrificed. You can't make this shit up, people. Actual goat sacrifices for a video game based on Greek mythology. This probably wouldn't have caused as much of an uproar as it did if not for the fact that the images of the Dead Goat were printed and placed into the UK Playstation Magazine for readers to see. This caused a huge uproar and got Sony in a lot of trouble, as you can imagine. The goat was returned to the butcher, because thank god the goat can go back to beating eaten. I guess it didn't need to live. Along with that, over eighty thousand copies of Playstation Magazine were recalled in hopes of getting rid of the thoughts from everyone's minds... It obviously didn't work.
~#1~
... Who remembers Acclaim?
#1: Shadowman, Turok, Burnout, and More
The final entry is, pretty much, a majority of what Acclaim had made, especially in the late 90s and early 2000s. Let's start with Burnout 2, a game that was released at that time, and how Acclaim said that if you sped down the street just to buy a copy of Burnout 2, they would pay for your speeding ticket. They were willing to endanger life over a game. For Gladiator, it wanted the advertisement posters to shoot blood on passerbys. For Virtua Tennis, it wanted birds to be painted like tennis balls and fired at tennis players, because nothing gets me in the mood for a tennis game than animal cruelty. For Turok, it wanted people to name their baby Turok and the first person to do so would get ten thousand dollars. It's just like the Dovahkiin story again, only with Turok, a name that you cannot live down no matter how hard you try. And finally, probably one of the most disrespectful things I've ever seen since EA (I think I've run my course of EA insults for a while) was the promotion for Shadowman 2. This advertisement is notorious in the gaming community for being one of the worst and most offensive marketing campaigns for a game, in where, in promoting Shadowman 2, they would pay families of a deceased relative to allow them to put an ad for Shadowman 2 on their deceased families gravestone. They would actually desecrate graves just to promote a game that wasn't even that good. Well, Acclaim, was it really worth it in the end? Apparently not, because in the end, Acclaim went out of business. Hell, they went out of business twice because after the went out the first time in 2004, they were bought out by another company and then went out of business again and for good in 2010, and none of their games were ever remembered. And you know what, that's okay.
~#10~
Skyrim, a franchise that was known as one of the most amazing games of the last year and a game people wish would just die already so they can make an Elder Scrolls VI already. But you know it in your hearts and Todd Howard's wallet that Skyrim is here to stay. But there did exist a time when Skyrim was new and people were very much excited for it. And then, the marketing attempt came along. And it involved babies.
#10: 11/11/11 Baby for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Before the game was to be announced, a contest was made by Bethesda to grant people a chance to win free Bethesda games for life. To do so, people would have to name their baby Dovahkiin. Yes, really. But there's a catch. The baby would have to be born on November 11th, 2011, the day Skyrim was released, for the parents to get the rights to free video games. First off, just the contest alone sounds really stupid and unfair, as if they did this just to trick people, thinking that no one in their right mind would actually go through with it. Second, is it really worth the ridicule and bullying the kid would probably face years later due to this. Well, low and behold, a couple actually did name their child Dovahkiin on November 11th, 2011. The babies full name was Dovahkiin Tom Kellermeyer. I just want you to remember that this baby is six years old now. Boy, time sure does fly fast. Granted, the parents did say that the child would have the name, regardless of the contest, due to them liking the name, and that he was given the middle name Tom in case everything inevitably goes to shit. Well I guess that, of all the marketing campaigns, this could have been worse, but honestly, is getting a free copy of games like Fallout: New Vegas and DOOM really worth it... actually, don't answer that question.
~#9~
Dante's Inferno, a God of War clone that, just like every other God of War clone, manages to have a better protagonist than God of War. But jokes aside, it was a pretty fun game, despite being forgotten by EA like they do everything once they screw them over in marketing. That's not to say there was no marketing for Dante's Inferno. Because... there surely was.
#9: Christian Protests for Dante's Inferno
Okay, so there were actually two marketing campaigns for this game. One was with EA bringing in women into the E3 conference and told the audience to "engage in sins of lust with these women", or just shake their hands, as it really was. But nothing caused more of an uproar than when EA started a fake Christian protest for the game. Many people waited outside the E3 building, protesting about the evils of the game and how it is damning the souls of those who play it, and just, in general, yelling at passer-bys that buying the game will get them sent straight to Hell. As stated, EA later admitted that the protestors were hired by them to start the marketing for the game and to get people talking. And boy did it. Preferably, Christians who viewed the fake protest as a very offensive treatment towards actual Christians. Instead of protesting the game, EA was hit with numerous complaints from Christians who were furious over this. And eventually, some Christians did protest the game and demand that it not come out, as it would be better than let EA release it and then pretend it never happened. If anything went to Hell, it was Visceral Studios.
