Sega Courts Hispanic Audience With Daisy Fuentes Pilates

[Low Key]

My thoery is that Sega basically has this hot supermodel with a spanish last name, so why not make the game in spanish as well. To me, I don't think just because Daisy Fuentes made a pilates game that it will get anymore Hispanics excersicing than it does caucasians in the normal course of things. Games have been converted to spanish for a while (along with many other languages), since the gaming phenomenon encompasses more than just America. Pronouncing spanish language capability on a game that stars a famous Hispanic person, to me, seems more like a plea for acceptance rather than simply marketing a game.

 

[Wandrecanada]

The point is simply that having game boxes in two languages is nothing new, but Sega is hyping it here to pander to the Hispanic market.

The tone of the presentation mocks what is actually significant. Console options, instruction booklet warnings and warranties have been in multiple languages for a while, but it is quite new to have the full product from game to ad campaign, to manual fully bilingual. And starring a minority. That's my point, the tone of the article trivializes a few significant things here.

Is it necessarily "pandering" to promote a product partly to a specific market? The game is also marketed in English, so it's not pandering to any market as it isn't like English-speaking non Hispanics aren't being marketed to here.

Does Jillian Michaels' fitness game "pander" to the "white market"? Or can we agree that people of all backgrounds can enjoy both these titles?

Andy Chalk wrote something disrespectful. Perhaps it was an ignorant mistake. It mocked the importance of the recent study showing a lack of diversity and of marketing efforts that are notable. If the intent was to claim that bilingual marketing isn't new, then he could've gone about it in a way that was more sensitive.

I think Andy's article, which does indeed drip with sarcasm, is warrented in this situation. Now I don't know where you are from (or where the Toronto reference below your comment stems from either) but in Canada it is law to package things in both official languages for EVERY GAME. I don't want to step on Susan's toes here by reiterating what she said but she did a good job pointing out the problem entirely.

Putting bilingual box art and localized language options on your products should not be something to hype, especially when you are citing your ONE AND ONLY GAME that does so. Even more so since the game happens to have a Hispanic on the cover. Pilates is not a Hispanic only activity so what really makes this "game" Hispanic at all? The nationality of the spokesmodel and the localization language?

If anything Hispanics should be should be insulted by this game being thrown in as a test to, "see how well it resonates and how effective our reach is to the Hispanic market". Does this mean failure in a pilates game represents a failure of the Hispanic gaming market and therefor should not be attempted again? This reeks of the Catwoman movie all over again. Set them up to fail so future generations can be reminded with a stern example, of why it's bad to make Hispanic games.

If this were a major attempt to actually resonate and take a chunk of the Hispanic demographic (apparently quite a large chunk!) don't you think it would be more prudent to put your chips down on a title that has some, if any appeal besides seeing an attractive cuban woman do bendy things? I mean, Beyond Good and Evil has more appeal in a Hispanic heroine than pilates.

What we are seeing here is clearly a means of clawing at something, nay ANYTHING that could possibly boost the sales of the outright terrible failure that an excercise video/"game" will be on any gaming platform. I mean... visit your local Walmart and see how much your average pilates vid sells for. Could you imagine trying to pawn one off at full retail release prices? I know I'd laugh.

 

[joystickjunki3]

This is pretty awesome. [/sarcasm]

 

[Anarien]

What confuses me is that anyone can look at this and think that it's a genuine effort on Sega's part to make gaming more inclusive.

I never said that.

Putting bilingual box art and localized language options on your products should not be something to hype, especially when you are citing your ONE AND ONLY GAME that does so. Even more so since the game happens to have a Hispanic on the cover. Pilates is not a Hispanic only activity so what really makes this "game" Hispanic at all? The nationality of the spokesmodel and the localization language?

Companies have to take risks, but they also want to play it safe. As I said earlier, the marketing is done in English and Spanish so it's not saying that pilates is a particularly Hispanic activity. I don't know where you got that idea from, because it certainly wasn't from me.

I am talking about in the US here where we don't have laws governing this sort of thing, and as such, this is a very significant step. It was also pretty significant when packaged foods began carrying instructions and ingredient lists in both English and Spanish. It isn't like eating is limited to Latinos either, but someone had to start marketing to us. And when some food labels did it, others followed. When companies take steps like this, others take notice.

