Buckle up for a blend of humor, tech talk, and gaming nostalgia!
Ever wondered about the wildest marketing stunts in video game history? This episode delivers laughs right from the start with a quirky story about a back fat mishap, setting the stage for a rollercoaster of humor and insight.
We dive into the recent stock market waves, spotlighting NVIDIA's meteoric rise past Microsoft, and reminisce about our own experiences as PC gaming enthusiasts.
You'll hear a conversation around Battlefield 3's unforgettable guerrilla marketing campaign, which featured tanks rolling through London. We also compare its expansive gameplay to the Call of Duty franchise, sparking a nostalgic trip down gaming memory lane.
We'll talk about Xbox's cheeky Destiny fragrance promo and Mass Effect 3's weather balloon stunt, showcasing how clever marketing can amplify a game's success.
We take a look at the hits and misses of video game adaptations into movies and TV series, highlighting The Witcher's triumph over less successful adaptations like Doom and Assassin's Creed.
Wrapping things up, we'll discuss the controversial PSP White console and end with a fond look back at the iconic Super Smash Bros ad campaign on the N64.
ABOUT NERDBRAND NerdBrand is a national branding and advertising agency based in Louisville, KY. From establishing your brand identity to guiding your day-to-day marketing strategies, we bring the "why?" of your business to life.
Buckle up for a blend of humor, tech talk, and gaming nostalgia!
Ever wondered about the wildest marketing stunts in video game history? This episode delivers laughs right from the start with a quirky story about a back fat mishap, setting the stage for a rollercoaster of humor and insight.
We dive into the recent stock market waves, spotlighting NVIDIA's meteoric rise past Microsoft, and reminisce about our own experiences as PC gaming enthusiasts.
You'll hear a conversation around Battlefield 3's unforgettable guerrilla marketing campaign, which featured tanks rolling through London. We also compare its expansive gameplay to the Call of Duty franchise, sparking a nostalgic trip down gaming memory lane.
We'll talk about Xbox's cheeky Destiny fragrance promo and Mass Effect 3's weather balloon stunt, showcasing how clever marketing can amplify a game's success.
We take a look at the hits and misses of video game adaptations into movies and TV series, highlighting The Witcher's triumph over less successful adaptations like Doom and Assassin's Creed.
Wrapping things up, we'll discuss the controversial PSP White console and end with a fond look back at the iconic Super Smash Bros ad campaign on the N64.
ABOUT NERDBRAND NerdBrand is a national branding and advertising agency based in Louisville, KY. From establishing your brand identity to guiding your day-to-day marketing strategies, we bring the "why?" of your business to life.
I remember somebody a while back was, like you know, screaming I won't say who it was, I won't say who it was, but I think it was like don't touch my back fat. You know she was screaming that and I was like everybody's got something. She was skinny anyways. So, anyways, welcome to the NerdBrand podcast, where we're going to be talking about back fat and video games. It's been a weird week in the stocks, a couple weeks actually.
Speaker 1:
As of this recording, I want to start it off before we're going to get into guerrilla marketing of some video games that released. Jacob found a naughty and nice list for us, yes, so we'll try to be careful about the naughty and then we'll go over the nice ones and you'll know some of the names and one of the things that I just I'm not a video gamer myself, so I don't know a whole lot about video games. I don't play them. I haven't in a while. But NVIDIA is the company that makes chips. I think they still do the graphics cards for PC gamers. Being a former PC gamer myself, that's where I played Halo, and they've now surpassed Microsoft in value on the stock market, and so that's been a thing.
Speaker 2:
That's just it's crazy because Microsoft, ever since I've been aware of all that, has always been like the top Right, like it was always like oh, you got Microsoft, all right, cool, apple, cool. You know it's Microsoft, apple and Amazon kind of feel like they run the world. Well, disney, you can probably throw them in there.
