If there is some kind of reward for the most ridiculous marketing team then I think it should go to the guys from EA that are promoting Dante's Inferno. First, they set up staged protests outside of the LA Convention Center during E3. These gained a "WTF" reaction from a lot of the gaming community, which was the point, I guess. Dante's Inferno received additional press when a 'real' Christian protest group protested EA's fake protest. Yeah…

So, Comic-Con is here and EA doesn't disappoint. In fact, I will go so far as to say that their latest marketing scheme is leaps and bounds more ridiculous than the fake protests. EA is running a contest that requires you to take pictures of yourself committing "acts of lust" on booth babes. Then you must tweet or e-mail the pictures to EA. They will handpick one winner to spend a "sinful night" with "two hot girls."

I'm not sure who this contest is more demeaning towards, the booth babes or the Comic-Con attendees. It seems like EA knew that Dante's Inferno was too unoriginal or uninteresting to appeal to a large audience. So, they are taking the "Hey, look at how controversial our game is" approach. Any press is good press, I suppose.

I preformed a quick search of the hash tag "#lust" on Twitter (which was required to put in your tweet to enter the contest) and there was literally not one actual entry. It seems like everyone at Comic-Con is appalled at the contest. Maybe this sounds a bit conspiracy theory-ish but I'm sure that was their plan all along. Hell, the fact that I'm even writing this story is credit to their evil idea. I agree that the contest is most definitely tasteless but sending out hundreds of tweets about it is only promoting the game more.