EA Games have recently launched  ’Dead Space 2′, a very violent survival horror game that takes place in 2511 on a moon of Saturn. Players must tear apart a series of beings who have been infected with the ‘Necromorph virus’ (hhhhmmm) with the kind of raw fire power that would make Arnie in Commando look like a postman.

So what does EA Games promote? The gore? The complex plot? The graphics? The multiplayer interactiviy? EA Games had a strong story to tell across all these fronts, but that would simply be trying to shout the loudest using the same language of an increasingly crowded category. Instead, EA Games chose to broadcast a very different symbol of re-evaluation… the  fact that your ‘mom will without question HATE THIS GAME’.

EA Games have said that Dead Space 2 has tipped the ‘Mom hate Barometer’ off the scale… therefore by definition making it a very cool game indeed. The promotion for the game consists solely filming the reaction of suburban American moms watching clips from the game, thus proving the long known truth that ‘if your mom hates something, it must be cool’.

I love that this has introduced a new criteria for choice for young game players… not technology, not artisitic quality but a very new emotional scale that will surely create some buzz for a while.

I wonder if we spend 10 mins thinking about what our ‘mom hate barometer’ would be, what new criteria for choice could we bring to the market to shake things up a bit?