Jade Raymond wants to be left alone.

[MahrinSkel]

Playground rules: When someone takes a cheap shot, there are three options:

1) Ignore it.

2) Unleash a devastating counter-attack.

3) Do something that makes you look weak.

Trying to go for option 2 and failing means you took option 3.  Sending C&D's to Something Awful?  Either someone in Ubi PR or legal was so clueless about SA that they actually thought that would do something constructive, or the conspiracy theorists are right and UbiSoft was trying to milk some free publicity.

--Dave

[Ixxit]

Unless of course other people around you choose to become EPIC BUTTHURT as well and decide not to use you because you cause too many problems, or decide that it's a great joke that you should never be allowed to forget.

That's what I was thinking too.  Apparently this guy attends comic and other conventions, so while he's trying to come off all edgy and cool, he's just covering himself and trying to 'un-burn' bridges.


One just has to look at some of the previous installments of his comic to see that his explanation is bullshit and how  he really  feels about women and what they are used for. Very creepy

[Azazel]

The guy who wrote the comic is just some other random internet douche who happens to have some artistic talent. Doesn't make him someone worth giving a shit about.

[UnSub]

The guy who wrote the comic is just some other random internet douche who happens to have some artistic talent. Doesn't make him someone worth giving a shit about.

That's 100% correct, but he wins a lot out of this event. A lot of publicity, a lot of eyes going to his webcomic (some of whom will stay) and the ability to pull something like this again in future and get some more attention. There's a 99% change he's home free on the legal side, so he doesn't have much to worry about ... unless Jade Raymond's fans are really as stalker-ific as they present themselves.

There's not really a whole lot more to say here. Jade Raymond has the most to lose out of this whole thing while David Cheung and Ubisoft get the benefit. Women across the whole gaming industry get reminded what can happen when they put their heads up and get noticed by their predominantly male gaming audience.

[Xanthippe]

This thread continues to be full of irony.

[Samwise]

I agree.  Bestest title ever.   

[Ironwood]

You know, I was prepared to 'Not Care' about this until I saw that wee mini interview with the unbelievable asshole in question.

What a horrid wee man.  Lying little scumbag sack of shit.  Why can't he just be honest ?  There's no way in fucking hell ANYTHING to do with that cartoon was about Ubisoft and marketing.  Weasel.

I don't mind people being pricks (or I'd never have made it through my early childhood) but at least be fucking HONEST ones.

Try this :  "I wrote this cartoon because pretty women frighten and disgust me, while I am also strangely drawn to my sexual fantasies of them."

Asshole.

[stray]

Right on.

[schild]

There's no way in fucking hell ANYTHING to do with that cartoon was about Ubisoft and marketing.

He's a webcomic artist, a well-known and quite published one at that.  BUT HEY, YOU KNOW HIM PRETTY WELL OBVIOUSLY.

Try this :  "I wrote this cartoon because pretty women frighten and disgust me, while I am also strangely drawn to my sexual fantasies of them."

More than not likely.

[stray]

Being a well known webcomic artist just makes him even less credible.

[schild]

Uh, ok?

[SnakeCharmer]

Never heard of him up until this point.

[Margalis]

I agree with Ironwood, I would have much more respect if the guy just told the truth. A pretty successful woman gets his panties in his bunch so it helps his ego to draw her as a dumb slut who will suck cock for sales, literally a whore.

I'm really getting tired of people saying what they actually think then later claiming it was some sort of brilliant satire. Jon Swift is a satirist, this guy is just a small-minded moron.

Again, there is a comic to be written about Ubisoft marketing and the pathetic fanboys but this wasn't it. Of course he has the "right" to produce this stuff and going after SA is plain stupid. I'll defend his right to say it but the guy is clearly an idiot, and his interview couldn't have made that any more clear without accompanying photos of him drooling on himself.

[Mosesandstick]

I agree with Ironwood, I would have much more respect if the guy just told the truth. A pretty successful woman gets his panties in his bunch so it helps his ego to draw her as a dumb slut who will suck cock for sales, literally a whore.