Speaker 1:
Well, yeah, I mean, at one time it was Facebook, google, twitter, you know something else, I don't know. This is like circa 2012 to 19 or something. So, anyway, now it's like, changed so much, the landscape of tech has changed so much and it's not, as you know, microsoft, for those listening that is, who's got chat GPT in that agreement and has integrated that into their search engine, bing. And we talk a lot lately about search engines on this show because I mean, that's, I don't know, we're nerds, we kind of nerd out on that shit. So we go through it and we look and we're like, oh, wait a minute. So Google's got theirs and they pulled back on it. And then you've got NVIDIA with what it's worth and worth more than Microsoft.
Speaker 1:
It's just this giant war in tech. But it's also kind of a little concerning for me. When I look at it. I don't lose sleep on it, but it's a very top-heavy market in trading. If all crashes, you used to trading Cause that. If golf crashes, like you know, you used to see Ford manufacturing that kind of stuff and that's like no, no, it's it's.
Speaker 2:
It's a tech side kind of rules and anything that has the smallest stuff that are worth the most amount of money, like that's. Those are the people who are making the most money right now.
Speaker 1:
I feel like it's just like, yeah, the most money. Right now, I feel like, yeah, it's like, yeah, I mean, it was a big race. Like they went out, did pc gaming, that hardware, did you have the latest graphics card? And I don't know if it's still that way and it may be, um, but it's almost like every week a new one would come out, because mark and my diary, uh, you know, you had 256 meg and that was, oh my god, yeah, exactly as you laugh.
Speaker 2:
Now, now you can get like what? 10 terabytes? Right, it's like, that's like not even.
Speaker 1:
It's like going back to like the 1800s and being like oh man, I got a hundred dollars it's like I bought a model t. It goes a whole 40 miles an hour. You hate under your hat, right, it's like that. And somebody pulls up in a ferrari and just like what are you talking about? So, yeah, a lot has changed and, um, you know, but the one thing that hasn't changed is how video games are marketed.
Speaker 1:
So I'm gonna start with the, uh, the, the good list and then I'll uh, I'll let you take the naughty right, but just kind of mention them lightly. Um, maybe omit the names of the companies. So, you know, everybody can go look it up if based on what we say. But yeah, I don't want to talk about a company name, because some of them have done some really silly stuff that I just can't, you just I can't, I can't, you't. I'm like that dog in that meme. It's just on the floor. I'm like I can't adult today. Anyway, starting with Battlefield 3, their marketing campaign, they had tanks drafted in London. You look this one up, yeah.
Speaker 2:
No, they had a straight-up video. Even people were recording it, and they just basically had regular tanks it was like three or four of them and just had a white sign that said battlefield three, and it just drove through London. Just, people are just taking photos and how many tanks? It was like three or four, three or four.
Speaker 1:
I don't know, from Russia. Yeah, probably. Yeah, like the last three they got.
Speaker 2:
No, I did battlefield three, so this was like early 2000s. For those who don't know, battlefield three is a very, very unique game. Personally, I think it was very well done too. I have a lot of friends that we all loved it because it took a Call of Duty mentality but just opened up the world a lot and then you're able to really have actual battle experience. There was like 60 people in the game, wow. And you're on each side. You can get into tanks, you can get into airplanes, helicopters and flying around, you can just run around. You got different objectives. It was just in different kits, it was. It's just a well-done series.
Speaker 1:
They've had a little bit of struggle in the more recent games a lot of gamers and a lot of development companies have recently, because, I mean, that's just been a they shut down studios that make no sense. Why you would shut them down, and you know there's all kinds of shenanigans going on.
Speaker 2:
We'll go into a little bit of those and the negatives. Yeah, yeah, this is going to the good ones, where it was like guerrilla marketing. They're really just trying to get people to be like oh wow, we're cool, you know. And uh, battlefield, I believe it is european owned. Um, it's not american owned. That's part of the reason that was allowed it to have that option and to focus in london compared to you know the us right, you know half the cities in the us, I'm pretty sure would either been like against it and the other half would have gotten on the tanks and started riding them around.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean I played when I played on the pc. I played halo call of Duty, I think it was called Wolfenstein.
Speaker 2:
Wolfenstein, yes, it was a. And then Doom.
