LOL! #eafail! EA's Dante's Inferno = Epic EA fanboi/fanmba Fail: Using Corporate Fanboi Arrogance Against the Corporate Fanboyz: Clint Eastwood's Fistful of Dollars (not fiat dollars): Part I--The Gold 45 Revolver Begins to Glow Gold
The gold 45 revolver / ideas have consequences / moral premise renaissance is going to be far, far greater than I had first thought! The EA cyclops has but one eye, focused on the fiat bottom line, and that is their tragic flaw, as fiat dollars are fundamentally worthless. The aging goliath is shedding market cap faster than Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon competing for pole position at Daytona! And instead of hiring bold poet warriors and visionary warrior poets to lead the gold 45 revolver renaissance and reap billions; they were fooled by the fiatocracy into seeing more profit in hiring Jonathan Knight and his team of fanboi mbas to debauch and spit on Dante's art, Dante's grave, Dante's beloved Beatrice (who Knight et al consigned to hell, while Dante placed her in heaven, reflecting the fiatocracy's view of women)--to debauch and spit on Dante's primal, epic soul, Dante's poetry, Dante's religion, and women in general.
EPIC #EAFAIL! “Harrass a Booth Babe”: A Twitter Contest Too Far?
A number of Twitter (Twitter) users spoke out on Friday against a Comic-Con contest hosted by Electronic Arts that some say objectifies women. In short, the “Sin to Win” contest, designed to promote Dante’s Inferno, encourages attendees to take photos with the so-called “booth babes” and Tweet the photos to the @danteteam Twitter account with the hashtag #lust.
It’s the wording of the contest that has Twitter up in arms, however: attendees are told to “Commit Acts of Lust” (see image below), which some allege is a recipe for sexual harassment. Others argue that attendees typically take photos with booth babes regardless. @danteteam did receive hundreds of responses to their request, but many are negative and critical of the behavior the contest might encourage.
In response to the Tweets, the team behind the promotion posted an apology on Twitpic saying the campaign is “tongue in cheek”. Opponents, however, seem unimpressed, and have combined their efforts using the hashtag #eafail.
--http://www.ethiopianreview.com/articles/19923
Jonathan Knight had an opportunity for exalted art in working with the classic, exalted, epic Dante's Inferno. Instead, this is fanboi Jonathan Knight's legacy:
http://whilenotfinished.theirisnetwork.org/2009/07/24/eafail-link-roundup/
http://twitter.com/search?q=%23EAFail
Epic. EA. Fail. All Knight had to do was put aside his dumbed-down fanboi arrogance, and respect Dante, Beatrice, the immortal soul, art, women, poetry, and religion; but when those fiat dollars were dangled in front of him, he found he just didn't have it in him. This was a soft ball straight down the middle, just floating there, and the EA haterz of art, poetry, and soul whiffed soooooo hard that it kicked up some massive surf that friday, and instead of comic-con all day, I had to go a surfin'! Man that day rocked! Wish you coulda ridden some 8-10 footers with me dudes.
So much tragedy to be found in EA's/Knight's debauched, dumbed-down, anti-art/anti-religion/anti-Dante/anti-Beatrice, 2002 fanboi approach to Dante's Inferno, I don't know where to start. It's as if the fiatocracy tried to convert fiat dollars into epic art, and hired fanbois to do it. "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew it how we will," stated Hamlet, and the epic story of the Gold 45 Revolver technology is playing out in a far greater manner than I ever thought it would. Note how the Gold 45 Revolver technology places Beatrice in Heaven, while the fiatocracy's dictatorial corporate fanboi MBA haterz @ EA placed her in hell.
The Gold 45 Revolver begins to glow gold in the third act & fire Zeus's Lightning as EA/Knight's three-headed fanboi/fanmba/fiatocracy Inferno epic fails. LOL! OMG! ROTFL! It's been a long time coming: http://twitter.com/search?q=%23EAFail
One of the funniest things to watch is the corporate EA fanboyz spitting on Dante's religion and grave and immortal love Beatrice while trying to bolster their flailing bottom line with Dante's art, as they take EA on down to financial hell; because they forgot to make the moral, exalted, artistic choice, because they succumbed to the fiat Sirens and ate the fiat Lotus, because they did not believe the Greats that only when one makes the moral choices does one's Gold 45 Revolver glow gold in the final showdown. What--did they think that I, Dr. E, and my good friends Aritsotle, Socrates, Dante, and Homer--and all of eternity's poet warriors and warrior prophets--were kidding? Their supreme, feminized fanboy MBA fiat arrogance lead them to believe that they could actually create art via mere soulless fiat, and incapable of the cathartic third act in their art and uncreative souls, whence the Gold 45 glows gold and fires Zeus's lightning, the fanmbas/Johnathan Knights are getting the third act in real life, as EA's debauched Inferno heads on down towards financial hell. Will the designers/debauchers and marketers/fanMBAs ever work again in the industry after desecrating women and art and losing millions?
http://www.acidforblood.net/2009/08/convention-sexual-harassment-and-eafail.html
Facilis descensus Averni:
noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras.
hoc opus, hic labor est.
