Charity
And how Sony continues to dismantle Everquest 2.
Starting today, Everquest 2 players can try to kill professional baseball player Curt Schilling. It’s supposedly for a good cause. Every time you kill Curt, Sony will donate $5 to the ALS Association. If you feel the same way as I do about professional athletes, this might sound like a win-win all around.
The problem, as I see it, is 2-fold. First, Sony is once again determined to screw with your experience in “their world.” Fighting a baseball player undermines not only the fiction of the game, but the overall immersive quality of world. Somewhere in this high fantasy world is a baseball player waiting to be butchered by elves, frogs, and assorted other fantasy characters. What would Anonia think of all this, I wonder.
The second problem is something I take issue with when it comes to corporate charity donations in general. It’s the same problem I have with the Yoplait campaign, where consumers are asked to send their yogurt lids back, and Yoplait will donate a certain amount of money to breast cancer research, based on the returned lid count. In other words, the “donation” is nothing more than the cost of getting you to buy more yogurt, and as an added bonus, it’s tax deductible. In the case of Sony, the money only goes to ALS if you play the game and defeat the encounter.
If corporations are going to donate to charity, they need to figure out how much they’re going to donate and just do the goddamned thing. Don’t turn it into a game, and don’t make it some big media event. Otherwise it makes me think this so-called act of charity is nothing more than a cynical ploy to make me buy more yogurt or another month of EQ2.
June 5th, 2006 at 11:31 am
I hate to ruin your day further but most corporation charity campaigns are rigged from the start. I'm not 100% sure but I'm pretty confident that Yoplait has a pre-set cap of donations. “Send in caps and we'll donate this much per cap or a max of $10,000 per year”
The pre-set amount donation is pretty common practice. The charities go for it because it's money no matter what. The advertisers like it because they're sheltered. The consumers that “contribute” after the $10k is met are the only ones that're screwed.
June 5th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Amazingly enough, corporations often do marketing campaigns to make money.
Thankfully “Curt Schilling” doesn't actually wear a Red Sox uniform in EQ2, he's a barbarian type who duel wields large clubs.
Eh, it kind of works - the only immersion-dampening factor is the name “Curt Schilling”, which isn't really high-fantasy. Still, shout outs to RL people happen in MMOs all the time and are usually popular - remember Daakon's Tower, the actual in-game name for “the thimble” in old EMain for DAOC? Daakon was, if I remember correctly, the first RR10 in the game. And the Mighty Cudgel of Obvious Truth was both a high-level magic item and an old lumthemad.net in-joke (it was wielded by staff writers and had +10 vs trolls).
Curt Schilling himself has enough gaming bona fides beyond being a famous athlete; he runs his own EQ2 guild, plays constantly (and gets SOE good publicity in the market) and in his spare time runs a company that brought Advanced Squad Leader back to market. I don't begrudge SOE for recognizing their most famous RL player in-game, he's earned it.
June 5th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
I wouldn't be surprised if this is Schilling's idea, Curt is a genuine person and big charity supporter; for example for each strike he throws he donates money, albeit I do believe the kill schill for charity concept is a bit obtrusive and gimmicky.
June 6th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
I've known about this for awhile, but can't say how… and what's sadder is I can't even share the funniest thing I've heard about this whole debacle because it probably hasn't been made public.
This is just so wrong on so many levels. Catch the logo on his “armor”?
June 13th, 2006 at 11:24 am
Just happened to see this after cruising over from Lum’s place, and wanted to mention something that I think you missed.
No one had to buy anything for this, just download the free client and walk up to Curt on the tutorial island. No fees involved. =)
-N
June 13th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
Hi Noel,
You’re right, I didn’t realize you could participate through the free client.
I still maintain my original objections though. A mob named “Curt Schilling” breaks the fiction of Norrath. While Curt may be worthy of the recognition, I think it could have been done in a more integrated way. Scott pointed out other examples of homages to players, but in each of those games the homage was kept within the fiction of the game.
My other issue isn’t so much an issue with Sony as it is with Sony and many other companies that donate to charity. I feel like if a company is going to donate to charity, then donate. Don’t make it a game or a PR campaign. Keep marketing and charity separate.
June 13th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Most of our (SOEs) contributions aren’t announced. This case was different; Curt really wanted to promote the ALS charity, and our marketting team thought it would be a win/win situation for that kind of promotion.
While I’m not going to say that I agree with everything our marketting/PR department does, this was kept to the trial island, and only went on for four days. All-in-all, not very fiction breaking, considering that established characters don’t return to the island. The model of the character will stick around in part of the betrayal quest as an NPC named Clint Gilcrush (an anagram of Curt’s name), but this is probably a less fiction-breaking than having to move around with a mouse and keyboard than your legs. =)
By the way, always good to see someone in the blogsphere from Monterey. I’m originally from Big Sur.
-N
June 14th, 2006 at 8:37 am
The model of the character will stick around in part of the betrayal quest as an NPC named Clint Gilcrush (an anagram of Curt’s name), but this is probably a less fiction-breaking than having to move around with a mouse and keyboard than your legs. =)
Ah, I agree this is much better. A much better way to integrate Curt into Norrath.
By the way, always good to see someone in the blogsphere from Monterey. I’m originally from Big Sur.
I’m originally from Colorado, and Big Sur was my first introduction to the ocean proper. The whole of the Monterey bay area is beautiful, Big Sur especially so. Lucky you!