Making life sacrifices can be hard, and leaving your best friends can be hard. It has been about two years since I left my best friends, and some of the things I do miss a lot, but other times it was just trouble. But, that life I felt got me where I am. They were the type to criticize everything I do and question everything I do, and going through that made me stronger. Would I have met the people I dated, or other people?

The same goes for the opposite. The friends I had to leave lead me to other friends I met at a previous job. Its one of those gut feelings you get when you know something is right. Leaving school for another school felt right and I fell right into place. Leaving my friends to meet new ones felt right. The friends I made, would I have gotten where I am currently, or would I be in a better place?

Sometimes you have to make decisions that will hurt the ones you care about. You have to listen to your intuition to get ahead. If you decide to ignore that decision, then you will never know what your leading into, or what you could have gotten into.

Marketing is the same way. You start at once place and then the decisions you make will determine what you do the next day, next week and even next year. When you feel like your boxed in, it is time to get out. I consider marketing as freedom. You can do what it takes to get the job done, but when you are in a position that restricts your freedom, then you can’t work to your full potential.

Browsing the news today, I came across this,

Ubisoft sues over Assassin’s Creed leak. Publisher believes disc replication firm responsible for 700,000 pirated pre-release downloads of its PC action game.

Lets break this down and see how Ubisoft is not the victim, but responsible for their own grave. The world of piracy is huge and no matter how many companies sue, no matter if the government gets involved, piracy will always be around, always be ahead of everybody and piracy is responsible more for getting noticed than causing harm.

Last month, Ubisoft filed suit against Charlotte, North Carolina-based Optical Experts Manufacturing, the company it had contracted to reproduce copies of the game disc. The publisher alleges that “an extraordinary breach of trust and gross negligence” on the part of OEM allowed one of the company’s employees to take a copy of the game home early and post it on the Internet in late February, six weeks before the game arrived in stores.

The publisher alleges that OEM had agreed to abide by–and thereafter ignored–an array of security procedures that could have prevented the leak. Ubisoft further alleges that OEM admitted to not following through on its security commitments and causing the leak. One such security procedure was to prevent copies of the game from ever leaving OEM’s premises. Ubisoft said it tracked the earliest connections to the pirated copy of the game online and found that they were coming from the home of an OEM employee. An OEM-manufactured copy of the game was later found at the employee’s residence, though the suit doesn’t specify when that copy was found.

… fair enough.

According to the industry-tracking NPD Group, the PC edition of the game sold more than 40,000 copies at US retailers through June. Ubisoft claims the leaked edition of the game was downloaded more than 700,000 times, costing the publisher millions of dollars.

Stealing is bad yes I know. But, how is this any different than one person going out and buying a cd and then lending it to a friend who burns it etc etc… there is no difference. There are a lot of people who would rather not pay $15 for a cd when the chances of liking it are 50/50.
The same goes with downloading games. Publishers release beta’s to let people try the game. Should the game already be bad, then people won’t buy it. When you assume losing millions of dollars due to downloading is the sole reason, Ubisoft better think again.

In addition to lost sales as a direct result of piracy, the publisher also claimed its reputation was hurt by the leak as well. Ubisoft says it included a bug in the pre-release Assassin’s Creed for security reasons that would cause the game to crash partway through. The bug was supposedly removed from the retail edition, but a mix of negative reviews of the leaked and bug-equipped pirated version of the game and legitimate reviews of the retail edition created customer confusion and caused “irreparable harm” to its reputation, Ubisoft said.

Ubisoft admitted they included a bug in the game for security reasons.  As a major video game company, why would you throw a bug intentionally into the game claiming security reasons, to stop people from downloading?  I don’t know the entire story, but why would the game be at a replication manufacturer when it wasn’t a final version?

Game review sites also used the bugged game to write their review while other sites received the bug free version.  So the confusion came again from Ubisoft for starting this ordeal.

To add more laughter to this, Ubisoft stole a crack (since downloading is illegal) and used the crack to fix a bug in Rainbow Six 2:Vegas.  So Ubisoft is suing for a leaked video game when they are in-turn using an illegal product to fix the bugs they didn’t know how to fix.

So, should Ubisoft sue themselves for making a game that has bugs and either doesn’t know how to fix them and for releasing a bugged game that came to bit them in their own ass?

source: Gamespot, Softpedia

First of all, my question is who will play Robocop and what storyline will it follow.  The original movie and Peter Weller was a fantastic Robocop.  I’m afraid to see who will play Robo..Daniel Craig?  He has the face for it, and all that.