Back to the idea of playing it safe. A game company has to test the waters. But Daisy Fuentes is a recognizable face among both the English speaking and Spanish speaking US audience, and she has done popular ads for pilates programs for years, so this agreement makes sense. And if spending these marketing dollars proves effective, then other companies may follow (which is my hope). It isn't really about this particular game, but the significance of the full-fledged bilingual approach and its potential as a template for the future (including in other genres).

 

[Wandrecanada]

What confuses me is that anyone can look at this and think that it's a genuine effort on Sega's part to make gaming more inclusive.

I never said that.

Putting bilingual box art and localized language options on your products should not be something to hype, especially when you are citing your ONE AND ONLY GAME that does so. Even more so since the game happens to have a Hispanic on the cover. Pilates is not a Hispanic only activity so what really makes this "game" Hispanic at all? The nationality of the spokesmodel and the localization language?

Companies have to take risks, but they also want to play it safe. As I said earlier, the marketing is done in English and Spanish so it's not saying that pilates is a particularly Hispanic activity. I don't know where you got that idea from, because it certainly wasn't from me.

I am talking about in the US here where we don't have laws governing this sort of thing, and as such, this is a very significant step. It was also pretty significant when packaged foods began carrying instructions and ingredient lists in both English and Spanish. It isn't like eating is limited to Latinos either, but someone had to start marketing to us. And when some food labels did it, others followed. When companies take steps like this, others take notice.

Back to the idea of playing it safe. A game company has to test the waters. But Daisy Fuentes is a recognizable face among both the English speaking and Spanish speaking US audience, and she has done popular ads for pilates programs for years, so this agreement makes sense. And if spending these marketing dollars proves effective, then other companies may follow (which is my hope). It isn't really about this particular game, but the significance of the full-fledged bilingual approach and its potential as a template for the future (including in other genres).

Yes that's fine that they are trying to improve bilingualism but to leverage a population into buying their product on that premise is just plain immoral. This is a matter of apples and horseshoes here. You're either marketing a product by leveraging something (read gimmick) or you're making a social improvement for it's own sake. The fact that they publicly link their motives from a marketing representative and say specifically that it is a way to "test the waters" for how much of the community they can reach by leveraging something as basic as language support is just devious.

This is clearly an attempt to increase sales in one specific area and not policy for future titles. It's like they want to hold language support hostage unless Hispanics buy their product. That's not reform at all. It means that only games dubbed "Hispanic" will be allowed to contain Spanish language covers, books and support. Not to mention the blowback if the project fails.

If this were real reform they'd be printing all US versions of all Sega games with Spanish localization. That's reform. What we have here is a marketing ploy.

Sega should have said nothing of their language support and just stuck to hyping the star of the show as a Hispanic. The box art is nothing to boast about. It's not new and it only goes to demonstrate how far away the gaming industry is from being progressive. Sega included.

 

[quiet_samurai]

Daisy Fuentes, haven't thought of her is ages. It's all starting to come back now, I might need a..... timeout.

 

[Rigs83]

The tone in this article takes what are significant issues (the lacking diversity study) and a notable advertising campaign (as well as the release of a bilingual game title) and mocks them all thoroughly for no good reason.

Fitness games are doing pretty well right now and it's another market the Wii is addressing. Natal may attract this market as well.

I am offended that you trivialized all of these things instead of reporting them in a more straightforward manner free of mockery. I am Hispanic and to me, this is significant stuff in terms of both media and gaming and I look forward to more game campaigns like this.

Did you mock the Jillian Michaels fitness game and call her out for being a white woman/minor celebrity on TV who stars in/is used to market a game in English?

If not, why the venom here?

The point is simply that having game boxes in two languages is nothing new, but Sega is hyping it here to pander to the Hispanic market.

Everyone likes to be pandered to.

 

[Andy Chalk]

I suppose you could interpret this as a laudable effort by Sega to recognize and reach out to the woefully underserved Hispanic gaming community by creating a pilates "game" for the Wii with a marketing campaign that features a recognizable Hispanic celebrity.

On the other hand, it's also possible that Sega came up with the game, hired Daisy Fuentes to appear in it because she's in her 40s but has a body most 21-year-olds would kill for, and then one day some bright young mind at the ad agency said HOLY DOG SHIT I JUST HAD AN IDEA THIS FUENTES CHICK IS FROM CUBA RIGHT?

