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The Dumbest Video Game Marketing Moves

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This week’s terribly generic announcement of Paragon got us thinking—what were the worst marketing moves in video game history?

That’s the main topic for this week’s episode of Kotaku Splitscreen, where Kirk and I regale you with all sorts of video game talk. Our special guest this week is Matthew Burns, a writer and game developer who’s worked on Halo, Call of Duty, and Destiny. He now works at the University of Washington, where he helps develop games that lead to actual scientific discoveries. (He’s also an occasional Kotaku columnist and sex reviewer.)

On this episode, we talk about horrible marketing moments in the video game world, from the story of E3 cutting the power to Tecmo’s Dead or Alive booth in 2003 to the infamous Daikatana magazine ad (pictured above). We also talk about Matthew’s work at university, the hellish story behind Trails in the Sky, and how Activision got way too addicted to Candy Crush and wound up spending $5.9 billion.

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You can contact us with reader questions (to be answered on the podcast), comments, suggestions, and anything else at splitscreen@kotaku.com.