Game Marketing Tips, Analysis, and News


Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Questionable Marketing

I did manage to miss this marketing effort, but Ars Technica covered it here. The bright idea is holding a press event for your True Crime game that involves Chinese triads and making it special by replicating a back-alley Chinese club... complete with pole dancers.


Now, I don't have anything against pole dancing myself, but when you do something like this you need to consider the possibility that someone you invite to this event may not like pole dancing. Might even be female... and whether or not they are female, they might be offended by pole-dancing. In any of those cases you wouldn't be getting the best coverage from such a person.

And then there's the issue of exactly what creating a deliberately sleazy environment says about your company and the game... it just seems like a risky way to get attention. Though here I am talking about it, so it's succeeded in that sense. But not all publicity is good publicity.

2 comments:

  1. Well it got you, to talk about it.

    Also the game is Sleazy, the game is called True Crime and is set in Hong Kong bars just like the one they created including the pole dancers,and is based on games like Grand Theft Auto IV.

    I does not strike you as hypocritical that its perfectly fine to have a sleazy game where your avatar is in the exact same situation but you have a problem with replicating it in real life.

    What the author should have done was tipped the girl for making the experience so life like.

    Steve.

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  2. One other point it does ammuse me to no end that someone who enjoys a game (the original source) where beating up whores is a viable strategy is offended by a pole dancer and a woman talking to him.

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