10 Insane Marketing Stunts That Were Used To Sell Video Games

8. Copies Of The Game Were Launched Into Space (Mass Effect 3)

Mass Effect 3
Bioware

Similar to BioShock 2's beach bottle event, the Mass Effect 3 marketing team also implemented a stunt that actively engaged members of the community.

Using select cities around the world (New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Paris, London and Berlin) as a starting point, EA decided to strap copies of the game to weather balloons, and send them into space. Each copy of the game had a camera and GPS system attached so players could track its location, and best of all, if the player managed to find the balloon when it landed back on Earth, they could keep the game and play it early.

This resulted in YouTube videos of people tracking balloons in their country, collaborative forum posts with people helping each other out, and the story being plastered all over mainstream media outlets for weeks. The stunt was a rousing success, and despite the game disappointing hardcore fans, it sold extremely well.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.