Duke Nukem's Case Study on How Not to Do Public Relations
Why pay $160 a year to the Harvard Business Review for case studies abut business when the PR firm for the game Duke Nukem is offering a free lesson entitled "Don't Do This"?
2k Games hired The Redner Group to handle the release of the latest Duke Nukem game, a title which has become legendary among gamers because it has been in development for 14 years. In video game terms 14 years is longer than a century. Which explains why "Yeah, that will happen when Duke comes out," was the game industry version of, "When the Cubs win the World Series."
So as you can imagine there was a lot of anticipation around the game, which was released on Tuesday. However, as the reviews of Duke began to come out it was clear that it was what the industry refers to as "terrible." (Sorry for the jargon.) The reviews were in a class with the Spider Man musical.
- Techland: "The worst part of this Duke Nukem's overwhelming awfulness is that there are germs of funny ideas in the game."
- IGN: "Embarrassing."
- Ars Technica: "This is an ugly game that exists to celebrate ugliness. The people involved should be ashamed."
Now there are a few basic rules when it comes to working with the press. None of them are very complex (just like the members of the press). Here are two that should be engraved in the minds of every PR person on the planet.
- Refreshments. If you have a press event before 4 pm it has to have coffee and muffins. After 4? Well, no one ever lost media goodwill by offering a free drink.
- DO NOT THREATEN. We will just publish the threats.
