Christmas Comes Early for Battlefield 3

It looks like I'm getting a late birthday present, and everyone is getting an early Christmas present. The folks at EA and DICE have finally dated the release of their Back to Karkand DLC for mid-December. Battlefield 3's back to Karkand  add-on, which will be free to those who pre-order BF3 (myself included), is set to be released on December 13th. Otherwise, it's $15 (1200 MSP). Playstation version owners will get it a week earlier on the 6th.

Karkand will feature new maps, guns, vehicles and achievement/trophies. It seems that the weapons will be unlocked by "Assignments" which require you to meet specific requirements within a match. But the cool thing is that they unlock for not only the BtK maps, but also the originals. Let's just hope that they're guns worth running on the treadmill for. I do enough running in the game as it is.

Your Mom Sells Dead Space 2

EA/Visceral Games' recent viral ad campaign for Dead Space 2 has been popping up on various video game news outlets since its debut over the weekend. For those of you who are not familiar, it's essentially an attempt to make Dead Space appealing solely based on the idea that middle-aged (conservative) mothers think it's gory and violent. Take a look at some of the videos here.

Apparently, everyone (excluding their mothers) thinks this is "brilliant". I'm not sure that I'd call it that, but I see what they might be going for with this campaign. The argument for why it's "brilliant" is because it uses the idea of the disapproving mom to sell video games. But if your target audience is over 18, how does parental disapproval have anything to do with making them want to buy the game? If it really is trying to sell mature game to minors, then is reducing your industry to the child-corrupting stereotypes really the way to help your bottom line?