Anyone remember this controversial Sega ad campaign?

[Jorpho]

I've posted about this before, and it always bothered me that I could never find the original reference... Until now!

From the June 7, 1997 issue of the Globe and Mail, page C11:
Sega, whose popular video games are aimed at a teen-age market, shocked even jaded ad-industry people in April when it established a mock religious cult to promote an especially violent on-line game. "We kill. It's okay. It's not our fault any more than breathing or urinating," the cult's founder tell teens in publicity materials that bear striking resemblance to those put out by Heaven's Gate, the California cult whose 39 members committed suicide in March. Sega also set up a phony Christian organization to generate publicity by opposing it own advertising.

Aside from this one little blurb from nine years ago, I've never heard anything about this ad campaign anywhere else. Someone must have buried it pretty well. It almost sounds like something Acclaim would do.

So, does this sound familiar to anyone?

[Ed Oscuro]

Strange, I've never heard of that before. As you said, somebody killed that dead...and in a hurry.

[segagamer4life]

this is news to me, I fancy myself a sega-addict, and I can remember tons of sega marketing, and ad's but this totally doesn't ring any bells. It would be cool if there was some actual footage of comercials, or the ads they are referencing, interesting subject though.

[§ Gideon §]

Grisly. I read the title and thought you'd have some lame, ooh-I'm-naughty-Sega campaign--but this is for real. I'd like to see more.

[MegaDrive20XX]

a Sega ad from 97' said that? Man what game was that for? I gotta find it and just wonder how that connects to this situation...

Yet to the real situation that happened, that is creepily ironic

[Ed Oscuro]

Yeah, it was probably being planned while Heaven's Gate was going down. Crazy, I remember seeing the photos in Newsweek (or maybe Time...been a while).

[evil_genius]

It's genius, sheer genius. Too bad it didn't help Sega in the long haul.

[Push Upstairs]

News to me....

but then again i was playing only PC Games at the time.

[evildead2099]

Reminds me of the time that Kevin Smith staged a pseudo-protest of his own movie by participating in a protest started by USA's puritanical Catholic League. Smith marched in front of a movie theatre holding up a sign which said "DOGMA IS DOGSHIT," and was successful in getting himself featured on the news. LOL

[Aswald]

Did this actually happen, or was it a rumor?

[Jorpho]

Did this actually happen, or was it a rumor?

It would reflect most poorly on The Globe and Mail (Canada's national newspaper) if they based such stories in rumor. (This blurb was part of a much longer article on disturbing trends in advertising.)

[Aswald]

True, but since it happened in the 1990s- think about what THAT decade gave us!- it was possible.

[Jorpho]

Well, at least now that I have specific words, I can Google. A search for the term "it's not our fault any more than breathing" brings up two links with more information.

The real meat appears to be at http://www.prismaweb.com/sega/heat/cyberdiversion/cs2.htm . Unfortunately, this link is dead at the moment and can only be viewed in Google's cache or through http://www.archive.org . http://www.prismadesign.com/complete.html still works, though, and gives the link as "SEGA Heat underground campaign" .

There is also further commentary at http://www.bookrags.com/other/communication/catharsis-theory-and-media-effects-eci-01.html .

So it looks like this was just a web campaign from the days when the web wasn't quite as big as it is today, and so it wouldn't be too hard to bury completely. (Perhaps PrismaDesign took down the link on purpose?)

[grimbal]

The real meat appears to be at http://www.prismaweb.com/sega/heat/cyberdiversion/cs2.htm . Unfortunately, this link is dead at the moment and can only be viewed in Google's cache or through http://www.archive.org . http://www.prismadesign.com/complete.html still works, though, and gives the link as "SEGA Heat underground campaign" .

There is also further commentary at http://www.bookrags.com/other/communication/catharsis-theory-and-media-effects-eci-01.html .

So it looks like this was just a web campaign from the days when the web wasn't quite as big as it is today, and so it wouldn't be too hard to bury completely. (Perhaps PrismaDesign took down the link on purpose?)

Sega Soft was Sega's PC game division and at one time there was a gaming community called HEAT. I agree that this was probably a campaign for a Sega game on that service.

Just did some searching and found this blurb from a Sept. 2000 archive on geek.com:

SegaNet and HEAT - Sega is "set to launch" its SegaNet online gaming service. Sega will be taking over the HEAT gaming network as of October 31, 2000, when HEAT.net officially switches over to SegaNet control. It looks like Sega is working hard to ensure that it has the number one online gaming network presence. All that remains to be seen is if it can actually make money off of an online gaming community.

[Jorpho]

PrismaDesign ultimately gives the full story at http://web.archive.org/web/20010501201742/www.prismaweb.com/sega/ .

I don't quite know if this "shocked even jaded ad-industry people"; I did a ProQuest search for the word "Sega" over the March-August 1997 date range, and the only stuff that turned up was mostly stuff about Sega's dalliances with 3DFX and Bandai (and Sega Channel's aquisition by Shaw).

I guess that solves that little mystery. Now if only I could find the long-lost "Give the World a Wedgie" Nintendo commercial...

So what happened to Heat.net ? I guess it got absorbed into something else, or quietly died off on its own?

[Biff_McFresh]

Perhaps the game was Flesh Fest? Though that came out like a year or so after that article is dated. Hmmm i dunno.

[Towlie2110]

this reminds me of the time a bunch of kids snuck into the Sega corportations and found out a bunch of crap about their games.

Personally I thought it was Sega themselves doing it, but it was still pretty cool.

There was a website like agent00x or somthing like that, with the crash cam for some football game.

Sega has always been the coolest when it comes to advertising