Image source: The Elder Scrolls Wiki
What happens when PR goes awry? Not slightly sideways, as we saw recently with the leak of Rage 2 (which is probably the best thing that could have happened to it anyway) but completely, irretrievably wrong, in a way that inspires conversation and funny stories for years to come? Game publishers do their level best to keep the hype machine running along smoothly and inoffensively—that may be the most important part of all—but sometimes, out of malice or greed or plain old good intentions, the bus goes off the cliff and there’s nothing to do but hold on and ride it to the bottom.
That’s when legends are born.
Daikatana: John Romero's famous bitch-botch
Back before the turn of the millennium, John Romero proclaimed that he was going to make you his bitch. "Suck it down," he added, presumably to ensure that we were all on the same edgy page. Three years later, Daikatana finally came out, and... well, there was some bitching, alright, but it wasn't quite what the ad had promised. The infamous FPS wasn't as bad as people sometimes like to pretend, but the pre-release hype (which was also wildly premature—the ad was followed by multiple delays) set the bar so high that anything short of perfection would have seemed a letdown. And the final product, while far from a disaster, was also far from perfection: Reviews weren't great, but the reaction from gamers was absolutely savage.
Romero ultimately apologized for the ad, acknowledging that it soured his relationship with the gaming community. Ion Storm Dallas closed less than a year after Daikatana's release.
Aliens: Colonial Marines - The actual gameplay demo that was not, actually
Pre-release press demos for Aliens: Colonial Marines promised a game of impressive—some might say cinematic—visual fidelity, but the final release left players squinting and scratching their heads. Opinions varied on the degree, but the general consensus was that the visual quality of the released game fell well short of what was promised in those "actual gameplay" demos. The difference was enough that the UK's Advertising Standards Agency forced Sega to add an after-the-fact disclaimer to Colonial Marines promotional videos, shortly after which a lawsuit was filed over claims of false advertising.
It eventually fizzled out but not before Sega and Gearbox pointed accusing fingers at one another ("It's Randy doing whatever the fuck he likes" remains one of my favorite lines from a leaked internal email) and while Gearbox was ultimately absolved of legal responsibility, the stench of that swim through a swamp of ugly recriminations lingers.
Dead Space 2 - EA pulls a “How do you do, fellow kids?”
For some reason, Electronic Arts decided that what Dead Space 2 marketing really needed was a literal "your mom" joke. The company released a series of videos in which middle-aged women were given an eyeful of interstellar trauma victim Isaac Clarke hacking and blasting at hordes of sticky space zombies. Clips of gameplay were mixed with shots of their horrified reactions: One participant described the game as "purely crap" at the end of her session and predicted that such games would leave us at the mercy of "a society of criminals."
The campaign was built on a framework of all the worst gamer stereotypes—Women! Old people! Games cause violence!—and didn't even attempt to make a save with an ironic twist at the end. It was embarrassing, and frustrating: Dead Space was a splattery mess, but it was also a top-notch survival-horror game with a dark psychological edge, and the juvenile focus on the worst excesses of guts and gore did the sequel a real disservice. (Also, your mom told me she actually loved Dead Space 2.)
Homefront - 9999 red balloons go into the bay
Image source: Kotaku
I liked Homefront, the Red-Dawn-but-North-Korea shooter that THQ pushed out in 2011. It was monumentally stupid and overwrought but so was Red Dawn, and the shooting bits were good enough to make it a “forgettable fun” kind of 6.5/10 shooter. (Interestingly, our reviewer, the redoubtable Norman Chan, saw it the opposite way: Intense story, “ho-hum” combat.)
Speaking of monumentally stupid, THQ released 10,000 red balloons as a Homefront publicity stunt during GDC 2011. The balloons rose majestically into the sky over San Francisco, but instead of rising high enough to break apart (or at least go away), crappy weather conditions brought them down prematurely in the San Francisco Bay. It was a hell of a mess. THQ claimed the balloons were biodegradable but city officials didn't care: The publisher had to pay to clean the mess up and ate a $7000 fine on top. Homefront tanked, too.
There's more...
