Very Good (if old) Article - Dumbest Moments In Gaming

[Nev]

http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/jun ... stmoments/

Bad business decisions, lawsuits, poor games, and similar, with GameSpy staff making fun of all of them. Actually pretty funny. I'm only up to MCA suing Nintendo for Donkey Kong infringing on the King Kong rights, which it seems to have been later determined that they did not own. Hopefully the rest will be as educational/hilarious.

Sine, you can move this to Gamethought if you want, but I feel like it works fine here as well.

[Imakeholesinu]

I vaugly remember this. It was a hilarious read if I remember, well I've got time, I'm going to read it right now. Then I'm going to go poop.

[Nev]

My God, how is Acclaim's marketing department this foul?

"Slightly less distasteful, but still idiotic, was the company's experiment in "Identity Marketing." Acclaim offered to buy the rights to legally rename five gamers "Turok" for an entire year. It claimed the promotion was the idea of a Dr. Simeon Cantrell of Australia's Marketing Science Centre, author of a book called Market Their Pants Off (which actually sounds like a good promotion for BMX XXX.) Unfortunately, Dr. Cantrell doesn't exist, although his biography shares certain details with one Dr. Byron Sharp, a real member of Australia's (real) Marketing Science Center. The book's ISBN number was actually a book of knock-knock jokes. One must therefore question whether Acclaim ever got the rights to use Dr. Sharp's bio or the MSC's logo. If it didn't, that wouldn't be surprising, either."

Is there anyone on the planet that wants to be named after a fairly dubious game character? I mean, I love the Metroid series, but if I have a daughter, I'm sure as hell not naming her "Samus".

This is in addition to the "Buy advertising space on tombstones" and "Encourage people to get speeding tickets to advertise extreme driving game" ploys.

[Imakeholesinu]

I heard somewhere that some guy named his kid So-and-So Ver 2.0.

[SineSwiper]

I think that was mostly a joke. People talk all the time about "Bill Gates Ver. 2.0" or "Linus 2.0" in reference to their children.

About the King Kong thing, NoA almost settled. How amazing stupid is that? Corporations are so completely afraid of lawsuits that they lose their backbone and settle on absolutely anything.

[Kupek]

About the King Kong thing, NoA almost settled. How amazing stupid is that? Corporations are so completely afraid of lawsuits that they lose their backbone and settle on absolutely anything.

It has to do with money, not pride. It's often significantly cheapter to settle.

[SineSwiper]

I remember being excited for the SNES CD-ROM, and disappointed when it just sort of evaporated; I remember being excited for the N64, and I remember being disgusted with it when it arrived. I have to wonder if Square having to retool Secret of Mana, which was originally going to be an SNES CD-ROM game, touched off its disillusionment with Nintendo. We'll probably never know, but it's obvious that losing Square -- and getting diminished support from many other important third-party publishers -- more or less ruined Nintendo's success with home consoles in recent years.

Wow...SoM was going to be a CD game? How awesome would have that had been?

It has to do with money, not pride. It's often significantly cheapter to settle.

Maybe only in certain cases, and only in the short term. One, your reputation takes a dive, and two, really nobody knows if it's "cheaper to settle" unless you actually fight. In this case, Nintendo actually RECEIVED money back, so it was much much better to fight.

[SineSwiper]

Well, that was a good waste of 3 hours. I read all 30 of them, and it seems like I've learned that the gaming industry is just as stupid as every other industry.

Of course, I knew this already.

[Nev]

Bit pessimistic, hey?

There are some real dorks in the game industry, but not everyone is bad. I would love to meet Shigeru Miyamoto, for instance, or Hideo Kojima...Hironobu Sakaguchi...Tetsuya Nomura...John Carmack would be cool too, or Richard Garriot. Some corporations do stupid things...I don't know if there's a way around that. It does seem a bit money-driven at times as well.

[Torgo]

My girlfriend's friend named her daughter Aeris. Her husband's suggestion, of course.

[Kupek]

Maybe only in certain cases, and only in the short term. One, your reputation takes a dive, and two, really nobody knows if it's "cheaper to settle" unless you actually fight. In this case, Nintendo actually RECEIVED money back, so it was much much better to fight.

They fought because it was more profitable; they realized they were clearly in the legal right, could probably get it dismissed and even get money out of it. Most of the time that's not the case, and a full blown trial will cost millions of dollars - that's not hard to estimate.

Bit pessimistic, hey?

More like realistic. Why should the gaming industry be special?

[Nev]

I suppose I've seen too much to have any wide-eyed innocence about the gaming industry, the way some do with movies.

[M'k'n'zy]

On the topic of amusing gaming articles, does anyone have a link to the thing they did a few years ago where they had young kids play old NES and Atari games? That was hystarical.

[Nev]

Some magazine did a feature like that recently. And yeah, it was.

"The duck just killed me." (talking about Adventure) "I think that's supposed to be a dragon, Timmy." "The dragon duck just killed me."