"When Sega's marketing group at Wieden Kennedy took on the daunting task of marketing ESPN NFL Football 2K4 against Madden 2004 last fall, it created a revolutionary viral hoax campaign that actually implicated Sega itself in a nefarious conspiracy against users."
-Electronic Gaming Business, Jan 14, 2004

BETA-7

Beta-7.com
For a long time nobody knew exactly what to think about this obvious hoax. What was its purpose? Who was behind it? Why go to so much trouble to make the impossible seem possible?

I don't know what to think but I do know that someone went to alot of trouble for an unclear reason. Thats exactly the kind of thing Sega loves to do. Anyone else remember those TV ads in japan a few years back where children were telling Sega executives "Sega sucks. We prefer Playstation." that didn't seem to make much sense? Sega has been known to poke fun at themselves for no good reason before. On the other hand, THIS was bad even by Sega standards.

But if this is your first time even hearing about the Beta-7 hoax, don't worry. I'm about to explain.

The Story

It all started on March 21 according to the blog which was posted on the Beta-7 website. The "main character" of the story, who's true name we never learn, was making a trip to the local mall in Orlando Floridia to pick up "hot chicks who speak little english" as his site put it. He ran into a hot chick handing out invitations to a beta test for a game which was going to take place the next day at a mysterious location.

The next day was the worst day in our hero's life. First he gets up and forgets his invitation to the beta test(which as you can see he will need to get in)and arrives late. He has to argue with a burly security guard just to get in.

He walks into a waiting room where a dozen other gamers are already waiting for the test to start. After getting a cup of coffee he sits down and a boring man walks in and does a poor job of getting everyone excited before asking them all to fill out a form making them promise that they won't reveal things like who makes the game, what game it is, etc. Also the form covers if they have Heart conditions, seizures, etc. He signed the form.

Thats when the first curve ball is thrown. Who would ever do something like this? For some odd reason the boring man announces that for the rest of the day everyone will be known by their "code name" which will be the word beta followed by their number. Of course our hero is Beta-7. Thus from then on he goes by that name on his site.

Boring man begins taking players back two at a time(nobody comes back while Beta-7 is waiting) starting with Beta-1 and Beta-2. Then 3 and 4. Eventually boring man comes for Beta-7 and 8. Beta-7 has to give up his coffee and then they pass into a hallway with many doors and each is guarded by more of the security guards Beta-7 met at the entrance. Beta-7 and 8 are taken into an unfinished room with crappy chairs and a TV set. Another man and a hot chick are here. Beta-7 is now told for the first time he will be testing NFL 2K3 which is made by none other than Sega and some other company that hasn't made anything important in about seven years called Visual Concepts. To make things even more bizzre Beta-7 will be playing the game but Beta-8 can only WATCH and not play. A large amount of effort goes into making sure everyone has to understand that Beta-8 will only be watching the game and HAS to watch it.

Then Beta-7 is told he will be testing a feature called "crash cam" mode which is basically first person mode(once again Sega steals ideas from PC games). Beta-7 starts playing and claims to be enjoying the first person mode. The last thing he remembers is thinking hes going to have to tell everyone he knows about this. Thats when he blacks out for the first time.

When he wakes up hes sitting in a chair with boring man standing over him and a security guard standing there holding him down. After a long intaorgation by boring man about the forms he signed the boring guy tells him he passed out and he should go home and get some rest. Beta-7 doesn't know whats going on and feels weak so he can't really argue with boring man so well as the security guard drags him out to his car and forces him to drive away without any anwsers about what just happened.

Beta-7 went home and went to sleep and didn't wake up until very late the next day and realised he had missed work. His boss nearly fired him and it took him a week or so to forget about the incident. He stoped playing video games and even changed his diet but just as he began to feel better and thought his problems were going away he woke up on the floor with his room mate's brand new lamp under him. His room mate was angry but just assumed it had something to do with his ex-girl friend who he had broken up with before the beta test. Beta-7 didn't know what to say so he went along with that and went to bed.

After that the blackouts kept happening. Sometimes when he was playing a game and sometimes not. He even woke up one morning with a sprained ankle and had to call in sick for several days(which nearly got him fired again). After it became obvious that his problem wasn't going away and he had no idea where to turn for help on this kind of problem he decided to he had to take action himself. He borrowed a camcorder from a friend of his and holed himself up in his apeartment for 3 days and taped himself sitting on his ass waiting for a blackout to occour.

Eventually Beta-7 had to give up his isolation and go to work but he continued to video tape himself whenever he was home. Even though he went to work he still attempted to hold out as long as possible and go out only when nessary. His friends and co-workers began to suspect he was crazy and he avoided them. Eventually he passed out while on tape but never tackled anything which just confused him more. Finally when he caught a second blackout on tape he found out what it is he does when he blacks out.