So, why Hollywood!! Stop encouraging producers to make a crap movie and pay the actors $10 million to half ass their way through it.  I think this is why the screen actors guild goes on so many strikes.  Original story lines are one in a million in today’s society.  If a movie was made with an original story line, chances are it will suck.

How To Fix Hollywood:

Hollywood, if you want to be successful again, please stop making horrible remakes of movies that were either really bad or were so good that they deserve to be left the way it was.  Please don’t remake Evil Dead; the B rated film was awesome and when it is remade, it will be crap.

Listen to the Sun-dance people.  The Sun-dance festival have terrific scripts, directors, cinematography and everything that Hollywood needs again.  Take the $60 million you pay Tom Cruise, and give $10 million to directors, script writers and actors who actually care about the movie.

What would you change about Hollywood?

I do have to say, Brett Farve was/is a great quarterback.  He played great and he probably still will play great.  But, what i don’t understand is why is he coming back?  He went on record saying he is retiring then the rumors began and he still said no.  Rumors started again and look, its a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Brett Farve!

Reason:

I understand that retiring from a game that you love to play is hard.  The $20M the Packers were going to give him was plenty enough to tied him over, maybe even make him the GM so he is still connected.  A plane lands and Brett Farve is now attending training camp.

So, now there is open trails for the open quarterback postion.  Aaron Rodgers has plenty of life in him but can he stand up against the experience of Farve?

My thoughts:

Aaron Rodgers will take the spot of starting quaterback.  After the Packers start winning or even after the first couple of games, Farve will come in for a couple of plays.  That will gradually increase until Farve makes his triumpth return as starting quaterback.

Why?  Everybody loves Farve, and when Farve retired, I bet some of the season ticket holders were thinking about spending their money on a snow mobile or even save it.  Bringing Farve back creates more hype for the Packers and the fans of Green Bay and all over the world.  Bring on the $$$$$$!

Thoughts?

Terminator 3 came out and I was shocked at how bad it was.  I do give credit for tying lose ends about how the machines took over, but watching Terminator 3 was about as painful as watching Arnold in Junior.

Terminator 4 also known as Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins is set to release soon with a teaser trailer already released.  Can this be the return of a great trilogy +1 (or +2 depending) or will it be the Matrix type?

I think depending on how the story is made it can be a great movie to tie up the ending.  Christian Bale as John Conner is fantastic and the picture that is floating around is beautiful.  James Cameron left a clifhanger in T2 so anything can be done.

But, if you are a fan of the Terminator you will start to see some flaws.  I don’t want to give any spoilers but lets discuss in comments and for part 2 soon.

Terminator meets The Choppa!

All Grown Up.

I started school at a Big 10 college with the intent to study medicine.  Sitting behind a desk doing research was not who I was..but the six figure income was.  After a year I switched my major to Graphic design.  I loved the idea of being creative for a company, but it came back to being behind a desk away from the real purpose of marketing.

Then It Happened

I spent many nights with friends discussing the purpose of life and what our futures hold for us; while going out doing what College kids do at one of the biggest drinking schools.  The first thing I should have realized is drinking and discussing the purpose of life does not mix well with school.  Sitting down one day reality struck that I was not doing well to get the degree I wanted, and I was not 100% happy where I was.

I made one of the largest decisions of my life;  I decided to go back home.

Stay tuned.

“The Alltel guy is in a van with a family along with the other 4 carriers, ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint.  Once the Alltel guy tells the family about their family unlimited plan, the other carriers get kicked out.”

If you are familiar with the Alltel ads, they are portraying that we have what the other carriers don’t; which is true.  I would love to have a family plan that is unlimited for 99.99.  Instead with the other 4 carriers, its 99.99 for each line on the family plan…this is for another post.

Anyway, if you follow the business news, Verizon bought Alltel for $28.1 billion.  Now my question to you is:

Should Alltel keep Verizon is as a competitor or should they have removed Verizon?

Take a journey through the life of me, as I begin my journey in an entry level marketing position struggling to rise to the top in this rough world.
Also join me in looking at new products, movies and everything in-between as I look at their marketing campaign and learn from it but also dissect it to see where they may go wrong in the future.