Scaring women in the name of advertising! Yeah, that's one Hell of a low-hanging fruit.
Studios are likely to cater directly to the target audience of the game they’re about to release. It only makes sense to do so. And since a lot of video games are horror or shooter types, who is the audience? Teenagers! And what is the stereotype of teenagers? That they hate their parents, or that they think their folks aren’t cool! Therefore, if their parents – or someone similar – object to their product, that product will instantly look cool to these teens! Sound logic there!
In 2011, Visceral Games and Electronic Arts made big plans for their latest survival horror shooter, Dead Space 2. Heavy stuff, hunting down monstrous aliens on a space station and dealing with mental illness. My brain who has never played this franchise immediately went, “that sounds like Aliens meets Resident Evil”. Anyone versed in the franchise can correct me. This combo says exactly what you can expect: Blood and guts galore.
That rating at the bottom couldn't be clearer!
The ad helpfully informs us that the women presented in its 32 seconds were part of an “actual focus group”, not actresses. So, we can assume their reactions are genuine. Grandmothers, moms, older women, you know, exactly the kind of person unlikely to enjoy what is being shown. Beyond the ad, the official Dead Space channel included full versions of some of the interviews. Hammering in these women’s outrage and anger at what they’re shown.
There’s just one problem: The game isn’t directed at younger teens. The ESRB rated it M for Mature. AKA, for older teens bordering on adults. I'm not saying they must have outgrown "your parents suck" at 17, but at that age, there's no need to involve the parents into the advertising. So, this campaign, on top of traumatizing multiple women, also completely missed the mark as to who it was speaking to. The whole thing was considered in very poor taste. The use of an age-old (pun intended) stereotype also turned away many people outside of the ad’s target demographic. To say nothing of the ESRB, who got a strong talking-to for allowing the ad to be broadcast.
5. John Romero wastes years of goodwill in one B-word
Sometimes, all it takes is one misplaced word or comment to kill a campaign. And even if the name in it was only the one who approved the campaign, however hastily, damage can be irreversible.
The man has a legacy. And he has every good reason to be damn proud of it.
John Romero had accumulated a ton of goodwill in the gaming community off the back of the series of first-person shooter smash hits he helped design for his company id Software. Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, only to name a few… The man didn’t invent a genre, but he certainly helped build it towards the 3D era. I’ve never played a Doom game, I probably should. I'll probably suck.
Sure enough, when you’ve created such famous games, the pressure is great for a follow-up. And what better way to innovate than to swap out guns for a blade? FPS: First Person Swordman, that’s the future. Daikatana would be the next groundbreaking game, and Romero would work on it from the comfort of their company, Ion Storm, with one of its studios located in Dallas, Texas. The game was announced in 1997 with a poster all in red, making an evocative boast.
If you’re gonna say that, you should be able to back it up.
The original build of the game was made using the first Quake'sengine, and that version was received quite poorly at E3 in 1997.
Romero allegedly hastily approved the ad, got second thoughts later, then was persuaded to let it go through anyway by his colleague Matt Wilson. Daikatana’s production was plagued with delays, only reaching store shelves in 2000. The year prior, a demo at that year’s E3 ran at a measly 12 frames per second. If the poster killed interest in the game while it was still in early development, everything that happened afterwards dug the grave, then tossed the corpse in without a funeral. Negative reviews and an even more brutal reception from disappointed gamers buried it. The gravestone would be adorned with the words “projected 2.5 million sales for profitability, only sold 40,351”. One of the biggest commercial failures of the industry.
Ion Storm Dallas would close in July 2001, just over a year later. Romero would apologize for the ad in 2010. To his credit, he’s still in the industry, and still making games, and I wish he never loses that spark.
4. New console? Or just an add-on? U are not clear
I don't play it as often as before, but I do still have a soft spot for the Wii.
It’s so strange to think that the Wii is two years away from being 20 years old. We tend to forget just how big of a smash hit the console ended up being. Its focus on motion controls invited an audience far beyond the usual gaming crowd, with new activities suitable for anyone in the family. I have fond memories of roping uncles and aunts into Wii Sports' Bowling. If there isn’t a Wii on standby when I’ll be at the retirement home in 50 years, I’ll be disappointed. Hell, the console was so popular it created a new era in gaming, and everyone else tried to jump on the motion controls bandwagon. Remember the Kinect?
