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I'd so buy that if I had a Wii. Seriously. I'd buy it over Brawl. | |
Oh god i used to have the biggest crush on her. If i had a wii i would buy this, now if they could just throw in Selma Hayek then id buy the wii. | |
ZOMG! SPANISH?!?! Sega, you are on par with Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Abraham Lincoln...but with Latinos. | |
I take back all my words about Americans having spine while Europe works their ass off trying to please small minorities. | |
I will buy this just for that Daisy woman. I've never heard of her until now and I wish I had. | |
waitaminute waitaminute, SEGA actually thinks they can make a DIFFERENCE??? In RACIAL EQUALITY??? HAAA HA HA HA HAA HA HA HA!!!.......no........no..more............. | |
I will buy it just so I can hear her roll her 'R's. Oh my... I always had such a crush on her. I loved the Wayne's World SNL skit with her. Foxy! Shwing! | |
Gotta agree here. We need to campaign for more Bosmer in games. Those goddamn Altmer keep taking up all the story leaving the Bosmer to be slapped into side character roles at best and comic relief at worst. What the hell is Pilates anyway? | |
"Genesis does.." | |
What happened to the days in which you had a language menu to select from the moment the game started up? Once I played UFO: Enemy Unknown in Portugese, just for the hell of it. Man, I loved that game. Ethereals die like dogs when you pull out your lançador do dinamitador. | |
Being able to set your language in the console's option screen happened. | |
The tone in this article takes what are significant issues (the lacking diversity study) and a notable advertising campaign (as well as the release of a bilingual game title) and mocks them all thoroughly for no good reason. Fitness games are doing pretty well right now and it's another market the Wii is addressing. Natal may attract this market as well. I am offended that you trivialized all of these things instead of reporting them in a more straightforward manner free of mockery. I am Hispanic and to me, this is significant stuff in terms of both media and gaming and I look forward to more game campaigns like this. Did you mock the Jillian Michaels fitness game and call her out for being a white woman/minor celebrity on TV who stars in/is used to market a game in English? If not, why the venom here? | |
The point is simply that having game boxes in two languages is nothing new, but Sega is hyping it here to pander to the Hispanic market. | |
The tone of the presentation mocks what is actually significant. Console options, instruction booklet warnings and warranties have been in multiple languages for a while, but it is quite new to have the full product from game to ad campaign, to manual fully bilingual. And starring a minority. That's my point, the tone of the article trivializes a few significant things here. Is it necessarily "pandering" to promote a product partly to a specific market? The game is also marketed in English, so it's not pandering to any market as it isn't like English-speaking non Hispanics aren't being marketed to here. Does Jillian Michaels' fitness game "pander" to the "white market"? Or can we agree that people of all backgrounds can enjoy both these titles? Andy Chalk wrote something disrespectful. Perhaps it was an ignorant mistake. It mocked the importance of the recent study showing a lack of diversity and of marketing efforts that are notable. If the intent was to claim that bilingual marketing isn't new, then he could've gone about it in a way that was more sensitive. | |
Do you live in Toronto? | |
Well, Im glad SEGA is helping racial divides...in Exercise tapes. Now what about gaming? What...thats a game? Doesnt look like one. Sure the Wii shelf is full of that (and is my primary anti-Wii reason) but its no game. | |
What confuses me is that anyone can look at this and think that it's a genuine effort on Sega's part to make gaming more inclusive. It's just a little bit too coincidental that the first game to have bi-lingual marketing is one that just happens to be one featuring a Hispanic woman. This just seems like a cynical effort to sell more copies of a game by trying to instil a false sense of kinship between the Hispanic community and Ms. Fuertes there. | |
Unless you count games that are both in English and Japanese, of course. But I do take your point. Thank you for taking the time to explain it more fully. | |
Took the words right out of my mouth. I'm a Latino, and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be buying this game. | |
My thoery is that Sega basically has this hot supermodel with a spanish last name, so why not make the game in spanish as well. To me, I don't think just because Daisy Fuentes made a pilates game that it will get anymore Hispanics excersicing than it does caucasians in the normal course of things. Games have been converted to spanish for a while (along with many other languages), since the gaming phenomenon encompasses more than just America. Pronouncing spanish language capability on a game that stars a famous Hispanic person, to me, seems more like a plea for acceptance rather than simply marketing a game. | |
