Headset Company Sends Gamer to Iraq in Promotional Campaign

[Hevva]

Headset Company Sends Gamer to Iraq in Promotional Campaign

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The New Zealand branch of gaming headset company Turtle Beach has dispatched a regular Kiwi gamer to Iraq to see "real" war.

For reasons apparently relating to promoting its brand of gaming headsets, the New Zealand branch of Turtle Beach has teamed up with advertising agency Droga5 to send a regular "Kiwi Gamer" (a guy called Phil) on a gratingly real journey through Kurdistan (northern Iraq). Doing so will, they claim, allow the gamer to know what real war feels like. Ostensibly, this has something to do with Turtle Beach's assertion that its headsets offer really "real" audio experiences.

In terms of factual reasons as to why this is a bad idea, many dropped 10,000 elite troops [http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/middle-east-north-africa/iraq] there in October as the latest move in a decades-old fight with Kurdish militants keen to establish autonomy in Turkish-controlled Kurdistan.

Ben Ward, director of marketing for Fiveight, the New Zealand-owned distributor for Warner Brothers Interactive, SEGA, Ubisoft and Turtle Beach, said that, "Gamers play in virtual warzones every day and night, and they want the immersive feeling of combat...it won't get any more real than this."

It's probably fair to say that Droga5 and Fiveight will have had dear Phil kitted out with body armor, a healthy insurance contract and various other protections. If he'd come to any real harm, their promotional campaign would've been over. Even if we disregard Phil's safety for a moment, though, it seems that this campaign has to be up there with the most over-funded and under-thought of them all. Did they envision gamers responding to Phil going to Kurdistan with awe, saying things like "It just got real!" and getting excited? If you Escapists can think of any solid reason for these companies doing this beyond the shock factor, please do respond.


Source: GamePlanet [http://www.gameplanet.co.nz/news/138325.20111208.Turtle-Beach-sends-Kiwi-gamer-to-Iraq/]





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[orangeban]

This is just bizarre. What I'm most interested in is this Phil character, what kind of guy agrees to visit a warzone?

 

[Scott Guthrie]

Nope... Nope that's just fecking retarded

 

[Micalas]

Hopefully Phil reads those contracts through and through with a lawyer. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the contracts had some micro-text clause that said that if anything were to happen to him due to his occupying the same space as a bullet, he and his family are entitled to NOTHING.

 

[imnot]

Wow and people say EA are evil! This is a headset company so evil they send customers to a warzone for advertising! How you gonna match that EA?!

Whats that your sacrifising a gamer to satan for Dantes inferno 2?


Okay.

 

[Blazing Steel]

I would understand if this was some anti gamer thing where they show a gamer what a war is really like to stop him gaming, but as an add campaige for Turtle Beach? I mean really where the logic in that...

 

[samsonguy920]

I honestly can not think of a single thing. Now I wouldn't mind visiting the Green Zone in Baghdad, but to go to one of the hottest areas? Hell, no. Remind me never to buy anything from Turtle Beach. Lord knows where I could end up.

It would make an interesting movie.

It is about time for a remake to If Looks Could Kill [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102095/]. Gamer has to visit France to finish school, ends up on wrong flight to Iraq, and is mistaken for company agent who is to accompany a platoon into a hot zone.

 

[Zulnam]

Personally, I think the shock factor is enough. People online and in games always talk about war like it's a casual day at the bar, but many of them don't realize the kind of crap it provokes and the kind of danger you're in, even as a civilian.

I think it's a pretty cool idea and, overall, an experience that not many can live, especially tucked in safe behind a camera crew and, most likely, a PMC bodyguard unit.

 

[RA92]

Wow and people say EA are evil! This is a headset company so evil they send customers to a warzone for advertising! How you gonna match that EA?!

Oh for God's sake nononoNONONO DON'T ENCOURAGE THEM!

 

[Tiger Sora]

Isn't the Iraq war over. Thought America pulled all their combat troops out.

 

[Something Amyss]

Oh pleeeeease don't teabag anyone. Foreign relations are bad enough as it is....

 

[McMullen]

Wow and people say EA are evil! This is a headset company so evil they send customers to a warzone for advertising! How you gonna match that EA?!

Whats that your sacrifising a gamer to satan for Dantes inferno 2?


Okay.

I too was thinking this was right in line with the kind of thing EA would do, just taken Up To Eleven.

Even so, this doesn't sound real. I'd expect this from the Onion or something. A scene from Idiocracy maybe. Or a modern-day version of On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. It's that bizarre.

 

[Frost27]

Wow, we're so used to war now that it's becoming reality TV? If they can drop the cast of Jersey Shore out there for a season I will have no problem with this.

 

[Valanthe]

20 year-old Orbiter enthusiast into the back seat of a space shuttle and boot him through the fucking atmosphere, just to make sure he knows that using a joystick to fly a 2,000-ton tank of exploding chemicals into orbit is, indeed, rather tense when you have to do it in reality.

Thing is, being sent into space would be -really freaking cool- and probably actually increase sales. Sending a kid to an active warzone is just eight different shades of stupid.

 

[JSF01]

Isn't the Iraq war over. Thought America pulled all their combat troops out.

Doesn't mean there isn't still a war going on.

LOL You have prequoted him.

Any way as far as the idea, it probably sounds worst than it actually is. From the looks of the trailer he is just in the country no different really from many journalists. With a few edits, cuts and music to make it look like there is actually something more going on than reality. So while he is in a country torn with violence he not actually in the middle of that violence. Once you realize that, you see it is not that awful of marketing strategy (still would not call it good). Just picture a reality show called ?Living in Iraq?(ignoring the gamer part of this) being aired on TV, you could expect it would be successful.

 

[Johnson McGee]

Of course immersion and realism are important to gamers. I never tire of hearing stories from veterans, such as the time one respawned for the 5th time and ran across the battlefield to teabag an insurgent.

 

[Slayer_2]

He's playing Insurgency, that's a GREAT mod.