Speaker 1:
Doom was like, yeah, I had all the lights off and late at night playing Doom and then not being able to sleep.
Speaker 2:
I grew up playing Doom. Well, doom to be honest, I know it's not on this list, but that's because I know, since we were kind of already talking about Microsoft, but that's because I know, since we were kind of already talking about Microsoft they did amazing, amazing marketing for doom, and why doom is such a classic game, and the fact they rebooted it, which I thought was well done as well. Yeah, but, um, I don't. Do you remember this with Microsoft, with doom?
Speaker 1:
Um, I saw a little. Yeah, I saw a little bit of it. Um, there was another horror game, though, that I got more into watching the cut scenes on. I can't remember what it was, but it's irrelevant.
Speaker 2:
But no, I saw something, so yeah what happened with Doom was that it came out on Microsoft 95, I believe it was either 95 or the one right before it and basically what they did is Bill Gates partnered with id Software and said, hey, I want Doom on every new Microsoft PC whenever someone buys it. And then boom took off and they actually did an ad where Bill Gates is actually in the game and the screen all of a sudden stops and he just walks out into the screen. And he walks out and I forgot what he says. It's just basically like hey, keep on playing, and then walks off the screen or whatever. And he's just that was the ad. Was him just showing up into the game? I was like dude, that was brilliant. And then all of a sudden Microsoft blew up windows and all that with their issues that they had. But obviously you know they just were perfecting it.
Speaker 1:
I guess you can say, well, they kind of released the uh, this, this, this year, this year was that was too good. Yeah, that's the one that they want to forget about. That ever happened. But then there was also me and um. It was just like look, xp and um I don't know what they call it the latest one that just kind of came the de facto.
Speaker 2:
After that they kind of quit, I think yeah, renaming it, they just like rebranded it almost yeah, it's almost like their browser.
Speaker 1:
They have have Internet Explorer and then they shut it down. And I can tell you for a fact for years I was one of those developers that was just trying to make sites backwards compatible to IE7, which kept that stupid browser alive because users were not using it on IE7. It was just you'd have a boss that ran an Internet company making websites for God knows what and he's in his office and I can't see it. It's because he doesn't have the freaking anyways long story getting off my rant of past jobs. But yeah, that was a fun statistic. When they shut that down they were like, yeah, it's just developers keeping it alive because they're going backwards, because the latest one was like it wasn't even nine was the latest. It was like way out there, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:
When they did this because seven is like, that's nine, that's the 90s, you know um anyways, resident evil five. So I love this. You want to tell people what this is.
Speaker 2:
So what they did is they uh had a uh body part hunt. Oh, actually, sorry I mixed up what I said earlier, but uh, yeah, resident evil 5 had a body part hunt through london and if you uh collected all the body parts, or at least like a series of them, you won a trip to africa.
Speaker 1:
And so people were like they actually like, really like, like like real, like prosthetic, like prosthetic limbs and stuff like that, and then basically like, had them like in trash limbs and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:
And then basically like, had them like in trash cans and dumpster bins that were like you could tell there was blood on it, and like it, man.
Speaker 1:
London is aggressive on their marketing campaigns. What that agency is? Uh, we give a slow clap to you it worked.
Speaker 2:
A handful of people did. They got all into it. People were like you see them walk around. They got like blood on them and stuff because they're digging through these dumpsters, whatever for them right so it, it worked and things though. Resident evil 5 came after resident evil 4, which was, my opinion, their top game yeah, yeah, but could you imagine being a brand, a small business?
Speaker 1:
you're like you know what I'm gonna leave. Leave little body parts laying around Everybody, collect the whole human. You get a free muffin on Friday.
Speaker 2:
It's like, actually, to be honest, I was thinking, say, you're a bourbon company, you're like all right, you've got to pick up all the pieces of this bottle, yeah.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, no, seriously, you could you? Could say, like a commemorative bottle, we're going to use special glass, um, so that you know the color of it, and we're going to smash it strategically, you would think, and if you find all the, whoever finds the most pieces gets, I don't know, a hundred dollar bottle of our thousand dollar bottle of something, or I don't know, whatever, make it worth their while.
