Activision: EA' Mudslinging Is No New Thing For a "Challenger Brand"

[DrunkWithPower]

Am I a bad person for finding joy in this? More than likely, but it doesn't eliminate the joy. It feels like that stupid 2008 VP debate between Palin and Biden except there is a higher chance of hearing somebody utter the sweet, sweet words "Fuck yourself".

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

To be honest.....I don't know how I feel about being labeled as frosting. Sure, I'm delicious and make the whole thing exciting, but what about putting fruit on top of "me"? How does that come into play? What if I'm a birthday cake and you have to light "me" on fire? That's not fair.

....sorry, what are talking about again? Oh yes, sorry about that!

This is just stupid now. I mean, I expect this little fighting spat to go on between the two, but this is just childish.

 

[Beryl77]

This is getting a bit embarrassing. Both of them behave like some schoolchildren. And I really want to meet the guys who work at EA's marketing department because I'm sure it was them who told Jeff Brown to say those things, it fits their style if you look at Dante's Inferno and Dead Space 2.

 

[nifedj]

I wish they would spend less time talking about how well their games are going to do and more time talking about why they deserve to do well.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

I like you, Eric. Hell, I like you so much, you might just be making up for good ol' Bobby. Not the rest of the company though.

 

[Jumplion]

WOOOOOOO! Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight!

Oh c'mon, guys, live a little! I, for one, am seriously enjoying this mudslinging competition. It's perfectly fine to have a healthy shit-spewing contest every once in a while, especially for rivals on this scale. I would love to have just a completely immature mudslinging competition between the two companies (in good faith, of course), that would just be delightful. It's like a funny commercial inbetween your favorite shows (Battlefield and CoD), they're just fun to stop and watch.

Guess what, bro, there are a limited number of consumers. Don't give me that crap of "But we can all have fun and bring in more people!" No no no, bullshit, first thing (okay, maybe a couple notches down) you need to know about marketing; there's never enough consumers. You are in a dog-eat-dog industry here, you cannot play nice, you need to work for that consumer's hard earned cash. Don't give me that "growing the industry" BS, this is business 101 bro.

As I said before, I actually found Brown's response to him very interesting, and I find Hershberg's response to his response even more interesting. It's like an old veteran of the industry hazing the newbie, telling him to shove off and stop being naive. It's fascinating, really.

Anyway, back to the mudslinging;

"My game slept with your mom last night!
"Yeah, well our game skydived while doin' it with your mom!"
"Oh screw you, CoD!"
"That's the intention!"
"..."
"..."
"Wanna make out?"
"I thought you'd never ask"

*and off they go, riding into the sunset*

 

[Kodachi]

Are you kidding me?

"Hey guys, lots of reviewers stated our game had a ridiculously simple battle mechanic that was far too automated and putting people to sleep"

"I know!!! We'll add quick time events! That'll force them to pay attention as they spam 'Auto Attack' through the game".

 

[mjc0961]

That doesn't make sense. Pepsi is delicious and Coke is absolutely disgusting, so EA should be compared to Coke, not Pepsi.

And yeah, I guess it's nothing new for the little guy to go into mudslinging, but why do they do this exactly? Being dicks has the nasty side effect of making people not want to buy your products because you're such dicks. All this nonsense from EA isn't making me even start to care about Battlefield 3 (I don't care at all about it or MW3 right now), and I know that Apple's completely obnoxious "Mac VS PC" ads where all they did was bash Windows never made me want to go out and buy a Mac.

If they're going to do this, they have to balance it right so they aren't just being dickheads like EA was here. I remember some of those Pepsi taste test commercials. They weren't bashing or hating on Coke, they were just having people drink both and showing clips of people who said they liked Pepsi better.

 

[XT inc]

I don't see why there is an argument here.

Bf3 looks like it will be awesome, but unless they stop being sneaky origin bastards I really don't want it.

People need to view games as I do, In a negative space of unproven worth, with no sense of instant goodness based on previous titles.

Cod MW3 could rock the shit if done right, BF3 could suck ass by all accords. They haven't launched, they haven't been beaten, they haven't been good or bad to us with dlc policies.( who knows which game will cost you 70+bucks for 20 maps((cough bl,ops)))

Let your games do the talking.

 

[random_bars]

He's absolutely right. EA seems to have the impression that because CoD is the highest-selling game right now, the epitome of What People Want must be brown bloody screen multiplayer shooters.

But they're wrong. What people want, quite simply, is good games - ones which they can pick up, play, and get an enjoyable experience from. What that experience is makes absolutely no odds, and in fact, people are generally happier to play something new that they haven't played before.

Look at Mario, or Zelda, or GTA 3, or God of War, or Half-Life 2, or Minecraft - at the time of their creation there was nothing like any of these games. And yet they sold like fucking lava hotcakes and made their creators absolutely shitloads of money. Was this because they were all multiplayer FPS games set in the Middle East? No - it's because they are good fucking games, polished and properly tutorialed so that anyone can enjoy them, even if they've never played anything like it before.

That, EA, is what you need to do, and it's that that you need to copy from Call of Duty - originality, polish and accessibility. Not specific mechanics or themes.

 

[UnderCoverGuest]

While mommy and daddy are fighting, I'll be too busy playing Batman: Arkham City.

Never have I agreed more with a poster here.

 

[Awexsome]

I'm not gonna judge much since it's DICE making the game, not EA, but EA sure is working hard to get me to dislike them here. Their marketing dept must have found that the CoD hate train has enough passengers to constitute an audience worth catering to.

All I hear about from the BF3 side is how much they think that CoD is going down followed by some news about what they're doing with the PC version only.

Meanwhile all I hear from the MW3 side is what they're doing to try to improve launches on ALL platforms and how much input the new IW is taking to try and regain their top status after the abysmal post-launch support of MW2 followed by Zampella-gate.

 

[Korten12]

This is getting a bit embarrassing. Both of them behave like some schoolchildren. And I really want to meet the guys who work at EA's marketing department because I'm sure it was them who told Jeff Brown to say those things, it fits their style if you look at Dante's Inferno and Dead Space 2.

How are they both? It seems Activision hasn't been acting childish while EA has been.

 

[Iron Lightning]

This is great, it's like Hitler having a pissing contest with Stalin.

 

[No_Remainders]

Hold the fucking phone! Did I just read that right?

"I feel like [EA's commentary] comes from a place that assumes that there's a finite number of gamers in the world." He said, "If we as an industry act like there's a finite number of gamers in the world, and just beat each other up to get access to them, I think that will come true."

Ok, seriously, what?

Did he just say that there's possibly an infinite number of gamers in the world? Surely that's just... What?

 

[Brian Hendershot]

Wasn't it proven that people generally liked Pepsi more than Coke if they were not told what they were drinking...

 

[The Wooster]

Hold the fucking phone! Did I just read that right?

"I feel like [EA's commentary] comes from a place that assumes that there's a finite number of gamers in the world." He said, "If we as an industry act like there's a finite number of gamers in the world, and just beat each other up to get access to them, I think that will come true."

Ok, seriously, what?

Did he just say that there's possibly an infinite number of gamers in the world? Surely that's just... What?

Well as long as people keep breeding there's more people to buy games.

 

[Rad Party God]

I call that bullshit, Mr. Eric... The cake... is a lie.

 

[Dectilon]

No matter how old we become or how important things we end up representing in life we still remain stupid children.