We've seen some truly wacky methods of marketing and advertising for games in the last few years.
To promote The Godfather II, Electronic Arts sent out very-illegal-in-certain-states, authentic, brass knuckles with press copies of the game. And of course, there was all that calamity over the headless, limbless lady torso included with the Zombie Bait editions of Riptide's Dead Island: Riptide.
But Capcom stands out, patricularly with one of their flagship franchises, Resident Evil.
Earlier today, Capcom revealed they had canceled plans for another advertising scheme gone awry to promote the recently released port, Resident Evil: Revelations. According to Eurogamer, the plan was to "put floats in the form of human torsos in the open air 16ft by 32ft blood swimming pool, near Hackney Wick Station, as well as brains and intestines as lane markers. It also planned to have zombie lifeguards on duty and a diving board in the form of a freshly killed human corpse." Of course, the water would've been "died" a lovely shade of blood red. With Revelations stagnicolous setting, a pool obviously makes sense, especially with summer fast approaching. However, Capcom canceled their pool party plans for it after a British soldier was killed in Woolwich by two alleged Islamic extremists.
This would've been a trifecta for Capcom's wacky RE advertising campaign. In 2009, when Resident Evil 5 was the big title of the time, Capcom had London citizens go questing on a scavenger hunt for different human body parts, each worth a different amount of points: Limbs earned two points, three for torsos, and five points for heads. Those who earned the most points would win a vacation to Africa. Apart from the problem of explaining to bobbies why you're carrying a collection of mutilated body parts, Capcom apparently lost count of how mant parts they had scattered around the city, leading to people still finding "parts" long after the contest had come to a close.
For Resident Evil 6, Capcom decided they were going into the meat market. Literally. They hijacked the Smithfield section of London to introduce the Wesker & Sons faux butcher shop, specializing in animal meat made up to look like human parts. Tasteless to some maybe, but to Capcom's credit, all proceeds from the sale of the various "products" went to the Limbless Association.
As a gorehound myself, my problem with Capcom's advertising tactics isn't over taste, or sensitivity. I would've quite liked to see what the pool looked like, had some lunatic religous zealots' alleged actions not ruined the possibility, not to mention actually killing a man. But as a gamer, I do feel that the company's time would be better well spent towards developing the game, not advertising it, as evidenced by Resident Evil 6's poor reviews. If you make a decent game, people will flock to it, and you won't have to spend one red cent advertising it. Consider some of the big indie hits of the last few years: Minecraft, Retro City Rampage, Super Meat Boy, Fez. Games like these spread by word of mouth and became big hits simply because they're good games. Period.
Capcom obviously has deep pockets, so paying for the materials, dye, permits, etc. obviously wouldn't have been much of an issue. But the amount of time it would've taken to line everything up, get clearance, approvals, that's all lost time that could've, and should've been spent making a better game.