I got my Wii in 2011 so getting a Wii U would have been out of the question, but even at the time of its announcement I don't remember being particularly enthused by the concept.
The challenge was humongous to make a follow-up to this groundbreaking console. Thus came the Wii U, a commendable effort, yet one of Nintendo’s biggest commercial failures ever. This can be traced back to two major points, both related to marketing. For starters, the name itself confused families, several of whom mistook the new console for a mere add-on or an upgrade. It took forever for Nintendo to course-correct and explain what the new gimmick was. And that, no, this new controller with a screen is NOT compatible with the old Wii, and it’s a mandatory piece of a new console. And, in fact, several games will require both… an idea which ended up being awkward as all Hell to build games for, and to use at home.
The ads said very little about what made a Wii U stand out compared to a Wii. No real incentive outside of, "it will have games you'll like!" Oh, and don't get me started on the ads focusing on the freaking Amiibos!
The second mistake, lesser or worse depending on your point of view, was to fail to acknowledge the larger audience the console’s predecessor had. Aside from titles welcoming a slightly older audience (like Smash 4), focus was almost exclusively on children and their families. Maybe it was out of the impression that audiences outside of the normal gaming demographic would struggle with the new gimmick. However, the lack of advertising to a wider market was another nail in the console's coffin.
In comparison, Nintendo would do everything right with the Switch – new name, concept explained quickly, showing the features, and appealing to families, children, teens, adults, everyone no matter whether they’re a hardcore or a casual gamer. And it worked. The Switch is almost 8 years old though, so let’s hope they remember the lesson and don’t faceplant again when its successor is revealed…
3. Ask Me Anything? Maybe use Reddit next time…
Hack'n'slash/Metroidvania/Soulslike. Sounds like a fun combo.
In the age of social media, AMAs can be a great tool; they can humanize a company by letting its people speak. One of the best ideas out there, and the best part? It requires almost no set-up, and it can be done by one person, a band, an enterprise… There aren’t many ways you can screw this up. Maybe if you only answer two softball questions total, or if you say something you shouldn’t have… Oh, and maybe you should do research on the website you intend to use, first.
THQ Nordic GmbH, based in Vienna, Austria, jumped on the AMA bandwagon in February 2019. The idea was to have a direct line to fans during an event promoting an upcoming DLC for Darksiders III. So, they used Reddit, right?
Nope. It was set on 8chan. You know, the place the worst of the worst find refuge in when it turns out they’re so fucked up they get banned from even goddamn 4chan. I’d call it a wretched hive of scum and villainy if it didn’t make the site sound cool. Don’t be fooled, we’re talking about the worst people on the Internet. Just so you have an idea: 8chan was blacklisted by Google in 2015 for hosting “suspected child abuse content”. Yes, that means child pornography. It’s also the proud home to countless white supremacists, conspiracy theorists – including QAnon –, GamerGaters, hate speech advocates, racists of all stripes. And I’m skipping many, but you get the picture.
The tweet I got this picture from showcased another question from the AMA asking about "big tiddie lolis". (a reference to "lolicon", which is hentai content involving minors.)
THQ Nordic’s then public relations and marketing director Philip Brock answered question alongside product and business development director Reinhard Pollice, and things got awkward fast. You can have some idea of the type of questions they were asked. Only two hours later, the company finally realized what they had done. Brock apologized profusely on Twitter for failing to do his due diligence beforehand, taking full responsibility for the decision.
I originally put this on the first half of the list, then readjusted once the gravity of the error sank in, a few days after writing. That’s not a small hiccup, that’s a huge fucking mistake. At least they weren’t advertising something as important as a brand-new game, but considering this example kept coming back… yeah, people aren’t anywhere close to forgetting that blunder.
2. The bloody torso of shame
When I made my first list, I ranked the entries based on how many times I saw them in lists from other websites. This made sense as I wanted the ones most people remembered, even if it’s for the wrong reasons. Looking back at my criteria for these lists, I had not included this one at first, but now I will. After all, preorder bonuses and collector’s editions are a special type of advertising. See! By buying the fullest package of this zombie game, you can get this sweet bloody torso in a bikini to display on your shelf, for when the family comes to visit!
