Hello everyone. I’ve been off at San Diego Comicon, having adventures. As usual, when you’re actually at the front, you don’t get any of the bigger picture, so I’ve been catching up. And getting a little annoyed. Ars Technica broke the story on EA’s SDCC Dante’s Inferno compo – and reproduced the full flyer with all the rules – but in short you’re encouraged to take a photo of yourself performing an act of lust with a boothbabe and send in a photo to win a night out with two hot girls and a limo. There’s a bit of a furore. George Broussard has cracked in accusing people of not having a sense of humour and being feminists and/or wimps.
I’m about to come over all feminist. And I don’t mean in a “spraying ejaculate all over Germaine Greer and snapping a quick photo in an attempt to win the competition way”.
To be fair to EA, they’ve apologised for the misunderstanding in this, saying they were tongue-in-cheekly refering to just taking a snap with a booth babe. Which opens a whole different can of worms, but we’ll side-step the issue of objectification and all that malarkies, because it’s relatively beside the main issue. Which is, why offering a prize for this sort of behaviour at Comicon is a spectacularly bad idea.
In short: Comicon crowds? Not very good at judging what’s sexually inappropriate or not.
Let’s take a couple of casual stories from Comicon. An author friend of ours is hanging around at our table. One of our readers wanders up and starts chatting to her.
“So how do you know Jamie?”
“I’m just a friend”
“Sexual or other?”
“… Inappropriate!”
You don’t ask women if they’re fucking someone as an opening gambit. And, I stress, Phonogram are a bunch of indie-kid sweethearts with nary a bone of hate in them. This chap in question was otherwise lovely. He just displayed a bad judge of what’s appropriate or not. It’s plain social retardation.
Generally speaking, it’s worse. On the first day, a Photographer friend of ours wandered over, sighing that she’d already had her arse pinched four times.
This is what comicon is like without a multinational corporation deciding to turn it into a sport. Ever looked at the online photo-galleries of booth babes? A huge amount are just attractive women who happen to be at the show. A sizeable proportion of people who take photos are incapable of judging whether a girl is a booth-babe or not. As such, even with the “booth babe” proviso in the competition rules, sending people off to snap photos of booth babes is just encouraging people to go and sexually harass random people. Throwing petrol on the general aura of misogyny of the show – google up the whole furore over the Twilight fans at SDCC if you’re interested in seeing comic fandom in a bad light – shows a complete lack of understanding of how events like these work.
Oh, Broussard? Regarding the “wimp” thing? Real Men Finish What They Start.
Problem or solution, people. Really, pick a side.
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Italics, I wish I could quit you.
Wow, a shitload of status quo-defenders around here.
Contrary to the popular belief, just because sexism is rampant these days and has been for centuries, doesn’t make it okay.
And if you say ”there’s nothing we can do about it, that’s just the way it is” then you’re one of the worst kind of misogynists.
@ Broussard: oi mate; you’re fat and I’ll throw you in the river. Fuck off you bellend.
To everyone else: The soul eating monstrosity that is the EA marketing department makes mugs of us ALL once again. How many web pages of free publicity has this stunt generated?
As the reaction to this kind of thing is statistically predictable I guarantee you we’re all, right now, dancing to EA’s happy little tune exactly like they wanted us to.
uh, what?
sorry was to busy scratching my head at the prisoner remake to notice.
got to be bad whan
JESUS + GANDALF= meh
Alright, since I’ve already invested time here I’ll throw another two cents in.
We’re talking about the lowest common denominators of humanity here. Men and women who exchange sexuality and feigned affection for money. They do it because they have given over the rudder to their most basic desires, being women and security respectively, and whatever moral reservations they’re able to aspire to has been rationalised away.
Technically the women can say no to this job, but the reality, I imagine, is that most of the time they really can’t. They need the money and saying no really won’t change anything on the outside, because right behind them in the queue is another pair of tits who can flash a fake smile at a moment’s notice.
It’s supply and demand. If these idiots didn’t want to slobber all over the women, the women would be out of work, and if the women couldn’t set aside their repulsion of these “stinky nerds” then the stinky nerds would probably never engage a woman in conversation who didn’t have a body shaped like a beanbag.
It’s human nature, one of the lowest forms of it. It’s not pretty, but there it is. It’s all oversimplified of course, but this is a comment on a blog.
I have to give kudos to EA here, because they sort of deserve it, but mostly because the axe down the middle of their heads, which they deserve more, is something I can’t give them right now. Over the years EA has established itself as the epitome of a modern corporation, able to pimp artists, hussies and programmers under the same brand name, with no repercussions apart from more press and more brand recognition.
@cullnean:
I thought the trailer looked ace.
Big Gay Number 2 = WIN. Also, the Village looks amazing. That’s not your Grandad’s North Wales.
