In what very well may be one of the most genius yet batshit-fucking-crazily-insane marketing ideas in the history of the universe, video game publisher Electronic Arts will be giving away free copies of the next rabidly-anticipated installment in its epic sci-fi space opera, Mass Effect 3… from space.
Yeah, that’s right.
From fucking SPACE!
Utilizing the recent technological wizardry we all know and are clinically addicted to love as GPS, alongside some good old-fashioned weather balloons, EA plans to launch/steer/orbit/glide/<insert other space traveling adjective here> a few copies of the game to several different locations across the globe. Per USA Today’s Game Hunters blog:
“Publisher Electronic Arts will be launching copies of the game into space using weather balloons that will be released in New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Berlin, London and Paris.”
Each game has a GPS tracking device onboard and fans can track their return to the Earth on masseffect.com to find a copy and play it a week or more before the game hits stores.“
Again, pretty fucking crazy. But also pretty fucking cool. Save, of course, for the fact that the Central/Midwestern areas of the United States are getting the shaft big-time, of course.
Now, I’m not the type to go and take a four hour train ride ti New York City in the hopes that I’ll be able to out-GPS several, several other thousand GPS-ers in tracking the falling weather balloons, I will say that this is most certainly one of the finest efforts at viral, outside-the-box marketing that I’ve ever seen. And it fits so well with the game’s theme to boot!
The real question however, is how many of these weather balloons are going to get stuck in a tree or power line somewhere. And also, how many fights will break out throughout the six locations worldwide. If I were a betting man, and I am, I’d be setting the over/under for the latter at about 20 even. And taking the over. Any takers?
Joshua Galligan first became addicte– err… first got his illustrious start in gaming by relentlessly annoying his older brothers until they’d finally let him run Sonic the Hedgehog through the loop-dee-loops back on the Sega Genesis. Suffice it to say, he’s been passionately chasing those proverbial “loop-dee-loops” as a gamer ever since. When Joshua isn’t playing games entirely too often (according to some), he enjoys reading, writing, “theoretically” gambling on everything from football to Words with Friends, pretending he knows how to cook, MMA, and — perhaps most of all — attending and participating in tea parties thrown by his four year-old daughter. In addition, he strongly dislikes scallions, traffic, the color yellow, and his favorite color is green.
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