10 Video Game Promotional Tactics That Backfired HORRIBLY
If your marketing ends in a call to the police, you screwed up.
When it comes to video games and their space within modern day multimedia, it’s a fact that gaming is in a better place now than it ever has been in terms of public perception. Despite being a billion dollar industry, it seemed for a long time to be the expected duty of the press to sneer and turn their noses up at gaming.
When it came to marketing blunders, bad press for video games became damning, awful press. Outlets outside of the gaming would take any opportunity to rip apart studios, pointing and laughing the whole way. Some promotional tactics however… pretty much asked for it.
It can be billboard or television advertising, release day stunts for the public or behind-the-scenes promotions for the press; video games, much like other media, are always looking for new ways to stand out and get ahead. However, when it comes to fresh and challenging experiments, you need to be careful and consider: if this is such a good idea, why has nobody done it before?
This list will explore some gaming promotions that were such huge missteps that they honestly make you wonder what the studios were thinking.
10. Burnout 2 Tells Players To Speed
In the early 2000s, Acclaim Entertainment were continuing to find themselves in financial trouble. Despite video game successes, they weren’t bringing in the profits against their outgoings. The logical thing to do was craft a sequel to the highly-praised Burnout and to advertise it in an eye-catching manner.
To celebrate Burnout 2: Point of Impact, Acclaim declared that they would be willing to pay for any speeding tickets in the UK given on the release date of their upcoming crash simulator. Understandably, the UK Government wasn’t all too happy about Acclaim essentially telling its population to freely drive recklessly and the concept created quite the stink in the media.
Following the negative reaction to this, Acclaim changed their mind and cancelled the promotion before the game’s release date. One has to wonder if the company would merely pay off speeding tickets or if they’d be willing to pony up for any medical or funeral costs that this stunt could’ve inevitably led to.
You’d think it would be obvious to most but speeding in video games is fun purely because real people can’t get crushed or mangled.
This campaign was the last of a string from Acclaim - others asked players to name their newborns Turok or advertise Shadow Man 2 on the gravestones of the recently deceased - before the company closed its doors in 2004.