Thursday, July 28, 2011

Random Shots: EA Marketing Does An Bombastically Predicatable Thing

  • Nothing that the marketing department at EA does shocks me anymore. Starting with Dragon Age: Origins and Dante's Inferno, they have consistently shown that they have no respect for the actually audience for their games. Instead they try to fool the Madden and Call of Duty crowds into playing something that is outside of their comfort zone. When EA does something stupid, it should come as no surprise.

  • So here is another stupid thing they did. Surprise.

  • For those you afflicted with the inability to click on links (good luck finding your way off my blog if that's the case), EA decided to respond to the many and various calls to include a female Shepard in the marketing material for Mass Effect 3. The statistics indicate at 80% of players use the male Shepard, but those of us who play females are dedicated. In order to recognize those players, Bioware has agreed. And in order to pick the iconic female Shepard, they put it up to a vote on Facebook. Instead of, you know, using the perfectly awesome default Shepard that is already available in the game.

  • The results are predictable.

  • /sigh

  • At a loss for words here.

  • The title is a tip of the hat to Idle Thumbs and Jake's description of the marketing for Dante's Inferno. And for more on the topic, check out Shamus Young's Twenty Sided.

4 comments:

  1. Yeah, that's odd.. I thought the default female Shepherd was pretty awesome as well. Obviously just a publicity stunt. I went male for my first playthrough where I as goodish neutral. I wanted to be a goody two shoes but felt blocked by my lack of conversational skill (which I was assured by various min maxers in FAQs was a terrible thing to spend points on) at several junctures. My second play through was as the default female shepherd as an absolute saint with enough of a silver tongue to convince everyone to do the right thing at every juncture.

    I have yet to get around to my "raving evil dickhead" play through :-)

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  2. @ Yeebo - I've tried the "raving evil dickhead" route. It doesn't work for me, no matter which gender I play. I just don't like being a jerk to everyone, even in my games.

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  3. Oh good, I'm glad I'm not the only one who has a problem with that. Everytime I play a Bioware game (going back as far as Kotor), I play once as a good guy and then start a second time as a bad buy and I can never get more than two hours in as a bad guy before I feel like a jerk and quit.

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  4. @ Blue Kae - If there is one thing that I like about Dragon Age 2 (and it may be the only thing), it's that they offer a roguish/snarky dialogue option in addition to the standard nice guy/jerk face dichotomy. And it's exactly when I was hoping for as a Renegade in the Mass Effect games.

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