The Way of Marketing

There's a saying among video game marketing departments that any publicity is good publicity.  While this is true to some degree I have to ask...If you can choose between positive buzz and negative attention wouldn't you take the former and not the latter?  After all isn't it the real objective of marketing to get people interested in their game?

Case in point the Halo franchise.  It's interesting to think that while the big budget Halo movie planned by Microsoft and the guys behind the Lord of the Rings films never came to fruition (mostly due to greed and stupidity) we've gotten some interesting little flicks and video clips over the years that give us a taste of what a live action Halo film would look like.  Here's a collection of some of what has come out over the years:

  

So, while these snippets of what could have been tell a interesting little story we have never really had a chance to get a longer glance.  Enter a new short film entitled "Forward unto Dawn." I'm actually rather looking forward to this despite not being much of a Halo fan. It might turn out to be crap, but hey it's free and meant to be a prequel to the next game in the series so my expectations aren't all that high. What really makes me happy about all this though is the fact that a large amount of money, somewhere between 5-10 million dollars, went into making of it.

Personally, I think that this is a much better way to spend an advertising budget than simply burning it on over sized web banners, thirty second TV ads and other obnoxious schemes that companies like EA are famous for coming up with. Speaking of EA and the Dead Space series...promoting the first game with a multi-part motion comic was great. Promoting the second game because it offends your parents (and old people) was incredibly lame. Kudos to 343 Studios for doing it the right way. And incedentally Anna Popplewell is still smoking hot. Yes, that is irrefutable fact.  Conversation over.