When you can convince me that the former explanation is the correct one, I'll happily admit that this is as significant as you seem to think. Until then, I will treat it with the respect it deserves, which as you appear to have guessed is very little.

And for the record, no, I didn't poke fun at Jillian Michaels for Fitness Ultimatum 2009 because the marketing director at Majesco didn't make noise about how the game and its publicity campaign represented a potentially major breakthrough in advertising to Caucasians.

 

[Anarien]

I suppose then we will have to agree to disagree, but I continue to find your take on the whole matter shortsighted and ignorant. I stand by my opinion, which I have already explained. Do I think that your take isn't in the realm of possibility? Of course not, I actually think that is part of the package. As I said, the deal makes sense given who we're talking about (and the consumer this is being marketed to), but as I said it is also a risk. But if successful it could mean a breakthrough, as with those food labels I mentioned.

Here's another example. I became a vegetarian in the early 90s. In those days, my supermarket carried one type of veggie burger. Today, they carry at least ten. Obviously the first ones sold and so not only did more brands come onto the market, but the store started carrying them likely figuring they'd capture the vegetarian/healthier eater customer base. Obviously on my end I concern myself with tasty food (and games), but on both vegetarian burger manufacturers and game publishers, the ideal outcome is profit.

Nowhere do I pretend this is ever not about profit. But I am looking at this as a gamer, a writer, and a Latina. You know what? It's nice to be marketed to for once by a game company and it is something I hope will continue. (That said, I am not buying this title. I don't even own a Wii) We have a lot of money to spend collectively and based on the studies I have read, a lot of that market is untapped or ignored.

And for the record, no, I didn't poke fun at Jillian Michaels for Fitness Ultimatum 2009 because the marketing director at Majesco didn't make noise about how the game and its publicity campaign represented a potentially major breakthrough in advertising to Caucasians.

Man, all the white privilege I was seeing come to life over in the "Games lack diversity" thread has leaked right on over into this one.

You know why the marketing director didn't do that? Because they didn't need to. Caucasians are already being marketed to. Widely. By default.

They're even being marketed to in this very campaign.

The only reason you noticed this campaign was because it was different. And you chose to insensitively mock it without considering how this has potential to open doors for bilingual games and/or bilingual campaigns like these in the future. And as I said, hopefully with different genres. But someone has to be first.

 

[demoman_chaos]

I hate the bilingual stuff, I see it as 1 of 2 things, laziness so they don't have to rework the boxart for each language or a ploy to force all Americans to learn the language of their Mexican invaders.
I could understand if it was talking about ad campaigns for more than one country, but otherwise it angers me.

Everywhere in the US (but maybe a very few select towns on the southern border) uses the English language, so why is Spainish appearing on everything now? If Spainish has to be on there, why do we not see any German or Italian anything? What makes Spainish better than the other languages?

 

[HobbesMkii]

Console options, instruction booklet warnings and warranties have been in multiple languages for a while, but it is quite new to have the full product from game to ad campaign, to manual fully bilingual. And starring a minority. That's my point, the tone of the article trivializes a few significant things here.

Unless you count games that are both in English and Japanese, of course. But I do take your point. Thank you for taking the time to explain it more fully.

I think perhaps what Anarien's pointing out is that this is targeting the American Hispanic population. Japanese games aren't marketed in the United States in Japanese. They're translated into English (i.e. Final Fantasy). To market your game in Spanish in the United States, where English is the unofficial lingua franca, represents a real meaningful step in indicating to Hispanics that they're an important part of American culture.

I'm with Anarien here. I think Mr. Chalk, whom I do have to thank for bringing the recent study he mentions to my attention, does far too much editorializing in his articles (although, I don't think he editorialized the Lack of Diversity article at all; he simply didn't read the study). I even generally agree with most of what he says (though I always seem to strongly disagree with anything I don't). I recognize that no reporter has ever been truly objective, but one would at least think he would at least attempt to portray himself as such. His opening line here is bitingly sarcastic (as is the rest of the article) and misinterprets and exaggerates the actual results of that study, which did not comment as to whether the videogame industry suffered from racial discrimination (which implies active effort by videogame makers to exclude other races) or unintentionally favored one race over the other. In fact, the study worried less about why there was an over-representation of whites and an under-representation of Hispanics than it was about the potential damaging effects to players. You can read it yourself and see if the study indicated anything that confirms Mr. Chalk's statements (http://dmitriwilliams.com/VirtualCensusFinal.pdf).

