I think the attitude as a whole of Eat My Bomb towards certain games is quite clear and uncontested…

• Halo 2’s “ending” was a slap in the face that marred what was otherwise an excellent experience.
• The marketing SNAFUs that befell Beyond Good & Evil and Psychonauts fall somewhere between “petty theft” and “priestworthy buggering” on the scale of violation.
• Stubbs the Zombie seems to be shaping up to be one of the last truly great games on the Xbox as the system nears the end of its life cycle. (Yes, I know that they’ll continue to make Xbox games after the 360 comes out, but how much attention did you pay to the PSX after the PS2 came out?)

What am I saying, “shaping up”? It just so happens that Stubbs is already out on Xbox! You mean you didn’t know?!? Never mind, never mind…I don’t know how you missed all the buzz, but that’s neither here nor there. Let’s just put that aside and go buy it, shall we? Let’s see here….ah, EB Games ought to do the trick. Hmmm, that’s funny. It doesn’t say anything about it on the main page. Oh well, surely if we go to the Xbox page it’ll be listed there. [Ed. Note: At the time this was written, there was no info at all. Today a single line can be found under Best Sellers: Avaliable Now:. I still stand by my assertion that this game is getting the short end of the stick.] Wha…well what the fuck?! Ok, ok…maybe EB’s slacking off on their end now that the merger is going through. Let’s head over to Gamestop instead. Hmmph. Xbox page? Oh there it i….no, wait, that’s just some sweepstakes link. I’m not even going to bother looking for it online at Best Buy or Circuit City.

Balls.

What happened? Where did it go wrong? There are marketing angles that could be played here! “From the creators of Halo” springs to mind right off the bat. That time-honored approach was probably single-handedly responsible for getting Empire Earth to stand out from the crowd of historical RTS’s and getting people to see any number of movies with only the most tenuous connection to the named person or film. I have seen no commercials. There is, at present, 1 whole review up online and it can be found here. Does this mean that review copies did not go out? Was there no budget allocated for actually selling the game once the difficult job of making it was complete? Who exactly is dropping the ball here? Not everybody reads every article on every game site, and it’s going to be extraordinarily easy for this title to slip through the cracks at retail.

All this ranting does give me an idea, though. Why is it that our industry has to be so different from other entertainment industries? There are foundations, organizations, and media outlets out there that help independent filmmakers, writers, artists, and musicians get their product out there to the masses, but there doesn’t seem to be anything to salvage those gaming gems from obscurity. Should there be some sort of marketing scholarship-type program for developers who are financially shaky in order to allow them the full use of their resources on development as well as attaching a level of prominence to their product and garnering it more attention?

Perhaps a more respected and well-structured awards ceremony would do the trick. Which is more of a prestigeous accomplishment…winning an Oscar or winning an MTV movie award and a Golden Globe? There is not yet enough unity in the video games industry for any kind of award to mean anything more than a quick blurb on the box or in the ad. 9.7 on IGN, 92% on PC Gamer, 1up’s GOTY, 9.6 at Gamespot…these are great and all, but what about 1 program above all others that carries an air of independence and respect? It is this “Oscar consideration”that gives well-deserving indie films the backing they need to find prominence in a sea of overfunded, overmarketed studio projects.

Weigh in with your thoughts.