It is easy to go down into Hell;
Night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide;
But to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air -
There's the rub, the task. –Virgil’s Aeneid, Book VI, line 126
And the point of the Divine Comedy--it's very center and circumference--was to exalt us beyond hell--a point the fiatocracy's finest fanmbas missed, which is why EA wired them fiat $$$$$--not to exalt art, but to debauch and desecrate it. As you can see, Knight & EA's legacy will be quite different from Dante's:
I haven't spoken up about the failness that is #EAfail, partly because I've been doing detective work, collecting many of the links you see in this post, keeping tabs on what's going on in the Twitter stream, and just gathering my thoughts on it after several days of perspective.
If you haven't heard about it, this post gives a good overview of the Dante's Inferno "Sin to Win" contest, which EA Games ran at San Diego Comic-Con this year.
I think there are several interconnected issues at play here, and a broader context that many of the articles I've read about this incident that I feel people have not discussed enough, which I will cover towards the end of this post.
First is the misogynistic, sexist, and heteronormative bent of the contest itself. It appears targeted to males of a certain mindset (immature) and social aptitude/ability (incompetent) and/or Males Who Don't Give a Shit About Women.
--http://www.acidforblood.net/2009/08/convention-sexual-harassment-and-eafail.html
It is easy to descend--to debauch the culture and currency--it is easy to spit on Dante's grave, art, life, poetry, and his beloved Beatrice (and to place her in hell, as EA does, while Dante placed her in heaven), but it is hard to create epic, living art. It is easy to go down into hell--to print fiat dollars and entice the likes of fanboi Knight et al to desecrate Western Culture and spit on Dante's grave, art, life, poetry, and his beloved, immortal Beatrice, but it is hard to create epic, living art; as Dante did in exile, as Socrates did before he was put to death, as Van Gogh and Melville did without ever being fairly compensated.
Knight is the captain of the ship--what does he think about branding women as prostitutes and demeaining them? What does he think of spitting on Dante's religion and hiring fake christains to protest his desecration of Dante's art which nobody cares about enough to protest, but for EA's shareholders who are losing billions while also having women dissed and their culture debauched? What--does he think that real life atcually works like GTA/Fallout? This is classic--EA and all the corporate fanmba brass are trying to recreate the world in their own arroagnt, debauched fanboi image where innocent women wearing metallic bras may be shot anytime they get lonely in their mom's basements, but the gold 45 revolver rebellion hath begun, and the fanmbas will epic EA fail!
http://www.destructoid.com/sdcc-ea-to-prostitute-its-booth-babes-for-you-the-customer-141289.phtml "SDCC: EA to prostitute its booth babes for you, the customer"
Had the fiatocracy's fanboyz read Homer's Odyssey, they would know that "Fair dealing leads to greater profit in the end." Had they read the Inferno, they would understand that Dante placed Beatrice in Heaven, and not in hell, where the fanboyz/MBAz place women, taking out their misguided hatred for the feminist movement, which was also created by the fiatocracy which funds the MBAz debauched marketing campaigns.
It was awesome watching the good folks at comic-con turn on the corporate fanboyz who are creating such a boring and dull game that get this--they had to hire fake Christians to protest it--as their Harvard MBA, corporate-dictated art is so suckfull that it's not even shwoing up on anyone's radar. Knight et al. are panicking at the disco inferno, as they know that after their desecration and debauchery of Dante's exalted inferno flames out, they will not be able to desecrate other classics such as Homer's Odyssey and Vigirl's Aeneid. After they lose tens of millions of their investor's cash on a fanboyed anti-Inferno, anti-art gamesuck, bolstered by ridiculous, idiotic fanmba marketing blunders, they will be shwon the door, and they will be unable to pursue their passions of desecrating the great books and classics, as the fiatocracy rewards them for doing in fiat dollars, which are declining in value even faster than the souls they sold out in spitting on Dante's art, life, Beatrice, poetry, grave, and religion; all for a fistful of fiat dollars. (btw--Fistful of Dollars is the best movie ever & it helped inspire the Gold 45 Revolver).
