Manufactured Outrage!
Since I can’t upload the pic, because I haven’t had the time to fix my stupid blog, here is a link to the picture, and the story:"http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/729943/dead-island-riptide-zombie-bait-edition-is-gross-and-alarming/" />
Welcome back. Let me just say that I am not outraged or offended by this. Like my esteemed colleague, Chris”Rated”X, over at 20SD, I am a fan of Shock, Schlock, Gore and More. Like any horror fan, this is something that I have seen before. In truth, it’s pretty damn tame compared to some of the things that I have seen. (I’m looking at you “Cannibal holocaust”). Is this offensive? Absolutely! Is it schlocky? Sure, I would say so. Does it promote violence against women? I would say yes, but there is a ‘but’ to that…
I believe that they were going for that B-movie horror feel. The kind of movies where they just had enough special effects for a few gallons of fake blood and guts, and several shots of the leading actress naked. Those movies thrived on spectacle, and the way they got their name out was by doing cheap, tacky, tricks like ‘Oh my god! Did they just pull her entrails through her nipples? …THAT WAS AWESHUM!’ The thing about those tricks are…they worked.
With that said “Dead Island” is supposed to be a triple A title if I am not mistaken. It is at the very least, big enough to warrant a release on the Playstation and Xbox 360. Which means its budget was bigger than the games on Facebook and Xbox live arcade.
I get ‘what’ they were going for, and even ‘who’ they were going for. The large amount of men who grew up on, and enjoy, the grindhouse gore flicks of the seventies and eighties. I don’t see anything wrong with that. That’s your target audience, go for them, frolic and be happy…and be paid, don’t forget to be paid.
On the other hand, I don’t think this was an accident, either. I think this whole thing was intentional (and brilliant by the way). Corporate executives, even the ones in England and Australia, are not dumb or disconnected people by any stretch. No matter how much Hollywood wants you to believe that they are. When they enter a room, they are usually the smartest people in that room. Whether it be from advantage from birth and education, or they are just plain smart. After all, your average executive was smart enough, or at least diligent enough, to climb up the corporate ladder and put themselves in a position of wealth and power.
When these execs sit in their little meetings planning and strategizing, they are thinking of the best ways to sell their products to the most people. If they do have their thumb up their asses during these meetings, it’s far enough up there that they can feel the throbbing pulse of whatever industry they work in. Corporate executives in the gaming industry are no different than any other industry. They know their target audience, and they know how to shill their wares. They also know how the fans will react to given situations
With that said, I think they knew how people would react to this particular statue. I think that’s why they offered it in the EU and AUS territories and not NA. They knew that they would take a hit on the production of the statue. They don’t have to produce as much since their projections for Europe and Australia will be lower than the United States.
They create the statue at a loss. Certain women’s groups flip shit. They get a metric shit ton of free publicity from videogame blogs, personal blogs (like this one), and legitimate videogame websites. When the fire comes down they give a half-hearted corporate apology to the offended (who weren’t going to buy the game anyway.) and the people who were on the fence about the game, or didn’t even know about the game at the very least consider buying the game “to stick it to those freedom-hating feminists!” Even though, we in the states would never have gotten the statue anyway. So what do they do with all those manufactured statues that they can’t sell now. The might destroy them. The more-likely situation is they end up on ebay selling for quadruple the price that the collector’s edition was going to sell for, and they don’t have to include the game! That money doesn’t have to go on the books either, because those statues were already written off as destroyed
Maybe I am over thinking it, or maybe the Executives at Deep Silver are bloody brilliant. As for the outcome, the only thing that has been accomplished is that we have yet another wedge driven into our society over something trivial and pointless. Women are no closer to equals in our society, and a corporation is poised to make a ton of money. And what about the game, you ask? Is it any good? Much like the old joke about a women’s orgasm, ‘who cares about the game?’
But someone, somewhere was offended! And we can’t have that…ever!
As for the statue, it is ugly, tacky, doesn’t really look like an actual woman’s body, and let’s not even mention how gross it is. I would still plunk down 40-50 bucks on it just to have it in my house! Not that I particularly like it or anything, but because it pisses people off.
As for being offended, I’ll let Steve Hughes express my opinion on people who get offended over things:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b48_1305790944(also there are a bunch of offensive adds on that site. So yeah…)
As a side note, at this point I am offended by Zombie-anything. I find it a great snore. Can we get a new monster, please? Zombies need to shamble back into their graves for a decade or two. (Except the classic Hatian-style zombies. They are cool in fiction.)
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