Horse armor - The world's most infamous cosmetic (which you can still buy)
Before nickel-and-dime DLC was a routine part of the gaming life, there was Horse Armor, a $2.50 outfit for your mighty steed in Bethesda’s open-world RPG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The steep price for a simple cosmetic did not go over well, particularly since you couldn't even use it to flaunt your affluence and/or financial irresponsibility in front of your friends, enemies, and indifferent strangers: Oblivion is strictly single-player, so the only person who would ever see your horse in her fancy new outfit was you.
To its credit, Bethesda did a good job of owning the error—eventually. Its 2009 April Fool's gag (Oblivion was released in 2006) included a half-price sale on all Oblivion DLC except Horse Armor, which was actually doubled in cost. More recently, it added Horse Power Armor to Fallout 4 via the Bethesda Creation Club. But it also never stopped selling horse armor, and it still goes for $2.50. There’s probably a lesson in that.
Mass Effect Andromeda - My face is tired
The point of demos and early access availability is to get people interested in your game: They try it, they like it, they tell their friends, everybody preorders, and it's happy faces all around. Mass Effect: Andromeda is a case study in doing it wrong, wrong, oh-so-awfully wrong. Origin Access subscribers got a one-week head start on the journey to another galaxy, and almost immediately began dunking on it: It wasn't exactly broken but it sure as hell wasn't right (well, okay, some of it was broken), and the legion of memes it spawned—including one courtesy of our very own Tyler Wilde—was the last thing BioWare and EA needed, especially since fans were already uneasy about the state of the game and its ugly, tired faces. Glitchy visuals weren’t Andromeda’s only problem, but they set a pre-release tone that the game was never able to overcome.
Battlefront 2 loot boxes - The microtransactions heard ‘round the world
An exclusive licensing deal to make Star Wars videogames in a post-Lucas world should have been a golden goose for EA. Instead, after setting a promising pace with a rejuvenated Star Wars: Battlefront, it set the game industry on fire with Star Wars: Battlefront 2—and not in a good way. The planned implementation of loot boxes and premium currency outraged fans and forced a days-before-release walkback, which was bad enough on its own. But it also attracted the attention of politicians around the world, leading to multiple inquiries and threats of legal action reminiscent of the videogame violence moral panic of the early '90s. Many gamers also very vocally took up the cause, seeing the legislative pushback as an opportunity to force real change on the industry.
The reaction from publishers has been somewhat less than graceful so far. Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson reiterated the company’s (and industry’s) position in a recent earnings call that loot boxes are not gambling and said that it will "push forward" with them in future games no matter what people think. Executives from other companies have said much the same. But some sort of compromise in the way loot boxes work seems likely: Belgium's Gaming Commission recently declared that three out of four popular games from EA, Activision, and Valve (FIFA 18, Overwatch, and CS:GO) contain loot boxes that contravene the country's gambling laws and warned that hefty fines or even prison sentences could be applied if they’re not changed or removed. Ironically, the one game that was found to fall within the boundaries of the law is the one that started this whole damn mess in the first place: Star Wars: Battlefront 2.
And because our console cousins deserve some love too, we've got a pair of honorable mentions ahead...
Sony PSP Black/White Campaign - Yeah, that's racist
Image source: Reddit
To herald the launch of a white PSP in 2006, Sony rolled out an advertising campaign in the Netherlands that included an image of a very aggressive-looking white woman holding the face of a visibly frightened black woman. It was not good. Sony denied any racist intent but the subtext, intentional or not, was about as subtle as a kick in the junk with a steel toe boot. The backlash was immediate, and Sony quickly killed the campaign.
I mean, holy cow.
Xbox One is always online - Get with the times, chumps
“We have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called Xbox 360,” Microsoft’s Don Mattrick said during an E3 2013 interview with Geoff Keighley, addressing concerns about the Xbox One’s always-on requirement. (Start around 1:30 for the relevant bit.) “If you have zero access to the internet, that is an offline device.” It wasn’t an entirely unreasonable point but it came off as cavalier and dismissive, especially after he followed up the remark by basically implying that only chumps don’t have access to the internet. Xbox fans weren’t buying what Microsoft was selling, and possibly even worse, Sony used Microsoft’s struggles at the show to put on a master class in ownage.