I mean, it beats the Fallout 76 nylon bag any day, but it’s not like that competition flies high.
....Tasteful.
Developed by Techland and published by Deep Silver, Dead Island: Riptide was the second installment in the Dead Island franchise (to make things confusing, DI2 is the seventh game), and was released on April 23rd, 2013 in North America. The Collector’s Edition, christened “Zombie Bait”, would include goodies like a steelbook, some weapon DLCs and artworks, as well as the foot-tall torso. As a bonus, the latter would reflect where you lived, as the bikini on the, ahem, “model” would bear the Union Jack in Europe, and the stars and stripes in the US. How thoughtful!
The blood all over, protruding bone at the end of each arm, and an open wound showing ribs right under a breast; the sculpture was described as little more than the meeting of sex and gore. The product was deemed extremely tasteless at the time of release, as it was when voices were making themselves heard across the gaming industry about its rampant misogyny. (Later years, with both GamerGate and #MeToo, would go on to show just how deep the issue is.)
Deep Silver apologized for the product and swore to never let that happen again… but still sent limited copies of the Zombie Bait Edition to retailers anyway.
Better. Smaller. Still daring, but not as awful.
Get the Rigor Mortis Edition instead. That zombie Hula Girl will be a lot easier to hide in a closet.
This time, I’m not doing “dishonorable mentions”, because I’m keeping fuel for a third list. Just in case. Anyhow, let’s move on to…
1. How to kill a game with one prom joke
Let's never forget that successful Kickstarter campaigns have given us some of the most beloved indie video games of the last decade (and even before that).
One misplaced word or comment. We’re back to that. And I’m doing something different, too, by talking about a Kickstarter campaign. I haven’t talked about Kickstarter campaigns much either, as most of them tend to work thanks to their creators’ word-of-mouth efforts, and not due to massive stunts thought up by ad departments or agencies. I always try to highlight successful Kickstarter campaigns on this blog whenever they come up. So many campaigns try and fail to reach their goal, while others succeed or fail, and never deliver. Then, there are some that we wished in hindsight wouldn’t have succeeded.
I mean, yeah, a trailer for a Kickstarter campaign makes sense, but that's to reach your goal; you shouldn't need one for after your campaign was successful... right?
Mighty No. 9 touted itself as a worthy successor to the then somewhat dormant Mega Man series, and the project would be helmed by MM veteran Keiji Inafune. The campaign, started in September 2013, hit its goal in two days, and amassed a total of over four million dollars. There were big plans for the game, too, with a release across ten platforms. Production was plagued with several delays, causing the game to come out a year late. One month before release, an official trailer was published to YouTube, and…
Well, there’s a whole bunch of cringeworthy jokes. A lot of comments easily dismissed as barrel-bottom “How do you do, fellow kids?” And then: The line. “Make the bad guys cry like an anime fan on prom night.”
The bit from the trailer in which that line is heard is also the most rewatched part of the vid on YouTube. Gee, I wonder if there is a correlation.
Y’know. Anime fans. Who generally tend to be geeks. As in, the exact people who would be buying your game and who don’t need your middle school-level jokes about geek unpopularity. Here’s an idea, let’s try biting the hand that feeds us! That can never go wrong!
Going back to the John Romero example from earlier, if you’re gonna make statements this ballsy, you should at least be able to back them up. However, the review scores for Mighty No. 9 were BRUTAL. And in case that wasn’t enough, the release itself encountered several issues, such as reports that the Wii U version would cause the console to freeze or crash (but not brick, thankfully).
There's no word more apt for all this than "Disaster".
It speaks volumes that amidst such a disastrous game and release, the one prom line still stands out as the moment gamers collectively went, “Nope”. There might have been items more deserving of the #1 spot because they were more horrible, did worse things, whatever – but everybody remembers the exact moment that Mighty No. 9 crashed and burned, and this cannot mean anything else than, if not stunts or campaigns, then one of the worst marketing moments of all time.
On the plus side, I’ve got 16 more in reserve if I ever want to do another list like this. See you for that in, like, 2026 or something.
No comments:
Post a Comment