Speaker 1:
That'd be an amazing campaign a month, like 12 bottles a year, yeah. So if I see that campaign showing up, I know somebody listened to this podcast, stole the idea, yeah um, we'll trademark it right now. Yeah, yeah yeah, I'll go ahead and trademark that right now.
Speaker 2:
Well, given it's a little bit off the idea of that resident evil 5 campaign. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah all right. So then the next one is uh, it's for xbox specifically, but the game was destiny. What is destiny fragrance so that this you're ruining it, man, you ruined it all. Right, so it's. They couldn't run ads for destiny. Xbox could not say that they had destiny as a playable game for them they couldn't advertise it because sony had the rights with bungie.
Speaker 2:
It was a very weird time Cause I'm even remember cause I played destiny. I really loved it. It was a great game. It was basically a, I would say, a weird cousin to halo that just went in a different direction. But, um, basically you only saw Sony ads with destiny. It'll say destiny and they're like Sony or PlayStation. You know they do their, do their ads. Yeah, like sony or playstation. You know they do their, do their ads.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, xbox did not have the rights for it so they couldn't. So what xbox did was genius here I this is awesome is that they basically advertised a quote unquote destiny fragrance coming to xbox. So in that way people also knew hey, you can get play destiny on xbox. So the people who knew what destiny was and not xbox, they knew that's what it was. So they just rebranded it almost in a field that sony wouldn't care, so like I think that was genius and they just had like billboards of it and put in ads hey, yeah, destiny's coming to xbox as well uh, okay, well, yeah, I mean you gotta do what you gotta do when you're stuck over a word that's been yeah, trademarked, and you're just like really okay, it wasn't the word, it was like they had a sony, had the playstation, had the rights, you know.
Speaker 1:
But it's not like. You know you're spider-man or wolverine, you know, it's not like that you know, I mean those are like my, my destiny is my own. Anyways, Mass Effect 3 says they had the game attached to weather balloons. Obviously, this is before we shot them down with $400,000 Stinger missiles from an F-22.
Speaker 2:
Around 2009, 2010.
Speaker 1:
Yeah so weather balloons with trackers, and if you collected the balloon when it landed, you received an early access and other prizes.
Speaker 2:
And I like how you spell prizes with an s there, oh my god, another england london a campaign, obviously, uh yeah, because mass is is, I think, uh, european owned as well, actually. But uh, there's another great gaming series. Um one thing you're noticing, if you hear me saying, each one of these games that had good campaigns were also really good games as well.
Speaker 2:
So they yeah, they put that kind of helps and well, the games themselves are good, but they did great marketing as well. Right, then all these games Destiny, resident Evil 5, battlefield 3, mass Effect 3. You can go to almost any like semi-competent gamer like myself and they'll all be like oh yeah, I know that game. That was a good game Like these are all good ones.
Speaker 1:
I mean, I've heard of that, I've heard of all these and I'm not Well, I've not heard of Destiny, obviously, like you know, I, like I said earlier, I watched the cut scenes on the games and it's almost I watch that and I go. It's the movie for the game, because they always try to adapt these things into movies and it never really. I guess there's only maybe a couple that actually went well, but Doom was not one of them.
Speaker 2:
No, that was a big fail. The best part of that was where they went in the first person shooting with Carl Urban and you just followed him around. That was the best part of that whole movie. The concept was almost there, but they just ruined it. They pushed it too far one way or the other and there was something off that just didn't vibe well.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you can't really To take a game I remember Assassin's creed and they did that one and man, you have to really love it and know it. I think the only thing that's really worked out funny enough is witcher um with henry cavill. I don't know how things are going to go because recently they did just release pictures of uh liam. Uh, hemsworth isworth is a witcher.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, because whatchamacallit left. Yeah, but that's also one based off a book, so that's a weird scenario as well. But Fallout, the game they just put into the TV series, and, as someone who just watched it with my wife and my wife does not play any games whatsoever she really liked the show. Yeah, I really liked the show. That might be the best way to do it, then. Is does not play any games whatsoever she really liked the show.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I really like the show. That might be the best way to do it, then, is not try to take it to a feature film, but take it to a series, because I mean you are playing. I mean I would imagine, could you imagine if they did which? There's still rumors of them trying to do zelda, uh, for live action and it's like, uh, well, no, I kind of wish you wouldn't. Um, and then I saw I did see something on a side note the other day of Spaceballs 2. And I was like my God, let's get that made while Mel Brooks is still with us.
