I remember a good number of these, but I found it funny that Sony and EA were pretty the only companies on the list.
5) I don’t know who thought that a headless goat and naked women would have been seen as a PR success. I don’t know who was in attendance to this party, but I how it was apparently on the animal rights groups that threw a hissy fit. Any company that celebrates a thing with naked women feeding them grapes sounds like the mafia or something.
4) I remember this controversy a bit differently. When it was first stated that LittleBig Planet was going to be recalled because of the Qur’an stuff, I remember reading that within the context of the Qur’an it wasn’t all that bad. While not Muslim, I’m pretty spiritual and so I can see those lines, loosely translated to “Every soul shall have the taste of death,” and “All that is on earth will perish” as something a Abrahamic religious book would say and be good seeing as it might be promoting a theme of humility and not getting attached to worldly possessions, as opposed to threats. I think this was a case where someone on the production team, somewhere, was trying to be artistic.
3) This one I remember. Holy shit. First of all, this proved to me that EA has a marketing team made up of forum trolls because what PR guy says “hey, let’s make fun of a bunch of people to promote our product”. I remember responses from various church groups saying “we don’t hate video games and we don’t go out and we definitely don’t go out and protest a game that shares a name with one of the most significant pieces of western literature.” Seriously, EA got a bunch of fake protestors to yell at the people wanting to play Dante’s Inferno, claiming they were going to Hel lfor playing a game about going to Hell and yeah…WTF? But that doesn’t top their Sin to Win promotion which seemed like it was both annoying to regular journalist who got a box that would play annoying music until you smashed it (Wrath), or this one, where you pretty much try and look like an idiot to get win what does sound like prostitutes.
2) Really? No one looked at this and said “Uh….that’s a little racist don’t ya think?” I kinda does look like a threat and I imaged that a lot of people of African descent probably felt uncomfortable with that image. Heck, if you took off the “Playstation Portable”, it really does kind of look like some sort of genocidal treat.
1) EA is kinda stupid. That’s all I can kind of say. You know what I like when I get special things from a game developer for pre-order or something like that. A t-shirt, an artbook or music CD, maybe an action figure, but weapons? Granted if a game developer ever handed me a sword or something then I’d be down with that, but uh…brass knuckles are real, as evident from the real ones they sent out. Does anyone there have a brain? Why don’t you promote the next Battlefield game by giving every a loaded rifle or a grenade?