I'm really getting tired of people saying what they actually think then later claiming it was some sort of brilliant satire. Jon Swift is a satirist, this guy is just a small-minded moron.

Again, there is a comic to be written about Ubisoft marketing and the pathetic fanboys but this wasn't it. Of course he has the "right" to produce this stuff and going after SA is plain stupid. I'll defend his right to say it but the guy is clearly an idiot, and his interview couldn't have made that any more clear without accompanying photos of him drooling on himself.

Just to play Devil's Advocate, if the guy is an idiot/moron why wouldn't he think his comic is brilliant satire? He's not lying if he thinks his comic is actually good. I'm not denying the (very high?) possibility that he's being a dick about this, but a lot of people are convinced of their own talent and worth  .

[Margalis]

I don't disagree. He may just be genuinely stupid. Especially given his interview.

[Ironwood]

There's no way in fucking hell ANYTHING to do with that cartoon was about Ubisoft and marketing.

He's a webcomic artist, a well-known and quite published one at that.  BUT HEY, YOU KNOW HIM PRETTY WELL OBVIOUSLY.

Try this :  "I wrote this cartoon because pretty women frighten and disgust me, while I am also strangely drawn to my sexual fantasies of them."

More than not likely.

Can you please make your relationship with this chap known ?  You've been oddly defending him the whole thread in an unhealthy way...

"He's a webcomic artist, a well-known and quite published one at that"  This statement means fuckall and is yet another in the catalogue of Schild-said-what ?  Also, it doesn't have anything to do with my point about THE COMIC.  Which has dick all to do with Marketing.  Obviously.

He's clearly an utter cockmonger.

Bear in mind, I don't actually give a fuck about anything to do with this story except the patently untrue rationalisations and BULLSHIT this guy spewed about 'What His High Art Meant'.

Fucking Douchebag.

[Azazel]

Never heard of him up until this point.

^^ what he said.

[tkinnun0]

You know, I was prepared to 'Not Care' about this until I saw that wee mini interview with the unbelievable asshole in question.

What a horrid wee man.  Lying little scumbag sack of shit.  Why can't he just be honest ?  There's no way in fucking hell ANYTHING to do with that cartoon was about Ubisoft and marketing.  Weasel.

Why not? It makes perfect sense when I view it as "this is how Ubisoft would like to market Ass Creed". I mean, look at the last panel, it says that right there!

Maybe you'd like to view him as a liar because because you don't like him and your feeble mind can't cope with admitting you were wrong and he, the asshole, was right all along. Just look at what Ubisoft is doing with their trilogy. If Ass Creed was Matrix the movie, Ass Creed 1 would end when Neo gets flushed out of the Matrix. Ubisoft can't very well base the marketing of their trilogy on a part that sucks so very hard nor can their game give blowjobs to every geek on the internet. So, they do the best they can, try to get the geeks to IMAGINE the blowjobs and hey, let's be cordial about it.

[Ixxit]

So, they do the best they can, try to get the geeks to IMAGINE the blowjobs and hey, let's be cordial about it.

Wow, so any company that employs a attractive  woman in a prominent position who's job description includes among many things, talking to the public   is secretly planting subliminal penis sucking messges when they send her out to talk about something.

I guess David Cheung had the super secret decodifer glasses that allowed him to see all these spurting penises  and he felt that the only thing he could do was render these  visions as a public service

[tkinnun0]

Way I see it, Ubisoft Marketing has two choices: come out and say "we're sorry, everyone fixated on Jade instead of the game, we botched our marketing campaign", or stay the course indicating they're happy enough with their marketing campaign.

It doesn't matter whether the fixation on Jade was their goal all along or if they got forced into it by chauvinistic pigs. What matters is how they conduct their marketing campaign from this point onwards.

[SnakeCharmer]

Depending on your point of view about publicity (any publicity is good publicity?), then you could say that Ubisoft absolutely smashed the marketing strategy out of the park.  The public served them up a slow curveball that didn't curve (zomghotgamerchickbewbiesunFunFunFunF), Ubsoft got some good wood on it. 

Ball game.

All the gaming public / press did was reinforce the 'geek never had a date live in parents basement' stereotype.

