At the G20 protests in London a couple months ago, the police got in trouble for using agent provocateurs to incite the crowd to violence. While such stories are unfortunately not uncommon at large political rallies, I have never heard of the authorities or a corporation staging an entire protest. That, however, is exactly what the popular video game maker Electronic Arts, did last week in an effort to promote one of their new releases. According to the Associated Press:
The game publisher hired a group of nearly 20 people to stand outside the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on Wednesday and appear to protest the upcoming EA game “Dante’s Inferno.” EA spokeswoman Holly Rockwood says the stunt was arranged by a viral marketing agency hired by EA.
The group claimed to be protesting the third-person action game — loosely based on Dante Aligheri’s poem “Divine Comedy” — because they said the game glorified eternal damnation.
The fake religious protesters passed out pamphlets and held up picket signs with messages such as “Hell is not a Video Game” and “Trade in Your PlayStation for a PrayStation.”
Apparently, the fake demonstrators that were hired were unemployed. Pretty sad.
I would be delighted to see this stunt, which may very well have been successful from a business perspective, backfire on EA somehow. Perhaps an actual boycott of the company is in order, just so that the execs can get a taste of the real power of nonviolent action. But I don’t think gamers are generally activists, so I won’t hold my breath.
Gamers aren’t activists? Maybe not until they play A Force More Powerful!
Here in Canada, a corporate media conglomerate called a day of action — and to ‘save local TV,’ believe it or not.
Here are a few photos — with remarks and web links –
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tobanblack/tags/savelocaltv/
Gamers who infringe copyright are blamed for millions of dollars of lost business revenue, although those claims are highly suspect.
If improperly copied games really did cause businesses problems, gamers could pressure their peers to buy games from favored companies but infringe copyrights of disfavored companies.
However, since infringed copies probably don’t cause lost sales in reality, the exercise is unlikely to be conducted.
Fantastic details. I have bookmarked this website.
One strategy readily available to gamer-activists would be to download the games via some sort of p2p or torrent community instead of actually buying the game. This act is however very illegal and I am not, for the record, proposing that they do so.
I don’t see what’s bad about this…. EA hired people who “were unemployed” thereby paying them something (I’ve worked temp jobs most of my life) to stage a semi-amusing fake protest for the purpose of advertising. It’s not like they were creating a “fake protest” at something where a “real protest” was trying to accomplish something. In addition, it seems like they were caricaturing those hell fire and damnation folks that protest at everything from funerals to footraces. Frankly… I’d like to see them ridiculed as often as possible.
Fried Chicken outside the Southern United states of america.
And according to my short research, celery stalk contains PHTHALIDE which
can lower blood pressure, and also it lessens the production
of catecholamine (exists if physically and emotionally stressed) which causes the
imbalance flow of blood by restricting or blocking the
blood vessels. Using only flour, the crust frequently
falls off in the oil, doesn’t stick that well to the chicken and is soggy.