The Buffalo Blog

EA’s Marketing Madness…or not?

In the wake of Facebook’s beacon disaster EA Games is the latest company to enter into the grand social experiment, advertising to an audience that really doesn’t want to be advertised to. According to The Guardian, EA is releasing a free version of Battlefield which is funded entirely by adverts.

In a change of tact rather than place adverts in the game, a tactic that many games use to promote ‘realism’, these adverts will be more overt appearing on start-up screens and the game website.

At first glance you’d expect this move to spark another uprising of the anti-corporate movement. But, in reality this is never actually likely to happen – if they don’t want the adverts then they simply won’t play.

As such, while this move will never invoke the indignation of the Beacon failure it remains to be seen whether gamers’ love of free stuff will override their determination not to be marketed to. The game could easily fall flat on its face with such obvious corporate interference.

To add to EA’s worries it’s also dubious whether such straightforward ‘name mentioning’ advertising will actually get through to such a savvy audience.

Success or not? Only time will tell.

Freedom for bloggers

This isn’t a blog famous for its cutting edge political commentary and that isn’t going to change today. However, as a fellow blogger and lover of free speech (see previous China blogs) I feel compelled to offer what support a small tech PR blog can to those bloggers who find it less than easy, indeed highly dangerous, to put their thoughts into the blogosphere.

Brought to my attention this morning by the Independent, is the plight of Fouad Al-Farhan, held in a Saudi Arabian jail without charge for over a month for his political blogging about the Saudi Government. Sadly these cases are all too common when you start digging and make you realise how easy we have it over here.

Calls are abound for Bush to do something about these ‘unlawful’ (at least in a British sense) imprisonments on his latest trip to Saudi. Owing to my lack of international political clout the best I can do is issue my support for free speech and maintain the hope, however misplaced, that Bush does something right for once.

Convergence of a different kind

The convergence of music, television, radio internet, computing and so on has been a long time coming. After much talk we are begninnig to see the trend finally catching on. Every once in a while however, something springs from nowhere, catching you right between the eyes thinking ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’. This, unfortunately, isn’t one of them.

Few futurologists, even the crazy ones, could have seriously expected the MP3 taser, released at the recent Consumer Electronics show by Taser International (US of course). This does exactly what is says on the tin – plays your favourite tunes and delivers a cool 50,000 volt electric shock to anyone who happens to irk you.

Those genii across the pond have pushed the limits of technology and convenience and spliced two gadgets that no sane person could ever see a use for. Nevertheless, apparently the US is so dangerous that you now need a paralysis-inducing taser as much as your trusty iPod. One can only assume that the MP3 feature is to block out the screams of your writhing victim.

This is rapidly turning out to be one of those incredulous posts of mine – but really!?

Someone is inevitably going to get zapped by mistake. I can just see someone overzealously selecting a big anthem only to fumble the buttons and take out a nearby dog walker with 50,000 volts in the chops.

And what of the lost tourist in central park – on affronting a jogger for directions, she, failing to hear his innocuous request, takes him for a mugger. Bam! Another one bites the dust.

Let’s just hope this company doesn’t get carried away or it won’t be long before we see the:

• Blackberry hand gun – catch up on emails whilst taking down even the toughest of intruders
• DVD rocket launcher – war is hell - why not catch up on Heroes and take your mind off the death and destruction you are wreaking

Look out for them!

Brought to you by Certain Death Technologies

China's web censorship and the Olympic wrecking ball

The Guardian ran a front page article today highlighting the next step in China’s web censorship. Its points were thought provoking to say the least.

For some time now China’s ‘great firewall’ has been worryingly effective at crushing anti-governmental sentiment and monitoring and removing ‘inappropriate discussion’. Fans of free speech will be pleased to learn – and I mean this in the sarcastic sense – that as of January 31 new regulations come in to force allowing the government to remove and ban any video content that is deemed ‘politically or morally objectionable’. Our beloved YouTube could even be zapped from the Chinese side of the internet.

Political views aside, China’s continued web censorship is setting it up for a fall, and the edge of the cliff is fast approaching. What exactly will it do when the Olympics come around?

The number of foreign journalists heading to the event has been estimated at around 20,000. With this fact in mind it is impossible to see how foreign journalists, many hailing from more liberal countries than China, could possibly operate in this environment. The importance of the web to modern journalism for both research and the communication of news around the world means that a slackening of such censorship activities will be absolutely vital for foreign news services to function.

However, were the government to have an epiphany and begin to loosen the reigns on the web, isn’t it inevitable that many journalists will go with a different agenda. How many foreign correspondents would jump at the chance to get the real inside story on China, warts and all? And what of China's embattled bloggers, will they finally obtain the freedom they crave?

What a shame…it appears to be catch 22 for the Chinese censorship machine: if they continue their strict regime, monitoring and limiting the news leaving the country, it will be blindingly obvious to external observers, highlighting China's censorship still further and fuelling the external forces of change. While, if it let things slip during the games, it’ll be a free-for-all on news highlighting China’s Draconian regime no matter how well they do in the sports.