How to bring your product to market is often decided by the guys with the money, and in most cases, those guys aren’t exactly willing to take risks that might damage the game, confuse the media, or completely bewilder potential buyers.
Luckily, though, there are still some creative developers out there — along with the occasional publisher who isn’t afraid of pulling a crazy PR stunt or two every now and then…
I have absolutely no idea how we ended up talking about this, but me and a few guys at work had one of our usual random conversations today. Somehow, I mentioned this game and its rather legendary video, only to discover that NONE of them had ever seen it!
So yup!… I showed it to them.
And they loved it.
They loved the video, they loved the madness… and yes, they loved the curry too! 😂
That little conversation was enough to send me straight down memory lane, so I decided to go a bit retrospective today — all because of the wonderfully bizarre marketing campaign for the PSN game THE LAST GUY!
Or, as it really should be pronounced…
DAAAA LASTA GUY!
The Last Guy was released on the PlayStation Store back in 2008 and quickly became a hit. The timing certainly helped, as there weren’t exactly endless new releases fighting for everyone’s attention at the time, but I genuinely believe that the wonderfully strange marketing campaign played a big part too.
The game eventually gained something of a cult following and became a bestseller, and it was later re-released on Blu-ray. That version also came with an update adding various bits and pieces, including Trophy support and other new content.
Not bad for a strange little PSN game with one of the most unforgettable marketing campaigns of the era…
CURRY AND HIMALAYA…
The Last Guy was a relatively simple game. There was nothing particularly extraordinary about the game itself, but what made the whole thing so special was where it supposedly came from: India.
And to make things even stranger… the Himalayas.
You know… that enormous mountain range. Snow… cold… paradise… somewhere close to God Almighty… lots of monks(?)…
Oh, and apparently a shed with three game developers, a goat and some curry.
And don’t forget the curry, because apparently THAT CURRY IS TOO DAMN GOOD!
Sony and the TLG development team decided to hype up the game with a rather unusual announcement video featuring the developers themselves. No hidden actors, no massive explosions, no carefully staged action sequences or random events designed to make the game look like the greatest thing ever created…
Nope.
This was presented as a proper developer diary as well as an announcement for the game itself — three guys, their game, their wonderfully questionable working conditions, a goat and, naturally, some bloody good curry.
Maybe you never got around to watching the video? If not, you really should, because it might genuinely be one of the best teasers ever made for such a simple little indie-style game.
It’s absolutely worth a few minutes of your time, if only to see just how hard some people are willing to work to make a game…
…as long as there’s curry and a goat nearby.
Believe The Hype & Curry…
A lot of negativity hit this marketing campaign when the teaser first appeared, because there are simply far too many idiots out there who apparently had no idea what this PlayStation PR stunt was all about.
They had no idea what curry was.
They had no idea what a goat was.
And apparently, they had no idea what THE BEST GAME EVER looked like either!
Because this video is the best ever! The best in the world! But NOT without curry, you hear me?!
CURRY!!
Just listen to the guys in the video. This is the best game ever! It has the best graphics too!
CURRY!
And a goat!
I’ve probably watched this video a hundred times by now, and somehow it remains absolutely timeless. The game itself might be a little too “normal” compared to the insanity of its marketing campaign, but I still think these guys deserved every sale and every player they got simply for having the balls to produce a video like this.
The game even had some pretty cool online features!
But let’s be honest…
It’s mostly because of the curry.
Want to know more about the game? Well, rush over to YouTube and watch that legendary video — or, even better, go and download the game right away!
fixed 🙂