‘Destiny’ is a popular yet divisive game that can’t seem to catch a break. Bungie, the developers of ‘Destiny,’ recently announced a partnership between themselves and Red Bull. If you buy specially marked cans of the stuff, you can get in-game XP and also an exclusive quest. This has left a bit of a sour taste in the mouths of a lot of people, both naysayers who mock the promotion in general and a lot of ‘Destiny’ fans who have their own reasons for disliking the promotion.
Similar promotions aren’t unknown in the gaming industry, though they’re not super common, and they often get made fun of. However, it’s usually the fans making fun of the promotions. In this instance, rival game development studio Techland, who are known for their incredibly popular zombie game, ‘Dying Light,’ decided to poke some good-natured fun at the promotion with their own promotion. Instead of a sugary, caffeine-fueled energy drink, they’re promoting… water. That’s right, good ol’ H2O. It’s not even a brand of bottled water they’re pushing, just any sort of potable water. All they want you to do is tweet a picture of yourself drinking water and adding either the hashtag “#DrinkRightDyingLight” or the hashtag #DrinkForDLC, I’m not sure if they prefer one hashtag over the other. In exchange they’re giving out premium dockets. (In ‘Dying Light,’ a docket can be exchanged for a free weapon in-game.) And boy did they get a response. So much so that they added stretch goals, as if it were a Kickstarter project. In addition to free weapons, when they get enough tweets on the hashtags, they’ll start handing out a temporary XP boost and DLC content to all ‘Dying Light’ players who want them. As of the writing of this article, they’ve already unlocked the XP boost and are on their way to unlocking the DLC.
I must say, this promotion for drinking more water isn’t just a health-conscious and responsible move, it’s pretty dang hilarious. And the fans are reacting quite positively to it. There are literally thousands of pictures to look through, but some of them are quite inventive. Techland has been retweeting some of their favorite pictures, but there are plenty more where they came from.
So what do you think about these promotions? Let us know in the comments below.