This week in support of upcoming action game Dante's Inferno, they made a similar error in judgment that backfired on them in ways they probably didn't expect. This year's Comic Con saw the posting of messages indicating a contest where participants could win “a sinful night with two hot girls” where they would apparently eat dinner, ride in a limo, entertain the paparrazi and “commit acts of lust”.
Surprisingly, the gaming community has grown up some, as indicated by their reaction to the promo which was largely negative, and EA was forced to apologize, which they did via Twitter.
Do any of my fellow fanguys believe anonymous apologies coming from massive corporations spitting on the indie artist's grave, religion, love, poetry, and art? Hell no! That is the nature of the fiat corporation--Knight et al are not manly enough to put their own names on their own desecrations and debaucheries, as they seek not immortal honor, but mere, fleeting profits.
Kinight and his fierce fanboys had such an epic opportunity to exalt a timeless piece of art; but instead, trained by the fiatorcracy to always conform to the fiat MBA/CEO and debauch and desecrate the culture and currency, they blew their epic opportunity for a few fiat dollars more; and then tried to save some of those fading fiat dollars with a marketing campaign which blew it even more.
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=110920
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people," goes the famous quote by H.L. Mencken, which many marketers seem to take to heart. After all, if you want to maximize your reach, you ought to appeal to the lowest common denominator, right?
Wrong, as Electronic Arts found out this week, as its "Sin to Win" promotion for the upcoming "Dante's Inferno" inspired an enormous amount of backlash which eventually forced the company to apologize for the whole scheme.
The Cliff Notes version of the promotion is that EA was encouraging Comic-Con attendees to "Commit acts of lust" with "booth babes" (by which they simply meant "take a picture with a booth babe") and then tweet a photo link to the Dante's Inferno development team's feed with a #Lust hashtag appended. The grand prize, according to the flyer handed out at Comic-Con, was a "night of lust" with two of said booth babes (by which they meant a chaperoned dinner).
The backlash followed pretty quickly on the heels of the promotion's announcement and from all directions. Gamers, feminists, and marketers all seemed to agree that this idea was pretty horrible.
Dante's Inferno was the first epic poem to ever incorporate the actual poet in the journey. It was also the first poem to exalt women to the very pinnacle of truth, beauty, innocence, and inpsiration. Of course the MBA fiatcrats at EA hate this, and so the first thing they did was place Beatrice in Hell, where as to Dante, never in a million years could Beatrice be corrupted by Satan and dragged on down to his depths, which is Knight et al's primary purpose.
Make no mistake--Knight and EA did not set out not to make a work of art, nor create a game exalted with Dante's soul and intent, but rather, they set out to desecrate and debauch--to spit on Dante's religion, art, life, and poetry--to spit on his Beatrice--and then to try to profit off of what Dante had given freely.
Knight and EA's MBA brass would rather lose billions in market cap and piss off everyone at comic con, while spitting on Dante's art, life, poetry, religion, and his beloved Beatrice; than they would to simply do the natural thing and exalt a game with Dante's vision and soul, which would bring in billions, had they not f'd it up by spitting on the immortal soul, which unlike their culture and currency, they have no power to debauch.
http://www.destructoid.com/sdcc-ea-to-prostitute-its-booth-babes-for-you-the-customer-141289.phtml
EA's Inferno is not only placing Beatrice in hell, but it is also remaking Dante as a buff warrior. Now the hilarious thing is that Dante was far greater than any buff warrior--he was a poet-warrior--a fierce soldier in spirit who stood, like a man, for his ideals and words and art and love and religion; and wrote the world's greatest epic poem in exile because of his uncompromising character.
Contrast Dante's manly, heroic nature to Knight et al.'s corproate-fanboi unwillingness to speak like men and to back up their words. In typical artless, characterless, soulless, cowering-corproate-fanboi fashion, they issue a back-handed doublespeak apology which their finest fanboi MBAs learned to pen at Harvard while killing Homer in their lit classes, placing the blame on the victim, just as the fiatocracy's fanboi technologies train the fanboi's to kill innocent women, cops, and civilians, while placing Beatrice in hell and issuing apologies as empty and insincere as their souls and money-losing games:
EA’s fanboi MBA “Apology”: It’s Your Fault You Misunderstood:
http://setonstun.com/2009/07/eas-apology-its-your-fault-you-misunderstood/
If EA has any marketing number crunchers worth more than a Dante’s Inferno T-shirt, then they must have realized, for each one of these people who are refusing to buy the game, they’re telling people why they’re not buying it, for every customer who vocalizes it, you know there are 3-4 people who are not vocalizing their intent, and there are 6-10 people who are on the fence. So EA issued an “apology”. Well, it’s really a “no-pology”. I thought it would be fun to rip it apart, sentence by sentence.