~#8~
This is a special category for a multitude of ads, and I'm sure, at some point, you've seen them somewhere
#8: Sexy Ads
This category goes out to all the advertisements that try their damndest to be erotic with gaming equipment, because if anything should prove that sex sells, it's video games. Let's just go down the list of some examples. Dead Island: Riptide's Collectors Edition containing a bloody decapitated torso with large breasts just for full grabbing. Hitman showing a picture of a woman with a bathrobe... and a bullet in her head. Because nothing is sexier than a dead body. Showing animals having sex with Gameboy Micros. Sega covering up a woman's naked body with Sega Saturn games. And then we get to Sony, don't even get me started on that. When it's not making you uncomfortable with creepy girls and evil baby dolls, it's making you sexually uncomfortable. Using Playstation buttons as innuendos, having the controller look like a pair of legs, barely clothed women on the cover of magazines advertising the Playstation 3, and then there are the horrifying John Carpenter's The Thing-esque creations, from having a women with two sets of breasts on each side of her body, to... A man... with a thumb for a penis.... This was an advertisement for the PS3... I wish I was making that up.
~#7~
Nice to see you again, EA. When you can easily get screwed over by journalists just for the slightest mistake, you really want to kiss their ass harder than an EA employee. So naturally, EA did what they could to market their games while pleasing the journalists. It went as well as you'd expect
#7: Bulletstorm, Dante's Inferno, and Godfather II Mailing
We don't have just one, but three games that all fit into the same category. When Bulletstorm was released, EA sent out to each journalist a piece of raw meat with the games logo on it. I mean, I don't know why. It's a large chunk of meat that was just placed on their doorstep. What if that stuff came out in the summer and was left there all day in the hot California sun. Ugh, I hate to think of that. Next, we come to, yet again, Dante's Inferno, where EA sent a very creepy looking check to the developers to, as they put it, test their greed, sending them a check for two hundred dollars with some skeletons on it. Cool looking check aside, isn't this technically bribery to keep the journalists on their side? Then again, it's EA, why am I surprised. Finally, the Godfather 2 Video Game, and in the mail, journalists found something that finally went to far. They were given a box, containing golden brass knuckles. That's right, EA sent journalists actual weaponry to promote their licensed game. This did not go over well with police as you can imagine and EA did everything they could to get the brass knuckles back. I'm sure that there are still some out there, but I couldn't find any.
~#6~
In a post-9/11 world where terrorism is not really something to take lightly, you think that using borderline terroristic threats would be the last thing to do. Apparently, Ubisoft didn't get the message.
#6: Splinter Cell: Conviction and Watch Dogs Scare
Another tied entry, huh. Well, what happened this time? Let's start with the Splinter Cell scare. A small bar in Auckland, New Zealand was met with this scare when a man with bandages around his hand walked into the bar with a gun, aiming it at customers and passerbys, terrifying them. The police were later called in, and the person informed the police that it was, in fact not a real gun and that he was only an actor. This was all a stunt by Ubisoft to promote the new Splinter Cell game. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but why in the name of god would Ubisoft think this was a good idea in the first place. And apparently, after that, they hadn't learned, as they did something just as bad with the game Watch Dogs. We all thought Watch Dogs was bad enough and then we get to this. A safe was sent to an Australian news station, stating that a message was left on voice mail, yet there was no voice mail. When attempting to open it, the safe started beeping. After that, the bomb squad was called in to pry the safe open, only to find a baseball cap, a beanie, and a copy of Watch Dogs. Weather that's more of a disaster than a bomb, I'll let you decide. The point is, this managed to be worse than the Splinter Cell ad due to having the bomb squad called in for something so dumb. Again, you think they would learn, but obviously, that just didn't happen.
~#5~
PSP... Oh, PSP... You were so badly advertised, weren't you?
#5: PSP
I can't possibly think of one popular PSP commercial that was good. You know it's bad when the least offensive of the one's I'm gonna mention is those god forsaken squirrels. A nut you can play with outside, what the fuck? But that aside, that wasn't the worst of it all. It somehow managed to get worse than that. Apparently some people found the squirrels to be racist. Terrible, yes, but I didn't see it. And then Sony did make a pretty borderline racist advertisement. The new PSP White showed a white figure clutching the face of a black person and standing over them. I'm not one to call things racist or sexist due to ads alone, but.... Yeah... This looks a little racy. Then there was the time Sony hired professional street artists to make some pretty cringeworthy art on the wall of an neighborhood, resulting in the residence becoming absolutely lived and desecrating the art that Sony had placed. But it doesn't stop there, because of course it doesn't. When promoting the PSP through a now defunct website with white rappers that would make Vanilla Ice look like the real Slim Shady, the website was found to be run by an advertising agency, with Sony proclaiming it as "too funky fresh". But, if you think we're done, you are mistaken. It somehow gets even worse! Sony then placed ads around cities, with a single space for a person to stand in and some text, such as placing "Escape from your girlfriend's pointless questions here" at bus stops, or everyone's favorite, placing "Take a running jump here" in subways, where people are more likely to commit suicide. Yeah, those shit squirrels don't seem so bad now, huh? Because of all of this, the PSP died with a pathetic squeal and no one cared, including us.