I think Andy's article, which does indeed drip with sarcasm, is warrented in this situation. Now I don't know where you are from (or where the Toronto reference below your comment stems from either) but in Canada it is law to package things in both official languages for EVERY GAME. I don't want to step on Susan's toes here by reiterating what she said but she did a good job pointing out the problem entirely. Putting bilingual box art and localized language options on your products should not be something to hype, especially when you are citing your ONE AND ONLY GAME that does so. Even more so since the game happens to have a Hispanic on the cover. Pilates is not a Hispanic only activity so what really makes this "game" Hispanic at all? The nationality of the spokesmodel and the localization language? If anything Hispanics should be should be insulted by this game being thrown in as a test to, "see how well it resonates and how effective our reach is to the Hispanic market". Does this mean failure in a pilates game represents a failure of the Hispanic gaming market and therefor should not be attempted again? This reeks of the Catwoman movie all over again. Set them up to fail so future generations can be reminded with a stern example, of why it's bad to make Hispanic games. If this were a major attempt to actually resonate and take a chunk of the Hispanic demographic (apparently quite a large chunk!) don't you think it would be more prudent to put your chips down on a title that has some, if any appeal besides seeing an attractive cuban woman do bendy things? I mean, Beyond Good and Evil has more appeal in a Hispanic heroine than pilates. What we are seeing here is clearly a means of clawing at something, nay ANYTHING that could possibly boost the sales of the outright terrible failure that an excercise video/"game" will be on any gaming platform. I mean... visit your local Walmart and see how much your average pilates vid sells for. Could you imagine trying to pawn one off at full retail release prices? I know I'd laugh. | |
This is pretty awesome. [/sarcasm] | |
I never said that.
Companies have to take risks, but they also want to play it safe. As I said earlier, the marketing is done in English and Spanish so it's not saying that pilates is a particularly Hispanic activity. I don't know where you got that idea from, because it certainly wasn't from me. I am talking about in the US here where we don't have laws governing this sort of thing, and as such, this is a very significant step. It was also pretty significant when packaged foods began carrying instructions and ingredient lists in both English and Spanish. It isn't like eating is limited to Latinos either, but someone had to start marketing to us. And when some food labels did it, others followed. When companies take steps like this, others take notice. Back to the idea of playing it safe. A game company has to test the waters. But Daisy Fuentes is a recognizable face among both the English speaking and Spanish speaking US audience, and she has done popular ads for pilates programs for years, so this agreement makes sense. And if spending these marketing dollars proves effective, then other companies may follow (which is my hope). It isn't really about this particular game, but the significance of the full-fledged bilingual approach and its potential as a template for the future (including in other genres). | |
Yes that's fine that they are trying to improve bilingualism but to leverage a population into buying their product on that premise is just plain immoral. This is a matter of apples and horseshoes here. You're either marketing a product by leveraging something (read gimmick) or you're making a social improvement for it's own sake. The fact that they publicly link their motives from a marketing representative and say specifically that it is a way to "test the waters" for how much of the community they can reach by leveraging something as basic as language support is just devious. This is clearly an attempt to increase sales in one specific area and not policy for future titles. It's like they want to hold language support hostage unless Hispanics buy their product. That's not reform at all. It means that only games dubbed "Hispanic" will be allowed to contain Spanish language covers, books and support. Not to mention the blowback if the project fails. If this were real reform they'd be printing all US versions of all Sega games with Spanish localization. That's reform. What we have here is a marketing ploy. Sega should have said nothing of their language support and just stuck to hyping the star of the show as a Hispanic. The box art is nothing to boast about. It's not new and it only goes to demonstrate how far away the gaming industry is from being progressive. Sega included. | |
Daisy Fuentes, haven't thought of her is ages. It's all starting to come back now, I might need a..... timeout. | |
Everyone likes to be pandered to. | |
I suppose you could interpret this as a laudable effort by Sega to recognize and reach out to the woefully underserved Hispanic gaming community by creating a pilates "game" for the Wii with a marketing campaign that features a recognizable Hispanic celebrity. On the other hand, it's also possible that Sega came up with the game, hired Daisy Fuentes to appear in it because she's in her 40s but has a body most 21-year-olds would kill for, and then one day some bright young mind at the ad agency said HOLY DOG SHIT I JUST HAD AN IDEA THIS FUENTES CHICK IS FROM CUBA RIGHT? When you can convince me that the former explanation is the correct one, I'll happily admit that this is as significant as you seem to think. Until then, I will treat it with the respect it deserves, which as you appear to have guessed is very little. And for the record, no, I didn't poke fun at Jillian Michaels for Fitness Ultimatum 2009 because the marketing director at Majesco didn't make noise about how the game and its publicity campaign represented a potentially major breakthrough in advertising to Caucasians. | |