Enjoy:
“We understand there’s a lot of debate right now around our “Sin To Win” promotion at Comic-Con and wanted to clarify a few things.
(Debate is really more about people of opposing viewpoints bringing points and counter-points to elucidate an issue and convince people. This is not a debate, this is an uprising… this is the French peasantry rising up and decapitating the nobles. This is NOT a debate EA. This is your customers telling you that you’re campaign is full of shit)
We created this promotion as part of our marketing efforts around the circle of Lust (one of the nine sins/ circles of Hell).
No kidding, we got that. We were able to figure it out on our own.
Each month we will be focusing on a new Circle of Hell.
Holy Hell! What are you going to do with Gluttony, Wrath or Sloth? Are you going to have an eating contest? A “dont get your ass off the couch contest?”
This month is Lust. Costumed reps are a tradition at Comic-Con
Again, tell us something we don’t know. We’re your audience, we’re not stupid. We’ve heard of booth-babes before… and seriously, you’re calling them “costumed reps” now? You’ve been calling them booth babes throughout your campaign, and NOW you’re trying to look like you’re respecting them? Bullshit.
In the spirt of both the Circle of Lust and Comic-Con, we are encouraging the attendees to Tweet photos of themselves with any of the costumed reps at Comic-Con here, find us on Facebook or via e-mail, “Commit acts of lust” is simply a tongue-in-cheek way to say take pictures with costumed reps.
Wait, ANY booth-babe? Not just YOUR booth-babes? Do you seriously think the other women were told this? Do you seriously think that some people might go just a little over the top to get an edge in the contest? Again, Bullshit.
Also, a “Night of Lust” means on that the winner will receive a chaperoned VIP night on the town with the Dante’s Inferno reps, all expenses paid, as well as other prizes.
Yah, we got that. That was the grand prize mentioned right before you mentioned the word “Booty”. Now, no reasonable person would actually think that you were literally pimping these girls out… but the fact that you insinuated it made it clear that you were not selling literal sex, but you were selling these women’s sexuality in order to pimp your game.
We apologize for any confusion and offense that resulted from our choice of wording, and want to assure you that we take your concerns and sentiments seriously.
Look EA, we were not confused. We were not blinded by your witty puns and double entendres. Your superior wordplay did not dazzle us. Let me be clear. It was not what you “said” that pissed us off. It was not your “choice of wording” that incited this wrath upon you. It was what you did. It was how you did it. It was what you believed you could do, it was the fact that you thought this was a good idea. It’s because you don’t get it. You ignore the fact that the fastest growing gaming demographic is women. You ignore the fact that there are more girl gamers now than there have ever been. You ignore the progress that women have made in your own industry and your own company. Again, it’s not your wording. It’s what you did that we didn’t like. If you took our concerns and sentiments seriously, you wouldn’t be saying it’s our fault for being confused at your wording.
We’ll continue to follow your comments and please let us know if you have any other thoughts or concerns. Keep watching as the event unfolds and you’ll hope you’ll agree with us that it was all done in the spirit of the good natured fun of Comic-Con.
Yeah, I know you’ll be watching our comments now, and you know we’ll be giving you our thoughts. Now you’re in the hot-seat EA, now you know that more people are watching you, now you know that people are looking for blood. You’ve got an open wound and there are sharks in the water. You know that now. Lets hope you’ve learned from this (and so many other) SNAFUs and impress the hell out of us.
In marketing, it’s all about communicating the value of the product or service to your users. In this case, you need to prove to us that you deserve our patronage. It’s a hell of a place to be for any marketer.
--http://setonstun.com/2009/07/eas-apology-its-your-fault-you-misunderstood/
What Johnathan Knight and his fanboy EA brethern are realizing is that they have no value to add to the aweosme Inferno, but can only debauch and desecrate it, and that is why they have to resort to spitting on Dante's grave, religion, art, life, his beloved Beatrice, and women in general, in their desperate attempt to save their careers by bolstering their fiat master's bottom line, while debauching the culture as is part of the deal.