The video of his second black out caught on tape(which he even posted on his site)shows him playing a game, then he drops the controler, gets down into a three point stance like a foot ball player, screams a series of numbers and finally tackles his tv tray, knocking over his CD rack in the process. After the tackle he lays on the floor for a few minutes and then gets up to do a short victory dance before falling over and passing out. Eventually he wakes up, gets up and checks his tape to see what happened. When he views the scene I just described he freaks out and locks himself in his house for three days. Doesn't go to work and spends most of the time worring that men in white coats will come to take him away. Maybe they should have.

After not going into work for three days he decided he didn't have a job anymore and didn't ever even call into work again to find out. After seeing the football stuff he was even more convinced that his problem was because of Sega and the beta test. He didn't know what do do about it yet but he was sure that Sega should be held accountable for what they had done. I of course agree but Sega has done much worse things than this if you ask me. His room mate became convinced he was crazy at this point and locked all his stuff in his room. Beta-7 spoke with a lawyer who informed him that even if he had any evidence of any of this being Sega's fault(and he pointed out that he didn't have said evidence) that because of the legal forms he signed at the beta test he was screwed anyway.

When Beta-7 had given up all hope he finally received his first peice of real evidence. Someone calling himself "Beta-X" emailed him from a Sega address and even sent him a tape in the mail. In the email there was a list of all the beta testers who were in the group with Beta-7. The tape was actually a video of Beta-7 himself during the beta test. In the video he stopped playing the game to tackle beta-8(what happened after that is unknown because the rest takes place off screen). He also discovered that the return address on the package with the tape in it was for a janitoral service(later he finds out that service cleans the offices of Visual Concepts which is a comapny thats basically owned by Sega and develops the NFL2K series).

He tried a number of things after that. He emailed Sega who seemed to think it was a joke. He called Sega and talked to operators who thought it was a joke. He even went back to the building where the beta test took place and it was completely empty. He spoke to the owner of the building who denied any beta test ever happened there. Finally he emailed all the other beta testers using the information on the list he got from Beta-X and found out most of the email addresses weren't there anymore. He got an email back from Beta-13 and convinced him to call him on the phone. Beta-13 agreed to work with him but didn't want to give him any info about his "plan" just yet. He also exchanged many emails with Beta-5 who was less paranoid but refused to have any phone contact. Beta-13 sent him a movie of Beta-13 tackling someone at work which he supposedly lost his job over.

When he hears from Beta-13 again he is told that Beta-13 is now working for the janitorial service that cleans the offices of Visual Concepts. After a few more days Beta-13 starts sending him boxes of shredded papers which he apparently pulled out of the trash at VC. Beta-7 tried to tape them togeather but didn't find any helpful information for a long time. He heard from Beta-5 again who claimed to be hacking into the Sega server.

Evetually he started turning up odd memos about the beta test and even refrences to other tests and some kind of "situation" as well. He even found a memo that talked about the test he was in and that it would be done by the survey company mentioned in the above invitation. Finally they(as in Betas 5, 7 and 13) decided to contact all the other beta testers if they could but when Beta-7 called most of the numbers had been dissconnected! One, Beta-10, called him back after seeing the number on his caller ID but just refused to have anything to do with them.

This was when he decided he should put togeather a website to get the word out but because he didn't know anything about websites he had to ask his friend rob to help. That meant telling Rob what was going on. Rob thoguht he was crazy at first but came around after seeing all the "evidence" aginst Sega and agreed to help make a web site. He got a tackle video from Beta-10 which he added to the pile and called all the betas again but only got through to one guy who didn't seem to speak english and got very angry when he mentioned Sega.

As the work on the site contunued Beta-13 stole a box of CDs with beta versions of NFL2K4 on them. This was right around the same time as Sega announced they were going to change the name of their sports games to ESPN. Beta-13 had to stop going into work because after he stole the disks the security guards started searching peoples cars and such so he figured they were looking for him. He did however send the beta disks to Beta-7 who got them and couldn't play them because he didn't have a modded Xbox and couldn't afford one.

The website was delayed when Beta-7 nearly tackled Rob and he found out on the same day that someone was now after Beta-13 who had to go into hiding because of it. Shortly after that the site finally went up anyway and he some how managed to convince his brother to buy him a modded Xbox and pay his rent.

When the modded Xbox arrived a week later Beta-7 began to play the demo versions of the game that was on the stolen CDs. He posted several videos on his website and even boasted the features of the game. This was when people began to beleive that Beta-7 was just a hoax created by Sega to promote the game. Beta-7 stopped posting videos of the game after that but it still ruined the sites reputation. Not even when he claimed to have found subliminal messages in the game did anyone actually beleive it.

