In a week where Will Wright’s long awaited Spore was scheduled to be no.1 after years of development, and weeks of UK TV campaigning it was the game from Pandemic Studios that hit the top slot.
Giving away free petrol in the middle of London during rush hour is bound to cause a stir, Gridlock ensued after the Last Stop’ garage in Finsbury Park started the hand-outs, with customers served by Mercenaries look-alike characters. Word spread like wildfire, complete Gridlock, led to massive online coverage which only increased traffic, followed up the next day by newspaper coverage about the stunt mainly about how irresponsible it was (by those in authority, thus appealing even more to the games target market). To Ease congestion the organisers shut down the offer after 5 hours, at just over halfway through the £20,000 giveaway.
Pretty much every UK national paper covered this story, as well as UK TV stations, blogs and gaming press.
For less than the price of a tanker full of fuel EA managed to get hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of publicity for the game, and additional Kudos with the anti-establishment crowd.
Click the links below to link to their EA related articles.
Job Done! – Just for the record here is the current UK top 10 games charts for the week ending September 6th.
The top 10 games chart is as below
- 1. Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
- 2. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09
- 3. Spore
- 4. Wii Fit
- 5. Carnival: Funfair Games
- 6. Mario Kart Wii
- 7. Wii Play
- 8. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
- 9. Big Beach Sports
- 10. Wall-E