One wonders why exactly it behooves Mr. Chalk to belittle these (valid) claims of lack of representation. The general staff of the Escapist strikes me as a very forward thinking bunch who welcome diversity in gaming. The Escapist has certainly published a lot of articles dealing with the subject, not just in race, but also in gender and sexual orientation, in fact, I seem to remember an article a few days in which both you, Ms. Arendt, and Mr. Funk decried readers responding negatively as "spoken like a bunch of heterosexual, white, males," yet here, no voice is raised.

 

[HobbesMkii]

I hate the bilingual stuff, I see it as 1 of 2 things, laziness so they don't have to rework the boxart for each language or a ploy to force all Americans to learn the language of their Mexican invaders.
I could understand if it was talking about ad campaigns for more than one country, but otherwise it angers me.

Everywhere in the US (but maybe a very few select towns on the southern border) uses the English language, so why is Spainish appearing on everything now? If Spainish has to be on there, why do we not see any German or Italian anything? What makes Spainish better than the other languages?

Hispanics and Latinos represent over one tenth of the American population. Spanish is a common language to all those people. That's 30+ million Americans who speak Spanish. And these are people who have countries of origin from all over the world who speak a single unified language. If, during the late 19th and early 20th century, the arriving immigrants had spoken one common language, it might have easily displaced English as the common language of the United States. But they didn't. They spoke German, Italian, Gaelic, Russian, Polish, Chinese, Greek, etc. And while all together, they may have represented a portion of the United States equal to Hispanics and Latinos today, none of those languages could even begin to approach being spoken by 1/10th of the American population of the day. That's why Spanish represents a "threat" to English, and is afforded its due status. I doubt it will ever replace English as the common use language of the American citizen, but I do expect it will one day stand equal.

 

[Logan Westbrook]

in fact, I seem to remember an article a few days in which both you, Ms. Arendt, and Mr. Funk decried readers responding negatively as "spoken like a bunch of heterosexual, white, males," yet here, no voice is raised.

Because in that thread, it was a bunch of jerk-off quasi-bigots on one side--the kind of people that a "forward thinking bunch" looks down on. However, in this case, the other side are considered to be like the people complaining about race in Left4Dead2--people who take 'forward thinking' too far in this bunch's opinion.

Taking a pop at me too, eh? Fair enough, I suppose I should respond.

I am incensed at Sega's cynicism in this 'marketing campaign', you only have to look at the quotes from Rick Naylor to see how manipulative it really is. If this campaign starts a trend for multi-lingual marketing I will be the happiest clam in the world, because I think that only good things can come from making our hobby more inclusive, but that does not change the fact that this campaign is effort to shift more copies by exploiting the ethnicity of its 'star'.

Just to touch on the Left4Dead 2 Racism issue, I'm not in the habit of brushing off people's concerns over racism in media, but Willie Jefferson's issue seemed to solely revolve around the ethnicity of some of the zombies. It was not that African-American's were poorly represented in the game, it was that they appeared at all that he had a problem with.

 

[Blackadder51]

This made me laugh for some strange weird reason

Well it might work i guess...

 

[Andy Chalk]

The only reason you noticed this campaign was because it was different.

Actually, no, the only reason I noticed it is because some marketing shill decided to make noise about it.

If Sega packaged and marketed its entire lineup bilingually, I would hail it as an outreach to the Hispanic market. This is not that; this is cynicism. Maybe that's good enough for you but I have higher standards and if calling it out for what it is makes me ignorant and shortsighted in your eyes, so be it. I'll sleep just fine tonight.

 

[HobbesMkii]

The Escapist has certainly published a lot of articles dealing with the subject, not just in race, but also in gender and sexual orientation,

I think The Escapist has been changing direction for a while now.

This is the one thing you said that I need clarification on. Do you mean it's moving toward a less socially conscious position or a more socially conscious position? And why is it you think that?