Here is what I imagine happened at the EA marketing meeting for God of War clone Dante’s Inferno: “Hey Terry!” (All marketing people are called Terry and look like used car salesmen) “Hey Terry! You know what would be a great way for us the peddle this crap game? Let’s just offend people. Then everybody will talk about the game, and will then buy it.” “I see no flaw in this plan, women or blacks first?”

In their continuingly desperate plea for people to care about their game, EA have taken to just being bigots. In a competition being held at Comic-Con you have to “commit an act of lust” with one of their booth babes, then post the picture on twitter.The winner gets a “sinfull night with two hot girls” (the quote should technically be in all caps, but I thought you may not be able to handle it).

This would probably be enough fuel for me to rip them a new one, but the story goes on. The team behind this great idea have come out and said sorry.

Costumed reps are a tradition at Comic-Con. In the spirit of both the Circle of Lust and Comic-Con, we are encouraging attendees to Tweet photos of themselves with any of the costumed reps[...]

We apologize for any confusion and offense that resulted from our choice of wording, and want to assure you that we take your concerns and sentiments seriously.

That’s right, they are sorry for the “wording” of their promotion, not for the idea behind it. Firstly, what the fuck? Secondly, seriously?

EA really should pay more attention to who is buying games these days. Apparently there has been this recent invention called “girls”. Not the “girls” you’re used too, those objects you demand to be underweight, then idolise and touch when they’re not looking, no. These new “girls” are actually real people. Don’t worry EA, it blew my mind too.

Then to say sorry for the wording!? My initial reaction is to be angry, but sadly I can’t help but think this is part of EA’s cunning marketing strategy. Get people with a moral compass to be angry at a game, then the kids will think it’s awesome and go buy it. It’s like the fake protests they made at E3 where they paid people to pretend to be angry Christians, or that time they took one of the great literary classics and turned it into a mediocre and quite generic video game.

Lowest common denominator PR.

Pic Source

Update: I just found this rather interesting piece via .tiff about sexual assaults at Comic-Con ’08. Related and worth a read. Also, here is a nice recap of all the other posts about this.