The Tragedy here is that Jonathan Knight and EA had a chance to honor Dante and the Gold 45 Revolver / Ideas Have Consequences / Moral Premise technologies. They had a chance to exalt epic art and reap billions while doing so--to make a name for themselves and EA. But instead the fanbois/fanmbas dined on the cattle of the Sun God--Lord Helios.
Instead of epic, exalted art, the fanbois chose to serve the fiatocracy which dictates that one must first and foremost debauch and culture and currency, and spit on the epic, exalted heritage while demeaning women, whether it be from their mom's basement where they shoot unarmed women in metallic bras, or from Johnathan Knight's cubicle at EA, where he works not for Beatrice as Dante did, but for the fiat MBAs lording over his debauched soul, greenlighting epically foolish--many would say idiotic--debauched, childish marketing campaigns.
This choice of decadence, seeming short-term profits, debauchery, and death, over art, life, poetry, and everlasting glory is nothing new. Homer opened the Odyssey with this common, tragic theme of the fiat mba fanboy's blind lust and base appetite:
Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only
to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.
But not by will nor valor could he save them,
for their own recklessness destroyed them all —
children and fools, they killed and feasted on
the cattle of Lord Hêlios, the Sun,
and he who moves all day through the heaven
took from their eyes the dawn of their return. . . .Translated by Robert Fitzgerald (1961)
Long after Knight et al have "epic EA failed," true artsits and poets will rise to exalt Dante's Inferno to the heights it deserves.
http://www.acidforblood.net/2009/08/convention-sexual-harassment-and-eafail.html
EA's response? A not-real apology (saved here, in case they try to take it down again), the kind that blames you.
It is funny how fanboy MBAs claim to be sensitive creatures, and their feelings get hurt when their storyless, soulless hooker-killing technologies are derided.
http://www.destructoid.com/videogames-are-stupid-and-babyish-states-games-journa
list–126722.phtml
“I’ve been covering the games industry for eight years, mainly for mainstream outlets, and I often find myself acting as a translator,” stated Chaplin at GDC’s rant panel this week. “… It’s not that the medium is in its adolescence, it’s that you’re a bunch of ****ing adolescents. It’s even worse because you’re technically supposed to be adults.”
Chaplin wasn’t the only one on the “Burned By Friendly Fire: Game Critics Rant” panel. There were plenty of names that you could expect to see on a panel with such a grandiose title — Leigh Alexander, N’gai Croal, they were all there, and they all had something to say on the subject. Still, it’s Chaplin that took the gold trophy by describing how immature and pathetic the industry is. There’s no Bob Dylan of gaming, allegedly, because everyone in the industry is a baby. ”
http://www.destructoid.com/videogames-are-stupid-and-babyish-states-games-journa
list–126722.phtml
“When I was a fanboy, I spake as a fanboy, I understood as a fanboy, I thought as a fanboy: but when I became a man, I put away fanboy things.”
Yes–it is time to put down that controller & pick up the classic, epic books:
http://artsentrepreneurship.com (Where fanboys go so as to become men.)
That doesn’t make their ‘I’m sorry you were offended by our witty marketing, oh, and please buy our game!’ standard corporate straight-from-image-management pseudo-apology any less disgusting.
We apologize for any confusion and offense that resulted from our choice of wording,
And I apologize for any confusion in how I worded my belief that your marketing team was devoid of common sense, views its female employees as sexual objects, and reflects poorly on our entire industry in its juvenile pursuit of attention.
and want to assure you that we take your concerns and sentiments seriously.
How nice for you.
I wish I could be surprised. Unfortunately – not really.
--http://brokentoys.org/2009/07/28/eafail/
Just as Jonathan Knight is too scared to put his name on his idiotic, crass, disrepectful fanboi mba publicity stunts and his insincere-double-talking-mba-jiv-corproate-fanboi apologies, I imagine that at the end of the day, he won't be man enough to put his name on the game either.
And that's a good thing, as there is only one name that shall forever grace the Inferno, and that name is Dante.
Now go forth and sin no more--tell all your fanboi MBAs that there's a new sheriff in town, and just because you don't believe the Legend of McCoy Mountain and The Gold 45 Revolver, because they deconstructed the Greats in your dumbed-down university/fiatversity, don't mean it ain't true.
Carl Jung reminds us of the third act's inevitability via the phrase from Juvenal he had etched in the stone over his door:
VOCATUS ATQUE NON VOCATUS DEUS ADERIT. (Called or not, the God will be there.)
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