~#4~
Jeez, EA again? I'm running out of ways to insult them now. Well, let's talk about their failure with the Mass Effect 3 campaign, because what's another way to screw people over. Because the ending wasn't enough.
#4: Mass Effect 3 Space Scavenger Hunt
Oh yeah, you read that right. Before Mass Effect 3 was released, EA had several copies sent into space and would eventually fall back down to earth where it would start a scavenger hunt so that it could be found by people before the game was to release in stores. Not a bad idea, until you remember we're talking about EA, the undisputed king of bad ideas. EA had no way of controlling where the copies would land, and instead of admitting their faults, they just decided to tell people not to bother with the copies anyway. That's EA for you. Some copies were stuck in tries and had to be knocked down with baseballs, others landed in private properties and in wetlands. There was once a situation where a person stepped onto private property to get the copy and the landowner ran up to the kid with a loaded gun aimed at him. Some time later, that same guy was almost arrested for doing this several times just to get a copy of the game to auction off for money. While no one was hurt, there was actual threat to getting this game, as proven when a guy was almost killed for trespassing. And in the end, after all of these trials and tribulations, Mass Effect 3's ending still sucks.
~#3~
You'd think that after the atrocious incident with Splinter Cell, Square would probably not scare people by having a bald guy walk into their house with silenced pistols. Well, they didn't... But they did do something equally as bad.
#3: Hitman Facebook Assassinations
The morning following the near release of Hitman: Absolution, Square Enix released an app on Facebook that would allow people to be able to send death threats to their Facebook friends. This would allow a person to send a hit on a person for any small number of reasons, including, but not limited to, a person's hair color, a person's laugh, and the size of a person's breasts or penis. Yes, I am dead serious about that last one. That is an actual reason to kill a person. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, how in the hell would sending death threats to your friends be successful? It wasn't. This made a lot of people upset on Facebook, and after only a few hours of the app being up, Square Enix took it off, and pretended that the whole thing just never happened. As much of a cheap move as that is, they have not been able to forget about this mistake. And I can assure you, we won't let them.
~#2~
Sony, why the hell do you keep doing this?
#2: God of War Goat Sacrifice
Once again, you read that right and probably were as memorized as you were the space scavenger hunt. Sony started a launch party in Greece for the release of God of War 3. The party started out alright enough, with food and alcohol and conversations amongst the party goers. Nothing too bad, you know, until Sony decided to bring out a dead goat that was sacrificed. You can't make this shit up, people. Actual goat sacrifices for a video game based on Greek mythology. This probably wouldn't have caused as much of an uproar as it did if not for the fact that the images of the Dead Goat were printed and placed into the UK Playstation Magazine for readers to see. This caused a huge uproar and got Sony in a lot of trouble, as you can imagine. The goat was returned to the butcher, because thank god the goat can go back to beating eaten. I guess it didn't need to live. Along with that, over eighty thousand copies of Playstation Magazine were recalled in hopes of getting rid of the thoughts from everyone's minds... It obviously didn't work.
~#1~
... Who remembers Acclaim?
#1: Shadowman, Turok, Burnout, and More
The final entry is, pretty much, a majority of what Acclaim had made, especially in the late 90s and early 2000s. Let's start with Burnout 2, a game that was released at that time, and how Acclaim said that if you sped down the street just to buy a copy of Burnout 2, they would pay for your speeding ticket. They were willing to endanger life over a game. For Gladiator, it wanted the advertisement posters to shoot blood on passerbys. For Virtua Tennis, it wanted birds to be painted like tennis balls and fired at tennis players, because nothing gets me in the mood for a tennis game than animal cruelty. For Turok, it wanted people to name their baby Turok and the first person to do so would get ten thousand dollars. It's just like the Dovahkiin story again, only with Turok, a name that you cannot live down no matter how hard you try. And finally, probably one of the most disrespectful things I've ever seen since EA (I think I've run my course of EA insults for a while) was the promotion for Shadowman 2. This advertisement is notorious in the gaming community for being one of the worst and most offensive marketing campaigns for a game, in where, in promoting Shadowman 2, they would pay families of a deceased relative to allow them to put an ad for Shadowman 2 on their deceased families gravestone. They would actually desecrate graves just to promote a game that wasn't even that good. Well, Acclaim, was it really worth it in the end? Apparently not, because in the end, Acclaim went out of business. Hell, they went out of business twice because after the went out the first time in 2004, they were bought out by another company and then went out of business again and for good in 2010, and none of their games were ever remembered. And you know what, that's okay.