Commentary by Kyle McLaughlin

Word is coming out from Ars Technica, G4 and other major sites about EA’s “Sin to Win” contest, encouraging con-goers to commit “Acts of Lust” (read: take pictures) with their booth babes and upload them to the net for fabulous prizes and what-not.  The contest promoting their upcoming game based on Dante’s Inferno has, brace for it kids, BRACE FOR IT!!!, struck a nerve, with some calling it degrading and misogynistic while others pass it off as a publicity stunt/grab for any attention they can get. Some will remember the small kerfluffle an EA-orchestrated fake protest outside last month’s E3 also promoting the game caused with the Christian community. EA has already offered up the apology that I’m sure was written up five minutes after someone initially suggested the contest.

Ignoring the mile-wide landmine EA’s breakdancing on for a minute, can’t they think up anything else? Taking pictures of and with booth babes and cosplayers is a con standard.  On top of this, Lust is only one circle of Dante’s Hell. As much creative license and liberties being taken with the source material totaled up, Dante can’t stay in the second circle forever. Yet, it’s the biggest chunk of the marketing the game has received so far. Sure, sex sells and all, but why not give the other sins some airtime?

With this in mind, and because you can’t really put positive marketing spin on consumers committing other key Inferno sins like theft, suicide and betrayal (unless you’re a tabloid), Project Foxhole would like to submit some suggestions for EA’s next big stunt as keyed to the seven deadly sins.

Gluttony:
Competitive eating contest!
Go grab five contestants off the net, put them table to table with some of competitive eating’s finest, Takeru Kobayashi, Joey Chestnut and the like, and have ‘em all go to town.  Last gamer not vomiting wins a year’s worth of Taco Bell, a Dante’s Inferno branded puke bucket and various EA branded swag.  Extra points if it’s a no-handed pie eating contest, because sinners need to be embarrassed for what they done did, like my parish’s Sister Francis Franklin said.

Greed:
Cash Grab Box!
One lucky winner of an online raffle gets five minutes inside a giant cash grab machine (full of ones, this is a recession after all.) while Visceral Games employees, the ones that haven’t gone over to Activision anyway, throw stink bombs, dead squid and other assorted vileness at them!  If it works for your local radio station’s drive-time DJ’s, it’ll work for you!  Throw a video of it on the Dante’s Inferno website for extra lulz.

Sloth:
Comfy, comfy chairs at the EA con booths.
Granted, it doesn’t have the pizzaz of dead octipi or tiny people eating twice their weight in Spam and horking all over themselves, but after a full day on your feet or in uncomfortable con chairs you’ll have half the convention scrambling for fifteen minutes in a barcalounger while they play EA demos.  Throw in massusses and a chance to win the chairs with some swag and half the con’ll be gunning for your booth.  Still need to throw some punishment in?  Those people stay in those chairs too long and the line for them will take care of that for you.

Wrath:
Booth babes’ revenge!/Pride FC fight!
Put a contest entry box at the end of the booth area, submit a entry and get a bag of swag with a chance to win something big down the line.  All they’ve got to do is get past the gauntlet of angry booth babes ready to throw down.  There’s enough pent up rage after a three day con full of smelly people, jerks and ne’er do wells to make this work.  Just give the booth babes a three-foot-long stick to poke people with and a jumbo bottle of Febreeze per babe.  Trust me, the babes will thank you.

Barring that, why not present a Pride Fighting Championship fight to promote people kicking the crap out of each other and at the end of the match a randomly selected winner gets a free trip to foreign lands to see a Pride FC championship bout.  You get the promotion AND get the word out about EA MMA.  It’d bring more publicity if you could win a trip to Vegas to see a Ultimate Fighting Championship match instead, but you kinda screwed the pooch on that one too, huh?

Envy:
Steal the Hat!
This one will take some explaining, stay with me here.
Create a fantastic, amazing hat.  Like a velour tophat with Peacock feathers and dollar bills in the strap that plays Ric Flair’s entrance music.  Now give it to some random guy that visits your booth.  Have someone follow random guy around telling everyone in the general vicinity to steal said hat of the heavens. The person that has the hat the longest after a certain time wins a new wardrobe from Hot Topic or Pacific Sun or whomever plus the requsite EA swag.  Repeat this several times a day for the rest of the con.  Post the funnier steals on the Dante’s Inferno website for extra fun.

Pride:
“Mister Inferno” Pageant of Shame!
Sure, a regular beauty pageant full of Dante cosplayers would bore you to tears in minutes, but how about one where the audience gets to throw pies, squirt seltzer water and generally degrade the contestants all while they have to continue on with the pageant, points taken off for breaking down and crying, jeering at the audience and not knowing how to walk in heels.  Winner gets digitized into the game as one of the denizens of the seventh circle of Hell.

Lust:
Just make it more interesting, dammit!
Okay, so sex is the easiest thing to sell and you can’t get your hands on a crate of dead squid, I understand.  But how about making it a little more challenging for the folks!  Give the babes tazers or make the contestants get dressed up as the “costumed reps”’s gimps!  Even if they don’t win, they’ll certainly remember the EA logo-shaped marks on their arms and backs!

EA, on behalf of the Foxhole crew, we hope that you will take our suggestions under advisement.  The game itself is looking kinda sweet and I’m sure all the white knights and interest groups will die down soon enough, but never, ever underestimate the power boredom has over your target demographic.  I’m sure half of the people reading this article already stopped half way and are watching porn right now, the sinful little buggers.