Speaker 1:
I was going to say I was like, oh man. So you know, you always know when society is getting weird, when you start to see things like this and you're just like, well, the end is nigh. It's like no, no, it's just the end is nigh for that particular character, because the actor, actress, is, you know, retired and you know, let's not do more. Indiana joneses, um, you know that kind of. Is there any video? Give us? Uh, what's the top of the naughty list?
Speaker 2:
Top of the naughty list. Here we go. Let me pull it up. That one is actually not so much a game but a console. It is the PSP White.
Speaker 1:
Yes, I remember you telling me about this one. This one is like really they let me see if I can phrase this they were not very cautious about how this presented itself in the culture that it was in.
Speaker 2:
Yes. I guess, yeah, yeah, pretty, pretty racial I would say that. But keep going A few good marketing games, a few just good video game ads that once again they're top games and they had the best ads. And I think the two are not that the two definitely have a correlation or connection to each other. Yeah, because, like super smash bros, when it came on n64, amazing part or ad amazing. Yeah, because of the concept of it, do you matter? Do you know which ad I'm talking?
Speaker 1:
yeah, I. You know the thing is I, I was just sitting here thinking, as you were crossing platforms, I was like you don't see a lot of playstation commercials. I don't see a lot of them anymore. Uh, like for the actual platform, like for the actual game, it's our console, yeah, the consoles. I don't see playstation xbox advertisements you.
Speaker 2:
You do every so often.
Speaker 2:
Um, usually what they do is they, they connect it to a connection of basically all their flagship games yeah, like yeah, because nintendo would do that with mario brothers and zelda yeah, you know they, but they, what they'll do is basically like so usually it'll start off it's like an ad, like I know playstation does a lot with like hey, yeah, it's an ad, you're gonna come in and start doing this, and then all since like a fighting scene. And then it's like, oh no, now you're an adventure game and then now you're in spider-man's game, yeah, so like you kind of. And then all of a sudden, like it brings it all together and just says playstation, so yeah yeah, but they're in a war in a way, like streaming in content, like oh yeah, you know it's yeah, well, it's like these games are only um on nintendo made by the studios that work with Nintendo or Nintendo themselves.
Speaker 1:
Right, yeah, that's been a pretty normal thing, still is. But when you have Sony and Xbox it gets a bit fragmented and you can find the game on either or, and that's becoming now a fight well between.
Speaker 2:
So it's uh, you have the big four, you have the nintendo, playstation, xbox and the pc master race. So the pc master race people I'm sorry you guys, I don't know. I I know too many people who are all about it. They're like pc's, the only way to go cool. All right, let me know. When you got to update your graphics card and increase what you call stock, because your graphics card goes out of date, throwing shade, that's what happens. You know, I don't have to worry about my FPS unless I have a bad internet connection. Meanwhile, if you're a PC, you got to set all your stats, set all your numbers at eight Some people. They got the money to throw into that thousand plus dollars, some people just like doing that too.
Speaker 1:
I mean, I didn't do that but it was because I'm from the old days where you just you were glad you had a gigabyte card, because apparently there are trillions of bytes now. But anyway, I didn't set anything, I just had a. You know God, what did I run on?
Speaker 2:
I had a Dell what did I run on? I had a dell, I had a dell dude and though, yeah, that was dell, then gateway, and then people.
Speaker 1:
Other people had max and I was like it's right, before alienware. And then when alienware came out, everybody was like, oh, I want that laptop or I want that. And then, but the hardcore guys, they built it. They built it from the ground up. And uh, I remember during covid, henry cavill built his from the ground ground up and it was really funny to watch because you had the gamer audience.
