I would like to see more meat-based marketing. God knows I get hungry enough at industry press events.

Creepy picture.

I certainly wasn't outraged by this display... more than anything, it just strikes me as a bad idea. Partly because they had to know _someone_ would take offense, which would lead to someone else doing the same, and so on. But mostly, I just think it's a weak idea for a PR event. Boobs, sure. Reaching into a tank of snakes, sure. But a dead goat? Meh. I don't even like the taste of goat.

Can't a man enjoy a faux Greek orgy?

One goat screws everything up. Again.

Because of this, I've seen a few Sony UK TV ads that never aired but were very good. This is actually not too bad, considering the theme, and for their hard work I would gladly try goat.

I have no problem with the girls or the snakes, but the goat? That was the waste of a perfectly good goat. If an animal is slaughtered, it should be to feed someone or to prevent it from doing harm. This goat was slaughter for attention whoring and nothing more. Whether they bought it from a butcher is meaningless. I don't often defend violence in video games but if I did, it would be for free speech, not for indiscriminate use of slaughtered animals to grab headlines. Eating is a normal part of life. Gory spectacles for wow-factor are not. One is a legitimate reason to take and animals life. The other is not. If a semi-decapitated goat is the same as eating a hamburger at a press event then it should be perfectly okay to parade human corpses around at a press event for dead rising. After all, we've all been to a funeral for a casket viewing. Are we afraid of what happens to the human body when we use it in death to sell video games?

Please. Wealthy countries waste plenty of food, meat included, every hour of every day of every year. Not that it this is a Good Thing, but it is a very small talking point for this issue.

It is is a testament to how utterly removed from the process of the consumption of the flesh of an animal that we are today. If it offends you sir, if you are not prepared to see the process from which you derive sustenance, I urge you to become a vegetarian.

On Sony's behalf, it fits well with the theme of the game that they are trying to promote.

Ironically, as it always is, those decrying the event have given Sony more free advertising and publicity than they would have received otherwise. It ONLY grabbed headlines because people such as yourself found it to be offensive. Perhaps Sony knew that it would cause such a reaction, perhaps they did not.

Using human corpses for the theoretically promotion of Dead Rising is a poorly formed analogy. Last I checked cannibalism was frowned upon by most cultures, especially those that consume the most animal meat per capita. It is an issue of hypocrisy, and perhaps even a subtle distaste for reality. After all, cute mooing cows look nothing like a Big Mac.

The event wasn't that outrageous (well the dead goat was going a bit far), but the worst thing really is this: the stunt links Sony clearly in people's minds with another company that became infamous for all kinds of distasteful advertising gimmicks: Acclaim.

"It is is a testament to how utterly removed from the process of the consumption of the flesh of an animal that we are today. If it offends you sir, if you are not prepared to see the process from which you derive sustenance, I urge you to become a vegetarian."

Who said they were offended? It certainly wasn't me. My wife grew up on a farm and I've seen my share of slaughtered hogs. I grew up fishing with my dad. Guess who got to clean and gut the fish? It seems like you WANT me to be offended. Does this make it easier to push your vegetarianism or what? Please? Yes, Please. I wasn't offended, I'm simply commenting on the acceptability of their actions. Wasting animals is never acceptable even if , as you say, everyone is doing it. I don't think thats a legitimate excuse, even if you do.

"Last I checked cannibalism was frowned upon by most cultures,"

Who mentioned cannibalism? Do you even read peoples comments or just respond as if they said things they didn't in order to suit your response?

Life should be respected. It should only be taken for certain purposes, and in my mind, those purposes do not include a visual spectacle no matter how well-suited to the subject matter.

For the record, I am a vocal opponent to trophy and big game hunting. If you don't plan to eat it, you should never kill it. Personally, I don't like any type of recreational or sport hunting, but that's another topic.

"Girls paid to be stared at are girls paid to be stared at. If you can't deal with it, either grow up, or move to a safer society, if you can find one. Good luck."

Oh, come on. This is like telling people who object to the war in Iraq to get out of America or "deal with it", as though maturity amounted to merely accepting the objectionable as "reality", when the reality of whether the war or "girls paid to be stared at" is objectionable is precisely the thing being debated.

And I'm sorry, but there are good reasons why people consider body paint to be more risque than form-fitting clothes, same as with wearing, oh, tiny stickers to cover one's private parts. Similarity of purpose does not equate to equivalence of social status. If that were true, then killing people to quell political dissent would be no more objectionable than throwing water in their faces.

I don't really wish to have a protracted argument in the comment section of an article, but I felt compelled to respond. I apologize for taking to response as offense, that is what it seemed to be.