I’m not going to touch this debate with a twelve foot pole.
@meat circus
im not so sure, but will watch if it arives in blighty
I think you’re all immature if you think this is immature.
“a shitload of status quo-defenders”
Really? I didn’t see that many compared to the opposite.
And 9/11 was an inside job, 1337monkey. Say again: Sony.
What you guys should really be worried about is that all this beautiful booth babes are going to get skin cancer from going to the tanning bed!
Question, I’ve never actually BEEN to one of these things so my previous arguments must be taken at face value (as little as that is) but, is everyone at one of these things actually a fat stinky nerd? I had a friend who went to Comiccon a few years ago who was an aspiring comic book artist and he was actually quite the ladies man (he looked a lot like a young Johnnie Depp) Certainly he could not have been the only good looking, non-stinky nerd to show up? (Certainly his other friend that went with him more than balanced out the equation being 500 pounds and stinking like a load of hot trash full of baby diapers)
If the people that show up to these things are really this bad, sexually assaulting people ect then I’d have to retract my previous statments. In my mind I have an image of comic con being a clean place where people act professioanly and only take pictures with booth babes, but since I have no experience I defer to those that have actaully gone before. If every single male at one of these things is a fat stinky pile of ego that semi-rapes everything near him then agreed, this contest is a very bad idea. It’d be like releasing women nude with bags of acid tied to their bodies into a crowd at Woodstock.
@ Hypocee: WTF does 911 have to do with what I posted?
Let me put it another way: Hi I have a degree in marketing and a former very successful career in PR and am positive that this is a textbook set-up for a viral marketing campaign driven by negative impact. Even down to the third party “leaking” or drawing attention to the original flyer and the almost immediate retraction and apology which you will notice has absolutely no effect on the amount of publicity generated. Look at some other instances of this sort of thing and you will see that all of them follow a pattern. That’s because there’s an established pattern for this sort of campaign. If they follow it to the letter then expect some form of headline grabbing legal action arising from this (that ultimately goes nowhere and quietly vanishes without trace) in the next 4-6 weeks.
Also if you are going to address me directly then try spelling my name right.
The funny thing is that they put off people intelligent enough to be disgusted by their actions, but that’s a fraction of the market share and a fraction I’m guessing they don’t mind losing, in order to gain many more empty eyes cast in their direction.
I’ve been noticing this more and more recently. Ad campaigns that don’t even bother to hide the ugly truth of their product anymore, because that truth is invisible to the (much) larger market share that they’re targeting. It’s like democratic marketing: Majority rules.
I think it would have been fun to run around with a sign saying “EA’s contest sucks” and have people pose for photos with it.
I think most of us can agree the people they’ve put off with this probably wouldn’t have purchased their game to begin with.
@ Serondal
Not necessarily true – I find EA’s distasteful marketing ploy reprehensible, but am still most definitely intending on purchasing Dante’s Inferno upon release.
Also, l1ddl3monkey raises a valid point that could probably have been summarized as ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity.’ Much shaking of fists and frowning aside, it has raised the profile of Dante’s Inferno beyond the sphere of those of us who were actually looking forward to the title before EA dropped the proverbial ball with their ill-conceived marketing shenanigans.
There’s no such thing as bad press. It’s a conspiracy. We’re all just sheeple who can’t see what’s REALLY going on, unlike highly successful PR reps with marketing degrees. This backlash is exactly the intended effect, rather than – say – a dumb brainstorm, not caught by people who had ever been to SDCC, from some disconnected manager with a marketing degree who isn’t busy misspelling things under an awesome alias on a web forum. NOTHING is EVER a mistake. It’s a PLAN. EA is getting exactly what they wanted, the Illuminati have us arrrrblblbl!
Spot the difference please; I can’t.
Always remember, there’s no such thing as bad press. There’s no such thing as bad press. Eyes, eyes, eyes. Just ask Sony. They went from undisputed, ten-year, world-girdling gaming champion to two-platform also-ran in only three years of front-page consumer abuse, controversy marketing and widely discussed public jackassery. SUCCESS. Just ask Acclaim; they pulled out the Big Gun over and over for years to save their sinking company – well, I suppose you can’t because they’re not around anymore, never mind. Just ask Nokia. It only took them two hardware cycles as a laughingstock before they accomplished their real goal, which was to…license a slightly modified Java SDK. To themselves. Sometime, probably. SINISTER. Just ask Microsoft. All they had to do was release a terribly broken machine, and we played right into their hands with our lawsuits and consumer complaints leading to an unprecedented, unparalleled multi-billion dollar consumer electronics warranty extension. VICTORY. Just ask John Romero. From a leading light of the industry at the preeminent company in PC gaming, he struck out on a campaign of profligacy and aggression, riding the gaming world’s waves of disgust and scorn to his current gig producing the occasional cellphone game. SUCK IT DOWN. Just ask Rockstar. That sales spike after they got GTA:SA pulled from Walmart speaks for itself, and it says CONGRATULATIONS. Just ask George Broussard. Eleven years of teasers and demo reels, each one sparking wider, more heated discussion than the last, and we all know how that turned out – BIG MONEY.