I suppose then we will have to agree to disagree, but I continue to find your take on the whole matter shortsighted and ignorant. I stand by my opinion, which I have already explained. Do I think that your take isn't in the realm of possibility? Of course not, I actually think that is part of the package. As I said, the deal makes sense given who we're talking about (and the consumer this is being marketed to), but as I said it is also a risk. But if successful it could mean a breakthrough, as with those food labels I mentioned. Here's another example. I became a vegetarian in the early 90s. In those days, my supermarket carried one type of veggie burger. Today, they carry at least ten. Obviously the first ones sold and so not only did more brands come onto the market, but the store started carrying them likely figuring they'd capture the vegetarian/healthier eater customer base. Obviously on my end I concern myself with tasty food (and games), but on both vegetarian burger manufacturers and game publishers, the ideal outcome is profit. Nowhere do I pretend this is ever not about profit. But I am looking at this as a gamer, a writer, and a Latina. You know what? It's nice to be marketed to for once by a game company and it is something I hope will continue. (That said, I am not buying this title. I don't even own a Wii) We have a lot of money to spend collectively and based on the studies I have read, a lot of that market is untapped or ignored.
Man, all the white privilege I was seeing come to life over in the "Games lack diversity" thread has leaked right on over into this one. You know why the marketing director didn't do that? Because they didn't need to. Caucasians are already being marketed to. Widely. By default. They're even being marketed to in this very campaign. The only reason you noticed this campaign was because it was different. And you chose to insensitively mock it without considering how this has potential to open doors for bilingual games and/or bilingual campaigns like these in the future. And as I said, hopefully with different genres. But someone has to be first. | |
I hate the bilingual stuff, I see it as 1 of 2 things, laziness so they don't have to rework the boxart for each language or a ploy to force all Americans to learn the language of their Mexican invaders. Everywhere in the US (but maybe a very few select towns on the southern border) uses the English language, so why is Spainish appearing on everything now? If Spainish has to be on there, why do we not see any German or Italian anything? What makes Spainish better than the other languages? | |
I think perhaps what Anarien's pointing out is that this is targeting the American Hispanic population. Japanese games aren't marketed in the United States in Japanese. They're translated into English (i.e. Final Fantasy). To market your game in Spanish in the United States, where English is the unofficial lingua franca, represents a real meaningful step in indicating to Hispanics that they're an important part of American culture. I'm with Anarien here. I think Mr. Chalk, whom I do have to thank for bringing the recent study he mentions to my attention, does far too much editorializing in his articles (although, I don't think he editorialized the Lack of Diversity article at all; he simply didn't read the study). I even generally agree with most of what he says (though I always seem to strongly disagree with anything I don't). I recognize that no reporter has ever been truly objective, but one would at least think he would at least attempt to portray himself as such. His opening line here is bitingly sarcastic (as is the rest of the article) and misinterprets and exaggerates the actual results of that study, which did not comment as to whether the videogame industry suffered from racial discrimination (which implies active effort by videogame makers to exclude other races) or unintentionally favored one race over the other. In fact, the study worried less about why there was an over-representation of whites and an under-representation of Hispanics than it was about the potential damaging effects to players. You can read it yourself and see if the study indicated anything that confirms Mr. Chalk's statements (http://dmitriwilliams.com/VirtualCensusFinal.pdf). One wonders why exactly it behooves Mr. Chalk to belittle these (valid) claims of lack of representation. The general staff of the Escapist strikes me as a very forward thinking bunch who welcome diversity in gaming. The Escapist has certainly published a lot of articles dealing with the subject, not just in race, but also in gender and sexual orientation, in fact, I seem to remember an article a few days in which both you, Ms. Arendt, and Mr. Funk decried readers responding negatively as "spoken like a bunch of heterosexual, white, males," yet here, no voice is raised. | |
