Aaron’s post demands a reply, not because I have an issue with anything he wrote, but because I have a major issue with this so called “viral marketing.” Personally, I find it both utterly pointless and a complete waste of time. Gaming companies are rapidly leaping on the bandwagon, seeing it as a way to generate massive amounts of hype for relatively low cost, but I would argue that its short time in the sun has already come and gone. The case in point here would be the (in)famous ilovebees.com site that was all the rage and the talk of the message boards in the months leading up to the Halo 2 launch. Granted, it was clever to put the URL at the end of the trailer, and the way the site was organized certainly served its purpose in terms of getting people talking. But my issue with the format is that it is fundamentally a cock-tease that delivers nothing what-so-ever.

Consider what we learned from the multitude of hours pouring over the obscure clues at ilovebees.com; Absolutely nothing. The site did not reveal the game’s upcoming launch date before it was announced at E3. It did not reveal any aspects of the story line that we did not already know from general press releases and screen shots. It gave no additional insight into the mythos, back-story, or universe that Bungie had crafted. It gave no tips that would help in multiplayer. It didn’t even give the name of Frankie’s mom. It made gamers speculate, argue, debate, and flame for months… but for what?

At the 360 launch event, Microsoft had a strange green tree with photos nailed to it, and as each person walked by and wondered just what the heck the thing was, reps just smiled and said it was part of a viral campaign. To this day, I have yet to find anyone who knows anything about just what the purpose of that monstrosity was. It’s just a clever word to use now. The Zune has a viral campaign, but will tell us absolutely squat about the product. But hey, gotta have one.

Other developers are not above this either. One of my favourite companies is Tecmo and their Team Ninja. Ninja Gaiden Black is perhaps the best game ever made, but even the iconic sunglass-wearing Itagaki stumbles here big-time. When talking about DOA4, he dropped a hint for fans that produced a flurry of speculation. The hint: “crocodile.” Having played the game considerably, I have failed to find any basis for that pointless clue what-so-ever. There is, of course, no crocodile in the game (not even in the African stage). Nobody gets a crocodile costume. You cannot have a crocodile as a pet. There is no ancient crocodile-as-deity reference in the game. Nobody cried crocodile tears. Get the point?

Not to be outdone, the developers of Lost Planet have described their upcoming game with the word, “Alligator.” Oh please.

I would perhaps go so far as to argue (at the risk of incurring great wrath from the community) that Frankie’s weekly updates from Bungie fall dangerously close to viral marketing as well and contain almost no useful information either. Before Halo 2’s launch, we read a lot of: “I just saw the *****, and you guys are gonna love it. The **** is just awesome, and when the ***** comes at you, you’ll leap out of your seat!” Um… ok… sounds great. I, for one, never leapt out of my seat during the entire game, so on two levels the information proved rather useless. The same thing is happening with Halo 3. Telling fans that the game feels like Halo 1 is really telling us nothing at all. What exactly does that mean? Oh, and when he says that battles are bigger, he quickly states that by that he means there is at least one more grunt on the screen. Be still my beating heart.

Maybe I’m just jaded, but in the era of hype I want hard facts, solid proof, and a game in my hands before I’ll believe that something will knock me out of my seat… or that it contains a crocodile. Either dump viral marketing, or make it useful. Any other way and it is just an insult to gamers, and a total waste of our time.

- Martin VanWoudenberg