There’s no such thing as bad press. There’s no such thing as bad press. It’s all part of a PLAN. There’s no such thing as bad press. If people are talking about you, you’re WINNING. EA is riding high on this wave.
It’s true. I learned it in school.
xtinctionevent – Personally I never even heard of it until this happened so I guess on some level I’m an example of a success. The contest certainly didn’t offend me on any level.
And yes, Serondal, that’s exactly what we’re saying. Obviously not all guests are mental adolescents, but they tend to be the face of any big event there. There are hypothetical situations where I’d be less enraged in favour of mere disappointment at the disrespect towards their employees, but I’ve seen videos and read accounts from SDCC over the years. Issuing those instructions toward their own booth babes would have been classless, and arguably employee abuse, in any setting. Issuing those instructions toward all (actual or suspected) booth babes would have been disgusting and irresponsible in any setting. At SDCC it was just playing with fire, to the extent that any reasonable person should have known it was a bad idea. Had Funny Marketing Man hypothetically shown the brochure to me ahead of time, I know that would have been the first thing out of my mouth. ‘A contest involving “Acts of Lust”, really? At SDCC? Have you been there?’
Nokia: worlds largest manufacturer of mobile phones. Suffering hard from their bad publicity.
Microsoft: yeah both them and the X Box market have slid into obscurity since that little fiasco.
GTA IV: only shifted 1,890,000 units. Just on the PS3 (that’s made by Sony by the way) and SA was the biggest selling title ever on the PS2.
As with all the cases you’ve cited you’re confusing shitty business decisions and shocking QA for deliberately generated bad publicity.
Also thanks for thinking you have the slightest clue what I was hinting at and for equating marketing tactics with belief in the Illuminati and 9/11 conspiracies. Equivocation and ad hominem in one very long BAAAAAAAAAAW post? Was the MENSA office closed today or were you just bored of 4 Chan?
Can’t we all get along?
@Hypocee: The success of individual products and brand recognition are two very different things. You’re making a case for corporate incompetence, and it’s a valid one, but that same incompetence and disconnection comes through when the next project is being evaluated based on the public visibility of something loosely related.
No matter which direction the issue with this contest goes in, it’s for the most part unrelated to the actual product because it’s taken on a life of its own. The result is that the news of the game’s release rides on a wave of something that has a lot more power to spread by itself than the release of another shitty EA game would’ve done. It’s not negative press for the game, it’s negative press for something else, it doesn’t matter what.
At the very least they greenlighted the idea because either way it’s a win-win for them.
OT: Do you have a chart, some kind of guideline of when to use italics and when to use all caps? I’ve always wanted to work out the pattern used in internet rants.
Not some of us. I suppose I may be a bit overreactive to conspiracy theories due to my location and interests, but they do nark me right off – and make no mistake: Whether it deserves quite this degree of pissiness or not, despite the fact I cheerfully acknowledge it could be true (Acclaim), this is a little baby conspiracy theory. I don’t appreciate the kind of person who casually advances them them, I don’t appreciate the implicit insult in a CT’s proposition, I don’t appreciate the positions that are served by believing in them without overwhelming evidence, and I don’t appreciate the heads-I-win,tails-you-lose tautological cheating used to perpetuate them.
—————-
Hey, deja vu! This distinction’s been having a little wave of importance lately. It’s great that people are becoming more versed in the fallacies, but it is possible to pursue them too eagerly. An ad hominem is when I try to invalidate an argument or position based on the other beliefs or actions of a person who holds it. What you saw here was much simpler – what we call an ‘insult’.
Here is another. It employs sarcasm, the lowest form of wit.
It twoo. Anything that does not completely kill a company forever is not a mistake and does not cost money. Acclaim. MS’ entertainment division’s profits, planned vs. minus a couple billion. Sony (specifically ‘people will buy anything with “playstation” on it’ and AllIWantForXmasIsAPSP).
So what were you oh-so-subtly ‘hinting at’ with this?
I thought you were saying that EA’s Inferno marketing team produced and distributed these contest flyers with the premeditated, primary goal of causing outrage. Have I misinterpreted you?
What would you expect to happen if this were a lamentable – and lambastable – mistake by a few thoughtless people in a large entertainment company?
Does this differ in any way from your prediction for what will happen if we’re all ‘dancing to EA’s happy little tune’?
