With each new game promoted in EA’s current ad campaign, my partially digested vittles creep ever closer to the ole uvula. Surely I’m not the only one cynical enough to give this approach to advertising a huge eyeroll. You’ve likely seen at least the one for Superman (if not, here it is with the other in the series thus far, NCAA):

 

They seem innocuous enough as you’re leafing through an issue of EGM on the can–a smattering of screenshots and some paragraphs of copy that no one will ever read, right? Well…read it. Because, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

You’re probably aware, as it is the stuff of internet legend, of the EA Spouse blog–wherein the wife of an Electronic Arts employee bemoans the state of labor issues within software’s 800 lb. gorilla. What you may have missed, however, was the settlement in April that resulted in EA shelling out approximately one assload of unpaid overtime. EA Spouse: 1, EA: negative $15 million.

So now, EA finds itself in a bit of a public relations pickle. Worse, they’ve got an HR issue to deal with–and it’s one that can’t be easily smoothed over by planting an EA Sports-logoed hoodie on every developer’s desk. Well, what if you could address both those problems and promote your upcoming games in the process? I think that would be the kind of thing referred to in corporate boardrooms as a “win-win”–and that’s no doubt how the ad agency pitched it.

OK then, back to the ads…

Each one features a “Creative Close-up” in the top right corner which lists the development team, development time, and a wacky little factoid (in the case of the NCAA ad, it’s the number of late-night pizzas eaten:4,160). Then each of those paragraphs of body copy talks about an aspect of the game from the point of view of a member of the development team. All of this is, fairly transparently, designed to send the message–to the industry, to the consumer, and to their employees–that EA does indeed care about its people. Awwwwwww.

Sorry, I’m not buying it. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been in the advertising/marketing business for close to 15 years now–in that time, I’ve had to sling my fair share of this type of damage control. Maybe my bullshit detector is on the fritz, though it’s usually pretty reliable. Or maybe I’m just the stereotypical jaded gamer. But, when I read these ads, some sort of internal translation device kicks in. I’ll demonstrate…

The NCAA ad says

Meanwhile, Florida grad Tom Vuong, an assistant producer, was supporting his school by pushing hard to get an important new feature into the game: the Gator Chomp. During NCAA 07 games at “The Swamp,” the Gators’ home stadium, the student section will periodically erupt into a mass of arms snapping open and shut.

But, for some reason, I read

Assistant producer Tom Vuong says, “I really hope fans get pumped up when they see the Gator Chomp…because I missed my son’s T-ball game to make sure it was implemented.”

In the Superman ad we get

It takes a documentary, produced every week by an in-house video crew, to help EA producer Jeff Peters keep track of the huge array of powers and attack combinations that the 140 developers working on Superman Returns: The Videogame have put together. “With a villain like Parasite, you may want to keep your distance,” he says. “You do something like grab a fuel truck, throw it toward him, then blow it up with your heat vision before it hits him.”

But I read

“We had some real framerate troubles when we introduced Superman’s heat vision,” says producer Jeff Peters. “Clearly, we couldn’t have that–so I skipped my father’s funeral to make sure everything was perfect. And, like I later told my mom, ‘he’ll still be dead when the game ships.’”

In the same ad

“Gamers can be so skeptical,” level designer Zach Wilson says. “I understand–I used to be those guys. That’s what motivates us: to prove to the world that we can pull it off.”

Go ahead and read that as

“True, it may have cost me my relationship with my wife. But as my boss told me: my contribution to this game will have a lasting effect on budget-priced game bins across the nation…and, it’s pretty easy to fill the void she left behind with hookers and porn.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 4th, 2006 at 1:59 pm and is filed under General Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.