Electronic Arts recently suffered a tide of negative tweets for its latest advertising effort on behalf of its upcoming epic-poetry-based action title, Dante’s Inferno. In order to drum up some attention for the title at last week’s San Diego Comic Con, an online contest was announced via the company’s official twitter page, asking for interested gamers to “commit acts of lust” with any of the costumed models at the show’s booths, sending in photographic evidence to win a prize. The offered grand prize was an unspecified “dinner and a sinful night with two hot girls, a limo service, paparazzi and a chest full of booty,” with several follow-up winners receiving a copy of the retail version of the game, a $240 gift card, and/or other assorted game merchandise.
Representatives from the company have pointed to the rules and regulations associated with the contest and being designed to filter out “…any submissions that are inappropriate for any reason, including without limitation, for depicting or mentioning sex, violence, drugs, alcohol and/or inappropriate language,” but the response from both the gaming community and media at large has not been positive, the contest’s twitter page hit with dozens of negative comments. Dante’s Inferno also got Electronic Arts into a stink at last month’s E3 in Los Angeles, where the company set up fake religious protestors loudly decrying the game’s take on the biblical side of its epic poetry roots. The company also received a lot of flak for sending members of the press bronze knuckles – an illegal commodity in most states – in advertising of it’s Godfather II this past April.
I don’t know, I like them thinking out of the box, and it’s served it’s purpose; it’s made people aware of the game. I don’t see what’s so bad about it, the people they strongly upset or offend would’ve never gotten the game anyway.
^ Exactly.