Dead Island 2 seems to have waded back into advertising controversy, with a new promotional campaign with a life insurance company called DeadHappy.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, DeadHappy has added a real, very real, new ‘deathwish’ you can add to your insurance plan called Dead Island. This is an extra stipulation for DeadHappy to provide a proper zombie cocktail themed wake in your honor in LA.
I know that last paragraph raises a lot of questions. Let’s get one thing out of the way first; DeadHappy is a real, UK-based, life insurance company, with an unusual way of marketing their plans. They really call their plans ‘deathwishes,’ and as farfetched as it sounds, they really try to meet their customers’ deathwishes as best as they can.
Some of the deathwishes they offer include giving someone a cash payout, sending someone to a holiday, paying to get them a pet, etc. If you still can’t believe it, you can look at their Trustpilot page, which shows they have 4.8/5 rating with customers.
This is the page for their Dead Island deathwish offer. They make it clear on this page that they can’t make their customers’ friends and family go to the LA wake, but they will follow through on holding a wake if it is possible. This also comes with a £8,000 price tag.
You may not remember this, but all the way back in 2013, the Dead Island franchise also courted controversy with a similarly outlandish promotion, that everyone would agree would be considered offensive. Dead Island Riptide had a special edition pre-order bonus, which was a statue of a mutilated torso. You can read the details here, but it is noteworthy that that stunt was also pulled by publisher Deep Silver.
This time, however, Deep Silver’s partner in the promotion, DeadHappy, has a history of courting controversy in the past as well. I won’t even describe what they did on their own, but you can read about their own poorly received advertising campaign here.
It’s hard to tell what to make of this new advertising campaign. This one seems like something that might actually find a market, that is, if DeadHappy find customers that seem to share the personalities of the characters in Dead Island 2. The Dead Island series in general is somewhat popular, but hardly critically acclaimed or successful on the same level as Left4Dead or the Resident Evil franchises.
Is a blatant publicity stunt like this going to interest an older, more discriminating generation of gamers? I suppose Deep Silver really wants to find out.
