10 Insane Video Game Marketing Campaigns That Actually Happened
7. Dead Space 2 - Players Were Asked To Film Their Mothers Getting Scared
Dead Space 2 is basically what would happen if a good video game version of Alien combined with zombies was made, with the threat of Necromorphs just around each tight corner. Because it was an extremely gory and horror-filled game, EA decided to eschew the usual advertising shtick of saying as many positive things as possible by getting people to say bad things about the game.
The advertising campaign involved selecting 200 middle-aged and conservative mothers whose video game knowledge was restricted to Tetris. These women were then shown the most horrifying clips from Dead Space 2 whilst a video camera recorded their reactions and the subsequent videos were posted up under the title 'Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2'.
Inevitably, this generated quite a bit of controversy with some people condemning the campaign for enforcing sexist and feminist stereotypes. Even more inevitably, some people loved it and Dead Space 2 went on to receive great reviews and massive sales, proving that middle-aged mothers clearly don't make up the key gaming demographics.