Good job!

[Megrim]

I'd agree that they were exceedingly successfull. And, Ixxit, remember that this is the same company that gave us the FragDolls.

[stray]

Don't know why everyone threw up their arms about FragDolls either. Must have missed something.


And yes, I know a big part of Ubi's part in that is marketing -- but imho, it's marketing that's really fucking needed. The girls themselves seem alright though.

[Engels]

Can you please make your relationship with this chap known ?  You've been oddly defending him the whole thread in an unhealthy way...

I've wondered about this too. Immediately referencing him as 'Dave' suggest some kind of relationship. I felt only slightly less creeped out by the Hellgate fanboism.

[Megrim]

Don't know why everyone threw up their arms about FragDolls either. Must have missed something.

And yes, I know a big part of Ubi's part in that is marketing -- but imho, it's marketing that's really fucking needed. The girls themselves seem alright though.

I suppose, on my part at least, i (on some level) object to being treated as a walking erection. Last i checked the Frag Dolls were utterly horrid at competitive gameplay (despite being marketed to the contrary), yet they had been relentlessly pushed forward as "omg we're gurrrls lookit us we're so awesome, we've got boobs!" As such, the end result is a bunch of pretty faces employed not because of their gaming talents, but because of penis-magnetism.

Furthermore, as far as Assassin's Creed is concerned - i would have loved to see interviews with the people that did the movement animations and motion for Altair, how the city mapping was done, etc... Now admittedly, i hadn't been following the game in any great deal of depth, but seeing nothing but JadeJadeJadeJadeJadeJade all over the place every time AC came up got a little obnoxious after a while.

[stray]

I agree... It's a good team all around (same peeps that did Prince of Persia). Then again, it's hard enough find to non designer/producer, team member interviews for any game. I'm sure there's some stuff around somewhere though.

[caladein]

Trying to go for option 2 and failing means you took option 3.  Sending C&D's to Something Awful?  Either someone in Ubi PR or legal was so clueless about SA that they actually thought that would do something constructive, or the conspiracy theorists are right and UbiSoft was trying to milk some free publicity.

If Ubi was covering their ass more than anything, who else would have been a valid C&D target? DeviantArt? That could quite possibly have been dumber.... maybe. If it's the "any publicity..." line, then SA fits just about fine, especially considering it was just that someone linked the comic on said boards, at least DA has it on their servers.

As for the whole schild calling him "Dave" thing, his news posts on Chugworth are signed (along with his DA profile) "Teh Dave" so it's not like there's much else to call him. It's the exact same thing as asking "Why do we call schild by his last name?"

[MahrinSkel]

Well, I think it made a lot of people take a second look at Assassin's Creed (I did).  Of course, the second look, reading non-prostituted reviews and grass roots word of mouth, said it was a pile of dogshit in a box, so I still passed.  But it probably gave that dog some legs, sales-wise.  Really, the only questions are if Jade is in on the scam, and if the crappy web-comic was just an opportunity Ubi took advantage of or a clever plant.  There are no heroes here, and the only clear victims are those who got suckered into buying AC.

--Dave

[stray]

Lol. Pile of dogshit? Whose "non-prostituted" reviews are you reading exactly? From what I know, it's cool enough. Certainly not anything that would make Ubisoft concoct some crazy web comic/slandering conspiracy to gain attention. This game has made all the attention a company could ask for... For over a year now.

Man, that's like the "Wtf?" post of the day.

[UnSub]

Furthermore, as far as Assassin's Creed is concerned - i would have loved to see interviews with the people that did the movement animations and motion for Altair, how the city mapping was done, etc... Now admittedly, i hadn't been following the game in any great deal of depth, but seeing nothing but JadeJadeJadeJadeJadeJade all over the place every time AC came up got a little obnoxious after a while.

Here's as good a list of Assassin's Creed videos that I could google from one source. And here's a separate interview with the composer I was aware of.

