One of my favourite titles of this generation was Bulletstorm however the game never reached the sales that were expected of it and Cliff Bleszinski believes this is mainly down to the bad angle that marketing decided to take with the game.
In the game you take on the role of an anti-hero who is stranded on a dangerous planet and as such his use of the English language leads a lot to be desired. However that was simply to try and set the scene but marketing decided that was its selling point and the word DickTits entered the English language and was used as a key marketing tool.
Oddly enough the parents of the world and gamers with young children weren’t enamoured by this angle and it showed with the titles lack of sales.
According to Cliff
@taswell promoting crassness was a mistake. Marketing latched onto it; people didn’t see a cool sci fi game, they saw "the dicktits game."
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) January 29, 2013
But this isn’t the first time he’s slated a previous game of his and later in the twitter chat he was called on it, but you have to give credit where credit is due. He isn’t trying to absolve himself of it.
@neednameplz @jordoncrain @taswell It wasn’t pr, it was marketing. And I thought it seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn’t.
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) January 29, 2013
This is a great lesson for everyone to learn no matter what industry they are in, it takes a real person to be able to look back and honestly analyse what went right and wrong with an idea. If you refuse to admit liability you will make the same mistakes over and over again and will never progress. People appreciate honesty and the ability to judge yourself fairly.
Oh and if you haven’t played Bulletstorm then do yourself a favour and go grab a copy, you are missing a unique sci-fi shooter and the best/worst bad guy in any video game ever. Seriously it’s R149 at TakeALot right now, go get it.
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