Do, or do not - there is no try
It will come as no secret to my friends in the CF that I'm baffled by the organization's overall PR efforts much of the time. Oh, they're getting better: the new ads are pretty good, and Operation Connection was a positive step.
But all too often, it seems like they're only half-interested in making a good public impression. This "Cool Stuff: Games" download on the Recruiting site is a perfect example: it's lame.
You want to reach out to the gamers? Put up something worth playing (something that's recognized outside the military as something worth playing, I might add), and stop taking half-steps. It's worse than doing nothing.
You wouldn't half-prosecute a section attack, would you? You wouldn't drop a few sonobuoys out of an Aurora and hope, right? So apply that same level of professionalism and attention to detail to your PR efforts.
And in the meantime, drop the terminally cheesy helo game. It's embarrassing.
But all too often, it seems like they're only half-interested in making a good public impression. This "Cool Stuff: Games" download on the Recruiting site is a perfect example: it's lame.
You want to reach out to the gamers? Put up something worth playing (something that's recognized outside the military as something worth playing, I might add), and stop taking half-steps. It's worse than doing nothing.
You wouldn't half-prosecute a section attack, would you? You wouldn't drop a few sonobuoys out of an Aurora and hope, right? So apply that same level of professionalism and attention to detail to your PR efforts.
And in the meantime, drop the terminally cheesy helo game. It's embarrassing.
posted by Babbling Brooks at 10:29 a.m.
6 Comments:
Have you seen Americas Army? That game was as good as any commercial release.
Uhhh...yeah. Hence the link to it? :P
oopsy!
It's Monday.
It's -36C...
I'm an idiot.
Seriously though, the game was pretty playable (though they needed to work on the difficulty levels, I know that for many people the whole learned helpless thing set in). It's fidelity level was probably a bit high (jamming guns??). It also sparked of a bit of a debate about umm.. using a toy as a recruiting tool. Also there were some questions among some of my very very gamer buddies about how in-game "deaths" didn't seem to live up to the same level of realism.
To many people already forget that in real life if you shoot someone, they don't get a new life. This played into it a bit too well.
Another thought (I'm full of them today.. I think my brain has unthawed), there were mods and skins for Ghost Recon that were being done by an ex-CF member. He also had RCMP skins as well. He was asked to stop by either the RCMP or the CF and all his work relating to those organizations disappeared online.
It was a really nice piggy back onto an existing engine.
So, here's the CF's solution if they're serious about this: buy the rights to the U.S. Army game, and then hire the guy whose work disappeared to mod it for CF recruiting purposes.
The point of my post was that you can't go halfway with this sort of thing: either make it truly cool, or don't bother. Doing neither just gets you mocked.
Exactly so, nothing worse than a pathetic game.
Look at Black Hawk Down. Everyone (by which I mean "gamers") were excited for a game based on the events/book/movie. It arrived and was utter crap. I can't find one person who liked it.
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