Hispanics and Latinos represent over one tenth of the American population. Spanish is a common language to all those people. That's 30+ million Americans who speak Spanish. And these are people who have countries of origin from all over the world who speak a single unified language. If, during the late 19th and early 20th century, the arriving immigrants had spoken one common language, it might have easily displaced English as the common language of the United States. But they didn't. They spoke German, Italian, Gaelic, Russian, Polish, Chinese, Greek, etc. And while all together, they may have represented a portion of the United States equal to Hispanics and Latinos today, none of those languages could even begin to approach being spoken by 1/10th of the American population of the day. That's why Spanish represents a "threat" to English, and is afforded its due status. I doubt it will ever replace English as the common use language of the American citizen, but I do expect it will one day stand equal. | |
Why should anyone celebrate the rise of Latino privilege alongside White privilege? Like you said, this is "about profit." I thought the idea was to undo the effects of privilege or address the root causes. This is just co-opting the minority into the majority, which is basically the story of white privilege--co-opting European ethnic minorities into the majority as they gained socio-economic power. This isn't different: this is the same thing all over again--whenever the majority is in danger of becoming the minority, they redefine what the 'majority' is in order to include enough people to stay the majority. | |
Why don't you see it as a ploy to get Mexicans to learn English? | |
My guess is the same reason he editorializes anything to do with software piracy--he likes fucking with us.
Do we need more diversity in games? As private individuals and companies engaged in business, we do not believe game companies have an obligation to create games about or for particular races, ethnicities, religions, genders, types of players, genres, platforms, or other segments. We believe they will and should do so insofar as it meets business objectives or artistic goals to expand the breadth and depth of the audience for games, or to target an under-served niche, and expect to see diversity increase for these reasons. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/content/positions
I think The Escapist has been changing direction for a while now.
Because in that thread, it was a bunch of jerk-off quasi-bigots on one side--the kind of people that a "forward thinking bunch" looks down on. However, in this case, the other side are considered to be like the people complaining about race in Left4Dead2--people who take 'forward thinking' too far in this bunch's opinion. | |
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Sega Courts Hispanic Audience With Daisy Fuentes Pilates
Sega is launching a radical and unprecedented effort to bridge the racial divide that has long plagued the videogame industry by advertising the hotly-anticipated Wii game Daisy Fuentes Pilates in both English and Spanish.
Although nobody realized it, it turns out that the videogame industry is a roiling hotbed of racial discrimination. Not only do videogame characters lack appropriate diversity - and I have to admit that I've always felt the Bosmer were a little under-represented - but Valve, one of the industry's foremost developers, recently raised an uproar by suggesting that African-Americans do not actually carry the special gene which renders them immune to zombification at the hands of the rampaging undead.
Fortunately, Sega has stepped up to show us the way to a more ethnically-accommodating future with the launch of a brand-new advertising campaign for Daisy Fuentes Pilates, the most anticipated pilates game featuring Daisy Fuentes to ever hit the market, that will employ not just one but two languages.
"While we've done little bits and pieces [of Hispanic-targeted marketing] over the years, this is our strongest effort to date," said Rick Naylor, senior director of marketing at Sega. "The packaging is completely bilingual in English and Spanish, and the advertising has all been in [both]."
That's right, both. The publicity campaign will include ads in Hispanic magazines like Latina, People en Español and the Spanish-language version of Cosmopolitan, on various Hispanic websites and "a public relations and event market effort that targets Hispanic media."
While other countries have dabbled with this so-called "bilingualism" in the past, Sega's groundbreaking effort to balance the scales of discrimination is especially remarkable because it involves Daisy Fuentes, a woman who is both extremely attractive and, apparently, Hispanic. Her experience as both a minor television personality and someone who was born in Cuba makes her an obvious choice to represent this exciting new pilates game for the Wii.
"We would like to see how well it resonates and how effective our reach is to the Hispanic market," Naylor continued. "There are certain types of [games] that lend themselves better to the market. This will be a good bellwether for what we plan to do there... If this type of product and marketing is successful, it's something you'll see more from us in the future."
Thank you, Sega. Your bold vision of equality for all is an inspiration. Daisy Fuentes Pilates comes out tomorrow.
Source: MediaPost
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