I'm not a vegetarian, nor will I ever be. Your lifestyle choices are yours and yours alone and I am not trying to influence them. My issue is one of the modern hypocrisy regarding animals, their consumption etc (which in turn can be used to analyze the acceptability of Sony's actions). I do not believe that one can objectively qualify an animal's existence based upon how its death was used, but again, that's not the issue.

The main gist of my argument is the hypocrisy inherent in the situation (I am trying to leave personal opinion out of this). The idea that life should be respected is only selectively practiced by human beings at large, whereas the consumption on animals is not. I have my personal beliefs as to reverence necessary for a given life form, however that does not make it any more true than anyone else's opinion. I am casting judgment on the hypocrisy - which is a lot simpler to do than to attempt to argue a belief system.

No, you did not mention cannibalism. Yes I read your comment completely. Reading it again I can understand how my response was interpreted as such, and I apologize for the ambiguity. What I was addressing was your analogy. Your analogy was "If a semi-decapitated goat is the same as eating a hamburger at a press event then it should be perfectly okay to parade human corpses around at a press event for dead rising." What I was getting at was that most cultures do not approve of cannibalism, yet they approve of the consumption of other animals - the obvious message here is that humans and other animals are not considered to be on the same level by most cultures . Thus using a dead human body in a promotion would be considered to be of extremely poor taste to most societies, as they are considered to be above "food" status. Goats by and large belongs fit most peoples' criteria for "food", and thus the upset caused by its usage (albeit only partially making it to the normal state for end consumption) is incongruent with their other ideas regarding animals, which was the impetus for my statement. It would seem then that when "food" is not presented as "food" it can cause some upset.

I think looking at the thing piecemeal is kind of cheating. The images evoke a certain aura of decadent paganism. Even in our relatively secular culture, there is still a certain stigma associated with the idea of animal sacrifice. Which is not the case here, but the presentation implies it, and was designed to imply it. I think within the industry there is more bafflement/outrage that nobody thought beforehand, "Hey this might cause some negative press".

The whole thing just strikes me as something befitting GoD not a multinational corporation. Perhaps I'm naive but I can't imagine something approaching this from Microsoft or Nintendo.

to mighty mouse - on whose behalf are you offended (or if not offended, upset)? Yours, or the girls'? If it's the girls, they chose to do it when they took the money. This isn't prostitution, I highly doubt they were forced. If it's on your own behalf - why? Perhaps it's Sony's audacity at pulling such a stunt, but if the intention was to throw back to days of polytheistic decadence, they probably succeeded. I just wonder where the outrage comes from.

I was more concerned about how OPM ran it - they didn't go to the event and wrote the story based on an invitation. The Mail picked that up and didn't bother to factcheck with Sony - or worse, did so selectively to further their own agenda.

That's why this got out of hand - Sony, trying to forge an aura of some sort of pagan mystery about the whole thing, wasn't open and upfront _until after everybody published misconstrued versions of the event_.

That's been the common, critical thread of Sony's European PR failures, from the black/white PSP onward. They come up with striking ideas to promote an item but don't think about the context at all, then try to artificially hype things up by being coy or closed up until it backfires.

The Sony stunt was so-so, and yeah, the response reflects more on the general fear of "civilized" Western society than a multinational corporation using goats and sex to sell things (just look at how well goatse.cx has done! :D ). But this was really about the shoddy journalism by OPM, and the Daily Mail's maliciously bad spin based on that bad journalism.

Add a spicy photo and tie it to the popular causes of animal cruelty and those damn corrupting evil violent video games, and you've got a minor, old PR stunt that because yet another Sony misfire. If OPM does actual legwork and reports the story properly, this doesn't come off so bad for Sony in the end.

You have an interesting argument. However, I'm inclined to believe that the whole furore is more because goat isn't a very commonly eaten meat. Somehow, I think if it were a decapitated fish or cow or chicken, people would be more likely to make the association with 'food' rather than with 'eccentric pet'.

Personally, I wasn't offended at all and find the entire debacle hilarious. This backlash is entirely due to originally poor reporting and lack of context. It's hard to believe it's become such a big issue.

The whole thing was blown up out of all proportion by the disgusting "Daily Mail" the UK's right wing, reactionary, "newspaper" At least the poor goat took the heat off the gay people, single parents and foreigners for a while! At first I thought that with all the fuss Sony had killed the goat! but they didn't it was bought from a butchers. Big Deal. Incidentaly it was the daily mail that printed all the lies about Rule of Rose that led to 505 gamestreet withdrawing the game from the UK- weakly and pathetically submitting to the daily mail's censorious shock horror garbage.

I usually don't post on this shit, but you're a self-righteous vegetarian that had to be stopped.

It's not that this was a decapitated goat, yes I know where my meat comes from.