After another "blackout" where he threw up on his grandmother his mother finally forced him to go to the doctor. The doctor didn't actually find anything and said he needed to go to a shrink which he refused to do. Which is good because shrinks are full of shit.

Shortly after Beta-7 stoped posting videos a new character called "Gamer Chuck" appeared and put up a website of his own with videos he claimed that VC gave to him because he was a real beta tester of the game. He claimed that Beta-7's website was fake and he had obviously never tested the game. Gamer Chucks website was obviously run by Sega. Also both Beta-7's website and gamer chuck's website were registered with the same "domains by proxy" company which caused many people to beleive they were the same person. However, for awhile, Gamer Chuck was more active then Beta-7 and even emailed many of the people who used the Beta-7 boards alot(even me)to tell them the "truth" as he saw it. Gamer Chuck directly deined to me that he worked for Sega but didn't deny promoting the game with footage of the game only a Sega employee would have.

Ads began appearing on the internet and in newspapers(according to Beta-7 anyway, nobody else saw them) requesting people call a numer in San Fransisco if they ever tested ESPN NFL football. Shortly after that Beta-7 put up a "take action" page on his site with a list of phone numbers where people could call and talk to Sega and/or VC. I called all of those numbers and got interesting results. The Sega number(which I knew off the bat was BS because I've called Sega before) just gave different results every time I called and eventually disconnected me. When I called the VC number I was able to get into voice mail boxes and leave bizzare messages yelling at them but the only live person I got on the phone was the night janitor or something who was less than helpful. I called Beta-7 out on these numbers and demanded to know where he found them but only got a generic "Oh, here and there" type of reply.

Eventually someone calling himself Beta-X began posting on the forums and posted a "medical site" that was just one page with a bunch of pictures of people with brusies and images of scaned notes. I think the jist of it was that this was the report of a company called HMK Labs which did some sort of research for Sega and had found that people who played ESPN NFL football had all sorts of evil things happen to them. The site is still there as of my putting this page up but nobody could find out anything about this HMK Labs or the server with the site on it.

Shortly after all that Beta-7 dissapeared. He claimed that Beta-13 had found HUGE evidence aginst Sega and he had to go to San Fansisco to see it because it was that important. He never revealed what this information was or why he needed to go see it. Just said he had to go and left. Several days later his friend Rob took over the site and started posting messages for Beta-7 to contact him. He never did and eventually Rob claimed he found Beta-7's apartment ransacked and Beta-7 was nowhere to be found. The forums shut down after that and the site has sat idle ever since.

The Truth

Eventually the truth came out despite Sega's best efforts to cover it up when they realised the whole scheme had been a huge mistake.

The marketing scam company Sega had hired to set all of this up and run it called Wieden Kennedy eventually wanted to take credit for their "creativity" and announced the whole thing as a fraud. Although there was little news outside of the marketing industry fate was aginst the american public once again and this hoax actually won several awards.

Here is an article I found on the internet after some total jackass kept sending people links to one you had to pay to read:

Sega Goes Viral to Take on Madden 2004
Electronic Gaming Business, Jan 14, 2004

When your marketing team is facing an offensive line made up of EA Sports, its biggest franchise, and an estimated 90% market share of the video football game market, forget about merely thinking outside of the box. When Sega's marketing group at Wieden Kennedy took on the daunting task of marketing ESPN NFL Football 2K4 against Madden 2004 last fall, it created a revolutionary viral hoax campaign that actually implicated Sega itself in a nefarious conspiracy against users. Outside of the box? Hey, these guys brought their own box.

"We knew we weren't going to be able to outspend [EA], so we had to outthink them," says Ty Montague creative director. Around the product's standout feature, a first-person view of the football action, WK seeded onto the Web the fiction that beta testers of the game were experiencing odd side-effects and Sega was scrambling to cover up the scandal. The genius of the "Beta-7" campaign was that it blended both traditional ad principles (push a key product attribute) with a ground breaking viral marketing technique that grabbed even skeptics with its elaborate, albeit farcical, story.

WK's targeting was precise, to create a novel buzz among the key influencers in the gaming space. "We wanted to touch the online gaming community where they live and breathe," says Montague, and so they had an online persona, "Beta-7," post queries on game editorial sites about whether other beta testers for Sega's game were experiencing blackouts and aggressive impulses as a result of playing ESPN NFL. This was pure guerilla theater, with the sites themselves having no knowledge of the scheme.

