Here's the emails.
From: Kate
Sent: 19 January 2011 13:53
To: Everyone
Subject: RE: e-Marketing
Sent: 19 January 2011 13:53
To: Everyone
Subject: RE: e-Marketing
Good points and an interesting debate! Shouldn’t this be a blog article…? :)
From: teh_steve
Sent: 19 January 2011 12:47
To: Darren; teh_others...
Subject: RE: e-Marketing
As a marketing ploy, hell yeah.
But as a means of promoting video games as more than damaging childrens toys? Eurgh… Stinks of adolescent pandering and “it’s an 18, but we’re really marketing it to the 14 year olds” mentality that many game studios use.
Dangerous stuff considering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzenegger_v._Entertainment_Merchants_Association ....
For further reading,
Not every game needs to be a deep involving experience, but that’s still a massively stupid move by the ad-writers considering what’s happening at the moment. I’m not saying kids SHOULD be able to get violent video games, but that games shouldn’t be punished more than other mediums depicting the same thing. You wouldn’t ban a book with a rape scene, and I’m sure even young kids could still buy it, yet you’d ban a game for its bloody content? Don’t ban the game because the parents fail at raising their children properly.
The adds detract from the fact that Dead space should be a harrowing and dark survival horror experience and instead focussing on it being a bloody video game, appealing to the younger gamers with material intended for older.
All this is fluff anyway. The Miller test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test ) is based on what’s good/bad for minors, but doesn’t just affect the kids. 1st amendment protection would go out the window for most video games, and that’s the real issue. Sure, ban the sales to minors, and properly police those processes, but don’t declare that video games do absolutely nothing to benefit society and plenty to damage them.
</soap box>
From: Darren;
Sent: 19 January 2011 12:14
To: teh_steve, teh_others...
Subject: e-Marketing
Sent: 19 January 2011 12:14
To: teh_steve, teh_others...
Subject: e-Marketing
This has to be the finest marketing scheme ever.
Oh Darren boy
Darren's my boss. A general jack-of-all trades in our small digital group, which more or less means he's the central pillar for a lot of the teams work. He's known as the "Technical Developer" a title he wears with a fair amount of self-pity.
He also got the job he has now by working as the student placement. All good stuff.
And he's a geek, which helps our rapour massively. He's also very right about the idea of viral marketing, it's an "offend to make a splash" tactic, taking on the ideology that "any press is good press" but in this instance, I disagree.
Erectin' another issue
A recent blog post of mine was tangentally about the "Mass Erect" issue, and how Mass Effect got cast in a negative light. now sure, those of us with half a brain know it's not true, and still bought it. And those of us that like that sort of thing (you sick fucks) probably bought it to play the porn simulator, as disappointed as you would be. But there's the issue. It's "us" and "them". Those that buy video games and those that don't.
Just watch the Extra Credits: Gamer episode and you'll start to get what I mean. All of the content in the email, everything from the Supreme Court case to the general dislike of video games. All of it is because we lack integration. For the same reasons that scientists could be seen as heretical in ye olden times, people hate on different religions, and things like comic books, new musical styles and even films have all been seen as corrupting.
It's fear of the unknown.
If everyone played games, knew what they could do, knew their ability to deliver a narrative in a real-time, consequential, and interactive medium, then this sort of bullshit would vanish, and we couldn't judge all games by the choices of the few.
Wii and DS was taking us that way, but man, if deadspace didn't just faceplant us back a few hundred yards.
Dead Face
Anyway, I'll try to keep it brief, though all of the above is true.
Do I believe kids should be getting access to M rated video games? Fuck no. But do I think that games should be declared a negative influence on all society, morally reprehensible and damaging to ALL minors? Again, no.
Why isn't there a middle ground? Why's it got to be art of purile steaming toxic waste?
In the UK stores actually bother to heed age guidlines, on all media. So they're neither banned nor freely available to those that really,REALLY shouldn't have them.
Whatever the reasons, and whatever the result, you guys on the advertising team for Dead Space really, REALLY screwed up. Though "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." ~Voltaire. </end auto-felatio>
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