Speaker 1:
That was like yeah, it's a really rad box, da-da-da-da-da, whatever the hardware was that he was unpackaging and he would do a really great video. And then you just had the other audience. That was just like look at his arms.
Speaker 2:
I mean Henry Cavill, does reach multiple audience segments. But the funny thing is, in that video he actually installs one that drives wrong.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I saw that. And then he turns it on and it's upside down and then he makes a comment and it's kind of funny because it's like we've all been there, man.
Speaker 2:
Right For the record, henry Cavill, if you actually listen to this, I'm not trying to throw shade because I'm going to do it myself. If you actually listen to this, I'm not trying to throw shade because I can do it myself.
Speaker 1:
So I give you props from the fact that it was like oh, all right, but if you are listening to this, we would love to talk to you about Warhammer, uh, 40 K. So there's that, just saying. We know that's deep cut for a lot of people. They're like what? And we're like trust us, this interesting and if he gets it done, I think he's going to. But if you're out there, henry, um, yeah, we don't, we don't have people to call, so you can just I don't know reach out to us and then we'll you'll find a podcast, and then find the name.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you'll find a podcast. You'll find a name. You'll be like I don't think I want to get near that, but you know it is what it is.
Speaker 2:
Um, but yeah, actually, on top of that playstation for a while had a great marketing actually for their console when they had the one actor and he would basically be like, uh, the one guy who was very cut straight and he basically would. He was in someone's household and one of the guys would come up or the kids, and be like hey, grandma, can I play my game now? And she's just like no, no, I'm like, and she's playing like GTA. Or I'm like and she's playing like gta or something like that. She's like I'm doing my mission, I gotta go, I can't, I'm not at a safe point, you gotta wait till later.
Speaker 2:
And guys like man, I can't get my grandma off that, off the playstation. He's just like hey, your grandma, when she grew up she didn't have playstations to play with. Give her her time to play with the playstation, he's like, but he's just like he, she has to play. Used to have to play with. Give her her time to play with the playstation, he's like, but he's just like he, she has to play. Used to have to play with a hoop and a stick. That's all they played with. And he's like but a stick. And it's just so funny, because then he's just got the guys like okay, you know, and because the grandma's and that's a great ad, because it's like yeah nostalgia, I mean I I like it because I like the ads, that kind of um.
Speaker 1:
The old nintendo controller, the first one, I remember it and I got a hold of one one time and I was just like my god, this is so small, um, but I remember playing it. I remember playing duck hunt and mario and all these other games. Castlevaniavania, castlevania is my jam Like I watch that show even on Netflix.
Speaker 2:
So you're a Metrovania guy.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so I've always liked Castlevania and the lore of it and everything, and I liked the anime on Netflix.
Speaker 2:
I was going to ask you what did you think of that? I loved it. I thought it was great.
Speaker 1:
I thought it was well done too.
Speaker 1:
I was like am out with another one, another one it got a little like it cut some corners in some places on animation with the fight scenes. But that's kind of getting nitpicky and I'm just like you know, let's be glad you got the series guys. Uh, because you know a lot of people can say, like you know, they tried to make that and they didn't. And then there's other arguments out there for games people love, where they try to adapt and they're like please stop. Yes, yes, but that one was done well, and I think on that note we're going to wrap up this episode of the NerdBrand podcast. We hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:
Walking down some video games. We haven't done this one or this kind of subject in a while. Tune in next week We'll figure out what we're going to talk about then. We haven't really landed on that. We about then we haven't really landed on that. We got a lot of stuff going on. Um, check out, uh, all the previous episode. Uh, we've talked everything about like why the earth spins to just a myriad of stuff, and you can go check out a previous episode where we actually talked to the voice of the valley. Uh, it was eric, yeah, from ohio valley wrestling withVW. That was an interesting story to hear about him going from various places, that he's worked, where he is now and what he's doing. So, anyways, check those episodes out at nerdbrandagencycom, slash podcast or your favorite podcast channel somewhere iTunes or Spotify and we will see you next week and keep your nerd ranch strong.