AC released a lot of videos - in fact, they seemed to use that as a primary marketing tool. Lots of gameplay videos that made it look like a good game. After all, if the game didn't look good, they could have had Tyra Banks and Jenny McCarthy rubbing together while naked during interviews and it would have done the game no good. Jade appeared in a number of them and narrated some others. Looking at the scores given to those videos, the ones with Jade appearing in them don't score significantly higher than those where she doesn't appear. Players were interested in the game not in Jade (and some of those videos make her look very rough).

Sure, some of those videos are pure marketing puff pieces - Fragdolls interviewing Jade twice, for instance - but she doesn't take up all of those videos, nor did a lot of the gamers seem to care whether she appeared or not. Looking through these I can perhaps see why Patrice didn't get more interviews - he's got a very thick French accent. I seem to remember a Prince of Persia making of... video that was all in French and if the PoP team is very similar to the AC team, this may have been an issue.. Anyone with a greater knowledge of Ubisoft Montreal want to tell me how many of the key production positions were taken up by native French speakers?

Also - Production Manager Elsbeth Tory gets at least one video. Bet she feels she dodged a bullet there by not doing more of them.

And again - "JadeJadeJade" came from the commentary / gaming sites who built her up. And Ubisoft gets off scot free in that comic too.

[Azazel]

Well, having looked around, it seems that Assassin's Creed is decent in a lot of ways, but disappointing in a lot of ways as well. Hardly the second coming of robot jesus as a lot of people, sites and the hypemachine have made it out to be. (Remember Fable?)

I "bought" it via tradeins, and it looks pretty and interesting enough, so I'm sure I won't mind it for having paid 35% off most retailers' prices.

[geldonyetich2]

Sounds like this game belongs on my GameFly cue and nothing more.  I blame a glut of Grand Theft Auto-like games.  Heck, even Jak and Daxster are in on the act these days (not that Jak and Daxter II wasn't some kind of awesome).

[stray]

The Jak and Daxter dudes moved on to greener pastures (or cliffs, if you will).

[Ironwood]

You know, I was prepared to 'Not Care' about this until I saw that wee mini interview with the unbelievable asshole in question.

What a horrid wee man.  Lying little scumbag sack of shit.  Why can't he just be honest ?  There's no way in fucking hell ANYTHING to do with that cartoon was about Ubisoft and marketing.  Weasel.

Why not? It makes perfect sense when I view it as "this is how Ubisoft would like to market Ass Creed". I mean, look at the last panel, it says that right there!

Maybe you'd like to view him as a liar because because you don't like him and your feeble mind can't cope with admitting you were wrong and he, the asshole, was right all along. Just look at what Ubisoft is doing with their trilogy. If Ass Creed was Matrix the movie, Ass Creed 1 would end when Neo gets flushed out of the Matrix. Ubisoft can't very well base the marketing of their trilogy on a part that sucks so very hard nor can their game give blowjobs to every geek on the internet. So, they do the best they can, try to get the geeks to IMAGINE the blowjobs and hey, let's be cordial about it.

What ? 

Seriously, I don't know what you just said.  Perhaps it's my feeble mind.

[Litigator]

On a related note, does anyone else think putting the hottie developer in front of the publicity engine made the game sites throw softball reviews?

I've usually defended gaming sites to some extent. They can only get their news through industry cooperation, because there aren't really opportunities to get pre-release access to games and screenshots unless the developer gives the publication access to the games. The only way a site can reasonably have completely independent reviews is to give up their preview access.

I'm willing to tolerate that the restrictions on access to games under development means that the sites are obliged not to pass judgment on the incomplete games that they see. I think idiots who believe the undeserved praise in previews and the false Gamestop contention that you can't get a game the day it comes out unless you preorder generates revenue for some shitty games.

However, I generally think that the sites are aware that they lose their credibility and readership if they recommend bad games. So, in spite of a 1-10 rating system that rarely goes below 7, I think, once you understand how to read their reviews, It's really easy to tell which games are generating enthusiasm, particularly using a site like metacritic or gamerankings.

Assassin's Creed was a very uncommon situation, in which some sites rated in the 7s and some in the 9s. I rarely see mixed reviews for games. I kind of suspect some reviewers went easy on AC because they dig Jade.