It's that its body was turned into a parade prop for a PR stunt by a global corporation. It's about respect. Yeah, it's great to use organ from a corpse, but would you like to see the disembowled corpse brought in front of an audience at an unveiling for a zombie game? It's already dead, right? We know where it came from?

Shut the fuck up and continue tricking yourself into believe that you're some how morally superior to the reset of us. I'll be cooking some delicious steak if you'd like to join. And I don't care if cows died for it, they're fucking morons.

But goats are morons too...

Then again nobody in Greece noticed such a PR thingy took place. Besides, goats are quite a national favorite...

What Brandon said is effectively true.

The Daily Mail is one of the best examples. They decry a dead goat in a PRIVATE party (not public) because of so called brutality, but they are also pro-hunt (you know, fox hunting - a sport based on killing animals for entertainment purposes favoured by middle-Englanders).

But any anti-Sony news is probably good news to fanboys who spends more time lurking around blogs (agreeing with a rant by a tabloid known for hating video games) than actually playing video games.

"Sony purchased this goat from a butcher shop - they did absolutely no wrong. It riles me to ridiculous levels that people would decry this, then turn around and get some fried chicken or something of that nature - no less barbaric, and in fact arguably quite a bit worse, since you're completely removed from the slaughtering process - you don't even know what you're getting."

Oh, get down of your high horse, dude. I think anyone above the age of say, five or six knows that fried chicken comes from... dead chickens! There are issues with the meat industry and the humanity of said, but hardly anyone is under the impression that this is some delightful and mysterious mana, scattered from heaven. Does meat farming need to get more ethical? Absolutely.

What is depressing about the Sony event - not ABSOLUTELY OUTRAGEOUS but quietly despairing - is that the goat died then wasn't eaten. Once that carcass got back to the butchers I seriously doubt it could be served up without posing a health risk. Some prick decided to stick a carcass on stage for cheap thrills rather than look into a synthetic, non-wasteful option. A fake dead goat didn't get killed and doesn't rot - it can be reused.

Eating goats is good for people and probably gives them a source of iron and protein. Dying for consumption has been part of life cycles for as long as it's existed and will continue to exist whether humans do so or not. Dying because some tit at Sony's PR firm thinks it would be funny or shocking is just kind of sad and an excellent reminder of the human condition and where it's got us today.

The mechanised and inhuman elements of the cheap meat industry are more than worthy of censure, but it's absolutely absurd to suggest someone be guilt tripped every time they reach for a hamburger. Should I be reminded of the destruction of the rainforests every time I wipe my arse with an non-recycled square of toilet paper?

The Daily Mail is an abysmal rag full of invalidity, lies, bigotry and poor journalistic integrity. By all means, attack the Daily Mail (I get almost sexually excited when someone rips them a new one), but theirs is not the opinion and theirs is not the only response. You are throwing rocks at men of straw.

"If you can't deal with it, either grow up, or move to a safer society"

I didn't realise you were based in London now...

heh...self-righteous vegetarianism go! Actually that bit was merely my speculation as to why people were appalled, and my point was that people shouldn't be shocked, not that they shouldn't eat meat. People probably should eat meat, so long as they do so from eco-conscious farms and suchlike. I mean Mayhem had a famous performance in Leipzig in which they mounted a pig's head on a microphone stand - is there a problem with that? Not particularly - the number of animals killed for purposes like this is far less than the number killed daily for any other purpose. I simply think it's hypocritical to get upset about this at all when it's so fully embraced by our society.

Getting upset by the Daily Mail's shitty reporting is another thing. I didn't touch on it because, well...it's rather obvious, isn't it? That thing's a rag, through and through.

"Should I be reminded of the destruction of the rainforests every time I wipe my arse with an non-recycled square of toilet paper?"

Well...if we want to survive in this particular world, honestly yes? Though recycling itself releases toxins into the air, so maybe we should just all give up.

Well, my point is that not everyone has access to the most ethical goods - as a student, it's hard to afford free range meats, though that's the model I support. Likewise, ethical bumwipe can be hard to come by if you're caught short and the corner shop just stocks one brand.

There's a distinction with the pig's head - once the head has been removed, the rest of the animal can be butchered and eaten (I think some people like the cheeks, tounge and brain, but that's a lower yield of meat). This goat was a one hundred percent write-off after the event (unless anyone can prove to me being exposed to room temperature and ambient smoke for that length of time wouldn't render it unsafe). What's offensive is not the tits* or the poor ickle goat - it's how the goat was used after slaughter and for what purpose that's offensive to my sensibility of not acting like a mindless jackass.

Racism, sexism and brutality are all to one degree or another embraced by our society, but they are and should remain offensive to rational people. Because a society eats meat does not mean a society can't be offended by needless waste.

*come on guys it was artistic