A game I'm looking forward to, Mass Effect 3, comes out in a fortnight. It is a fairly high profile release and is quite well known in the mainstream outside of the more enthusiast gamer like me. To this end I actually saw a TV program, The Walking Dead, sponsored by a videogame the other night. From what happened this morning that was just the beginning.
A little while ago I played a demo for another game, it wasn't bad but nothing amazing. In doing so I unlocked some multiplayer bonus items for ME3. The only thing this game had in common was the publisher, Electronic Arts. This morning I had a driver update for the video card in my laptop. That had splash screens all over it whilst it was installing advertising the game and proclaiming it had been optimised for ME3. Next I see stories on videogame blog sites that art books, action figures, soundtracks and various other paraphernalia related to the game also come with codes for other various unlockable items in the multiplayer in the game. This isn't to mention the two different facebook games you could play in relation to this game.
The long and short of it is that the PR push behind this game is astounding. There are so many widely different, sometimes totally unrelated, forms of advertising for this game I'm confused as to how successful they expect it to be. It should be a good game, the first was (even though it was a Microsoft only game so I didn't play it) and the second was great, so much so that I still want to finish my second play through. Is this kind of over saturation what it takes though these days to succeed with the mass market in games?
Questions to ponder I suppose. The more important question to me though is how much of me playing this game my wife can take :| . We shall see how my repelling the reapers from Earth gets on her nerves and if I can ultimately save mankind (ok, personkind if you want to be PC).
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