The real question is here, how can I train my new dog not to sexually assault ME and my arm. I’ve got scars both emotional and physical
Pstonie: True enough. I’m well aware this won’t make the dinkiest dent in Inferno’s sales. Hell, I’m just waiting until whichever Kotaku monkey is behind the curve this time reports it as ‘news’ next week; in my book that will mark its formal passage from the hivemind. I have absolutely no intention of wasting my ‘breath’ around launch ranting about ‘dont buy this remeber that thing they did at cc wont somebody think of the booth babes?!’.
My goals in writing comments here have nothing to do with Inferno’s or even EA’s bottom line. 1. Simply venting. The callous contempt for various parties that this contest displayed enrages me. By writing, discussing, fact-checking, reading and editing my reactions I add nuance to my memory and fix it in place, besides which it simply feels good to talk to other people to whom this storm in a teacup is important. 2. To raise and preserve awareness. To keep whatever public pressure we can on the powers that be. To remind myself and others to keep watching them. To raise the odds however slightly that anyone who’d gotten hurt by this or gets hurt by any future iteration would get help, sue, go public, set off an investigation, whatever – and in turn, in distant theory, to encourage the profession responsible for it to put in a bit more thought, display a bit more class, next time they’re playing ‘edgy’ marketing games. Maybe there’ll be some small but important policy change at SDCC as a result of this. Hey, it could happen. In that light I actually view it as a good thing that I mostly see stories leaning toward ‘EA done fucked up’ rather than any attachment to Inferno. The game doesn’t have any relevance, this is a thoughtless screwup (or a sinister stunt!!) by a team at a big, powerful company that could have happened with any of half a dozen of their franchises.
As you see, I dispute that. Cynical as I try to be, I think this sort of flap is more likely to hurt than help them on a wide front, and to be irrelevant at best on the narrower front because of the public connection to EA rather than Inferno. I even fondly imagine that an editor or two might deliberately have chosen that perspective just so that they wouldn’t be publicising the game, though that one’s probably false. Anyway, I also refuse to believe without evidence that the team thought a brouhaha would be a win. Napoleon’s Razor – I choose, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, to believe in incompetence over malice. It is naive in some cases. I still consciously choose to do it. Keeps my blood pressure down, if nothing else.
I do apologise for the discomfort to bystanders. 1. I am somewhat averse to using italics for agrammatical clauses. 2. I was deliberately trying to channel the newsgroup/TimeCube/InfoWars flavour, and shouting seemed the more appropriate style. 3. When I went back through the editing passes, the caps gave an excellent visual rhythm to the litany that I couldn’t bear to strip out. 4. In the past 24 hours I’ve been burned thrice by failed tag closures :) Of course, those are entirely personal and situational reasons. As you can see from virtually any of my text, I view the ability to spit on any particular style guide as a great Internet privilege, to be exercised at every opportunity.
Basically I broke the golden rule and got upset by some words on a screen which, viewed in that light, is both sad and pathetic.
I would like to point out that you, Hypocee, descended into rant mode before I did and despite your eloquent retraction I believe your knee jerked first and hardest. However: that was yesterday and this is the internet. I took offence to your implication that, because I suggested it was deliberate, I was some sort of conspiracy headcase. You did the conclusion jumping, I did the frothing at the mouth, neither of us got anywhere. Yay internet.
And yes; you are correct I was implying the marketing thing was deliberate and an established practice. Doesn’t mean that every time it happens it’s deliberate and I didn’t mean to imply that (although I clearly did imply that) but this one was textbook enough to be unlikely to be a mistake (and it’s EA, who’s marketing department is bigger than God’s, they rarely make mistakes).
If this happens all the time, every year. Why isn’t the model agency protecting their models, or the event organiser hiring security/bouncers. They’d be cheaper than a booth babe.
Do the event organisers have to green light such competitions too? They’d know the crowd better than anybody. Is anybody even trying to change anything about these events because of this? What’s the point reporting this at all? It’s just “haha, look at EA”. Investigate. Make it a proper scandal for everybody involved, encourage change! Change the World! Yeeeah!
Either way, we’ll know if he was correct when a story surfaces in a few weeks about a related lawsuit. My money’s still on this being deliberate.
While Napoleon was correct it should be noted that he was not alive in the time of EA (unless you believe the conspiracy theorists, in which case he’s Danny DeVito).
“All of this has happened before, and it will happen again.”
Rather than try and embarrass EA, who don’t care. I think concentrating on the event organisers and model agency would be far more effective. Embarrass them through association with it. They won’t be as happy about bad publicity as EA are. And as such will be pissed off with them and won’t want to be associated in the future. Then EA gets pissed at its marketing for letting that happen.
It’s a theory anyway.
No.’Somebody might do a SLAPP, then give up’ does not distinguish a sinister trick from a mistake that pissed a lot of people off.
Dihydrogen monoxide will be found in the tumour.
Well, EA (along with this comment thread) is certainly doing a good job of proving Heather Chaplin wrong.