"Some [gamers] thought he was a whack job and some got interested," says Montague, and soon Beta-7.com was launched as a blog chronicling the tester's emerging battle with Sega. Ultimately, the site hosted video clips of gamers blacking out from playing the beta, homemade video news footage of Sega employees being ambushed and filmed ambushes of Sega employees who were grilled about the game's ill effects and the purported cover-up, and even a filmed disclaimer by NFL player Warren Sapp denouncing rumors about the game.

The fiction became enormously elaborate, with Beta-7 apparently gone missing for several days, other beta tester characters introduced to corroborate the story, and never (to this day) an admission by Sega and WD that this was a hoax (except to the game and advertising trade press). In fact, the Beta-7 persona offers interviews to the press in which he denies Montague's "version" of the story.

Do You Believe? Who Cares?

A great many visitors to Beta-7 and its spin-off sites recognized the campaign as a marketing ploy: about 60% did in one poll taken during the program. Nevertheless, users were attracted to the seamlessness of the fiction and found it clever enough to follow. And unlike most marketing campaigns, this one was not fully imagined at inception, because Montague and co-creative director Todd Waterbury were imagining new elements of the program in response to visitor reactions. At one point in order to get non-believers to reconsider, or at least keep them hooked, the marketers took down the Beta-7 site, supposedly in response to a cease and desist order from Sega itself. When the site came back online, the team also devised a rival beta tester's blog, gamerchuck.com, which denounced Beta-7 as a spurious liar. With loads of game footage on the site, gamerchuck was made to seem like a thinly veiled Sega PR flak posing as a beta tester.

Clever, no doubt, but did the Beta-7 campaign work? To be sure, it was not Sega's only marketing effort for the game. A TV ad run featured comedian Tracy Morgan. And measuring viral campaign effectiveness is as new as the technique itself. For instance, the superficial metrics were not especially impressive, about 70,000 unique visitors to the mock sites during the campaign and about 300,000 page views. But Montague insists the real viral reach of the program is revealed in the 4 million downloads of those hoax videos and audio messages the campaign delivered to consumers. The power of viral is not in the raw traffic it drives but in the pass-along referrals. Most of those downloads were not coming from site visitors but from download links in users' email; as they passed around those "you gotta see this" messages. Viral marketing is about creating a story that is compelling or simply clever enough to turn consumers into your own media network of free distribution.

In terms of sales, ESPN NFL performed respectably considering the competition and that it hit shelves only two weeks after Madden sucked in most of the press hype and gamer dollars. "It didn't bode well," admits Montague. "We exceeded the sales figures of last year, but there is no way of knowing what would have happened if we could have launched before EA."According to NPD/Funworld's September data, the Xbox version of the game peaked at #8 on the bestseller list, just ahead of Madden for the Xbox, but the PS2 versions was running a distant #14 to Madden's firm grip on #1.

Regardless, Montague think that games marketing and advertising needs to get out of its pedestrian methods and engage audiences in campaigns like these that are as imaginative as the games themselves. The campaign actually worked on gamers the same way that games themselves entrance players, by inviting interaction.

"A lot of creativity goes into the games, but not a lot of creativity is going into the marketing," Montague says. "Throw screenshots on a page and write some copy with attitude - that seems to be the formula. Marketers who show a willingness to break the form will do well so long as they find something authentic to talk about."

Contacts: Ty Montague, ty.montague@wk.com ; Todd Waterbury, todd.waterbury@wk.com

[Copyright 2004 PBI Media, LLC. All rights reserved.]

COPYRIGHT 2004 PBI Media, LLC
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

And so ended Sega's biggest marketing hoax since Blast Processing.

Links

All of these links are working as of the time I posted them. However, information about Beta-7 has ways of dissapearing exactly when you don't want it to so I can't promise that these sites will always be there.(If you find a site deleted, don't worry. I have most of the images and files from this hoax saved on one of my older PCs and can post it again if Sega takes any of it down.)

Beta-7's website

The Medical Site

The Gamer Chuck Website

The only forum where you can still talk about Beta-7

The debate goes on...

The most common responce I get from this Beta-7 page is for rabid Sega fans to point out how the whole thing is okay because of a website called "I love bees" that was a similar viral ad to promote Halo 2. The people who make this point to me aren't usually the sharpest tools in the box if you know what I mean so I'm probably wasting my time here but I'm still going to try to point out the two really obvious reasons why that makes no damn sense.

Fist off, there is one HUGE and key difference between Beta-7 and "I love bees" that defines the level of deception involved here. With the bees site, yeah its a viral ad which by definition is a somewhat dishonest and sneaky method but you have to admit that for a viral ad the makers of Halo were really damn honest about it. They openly promoted the website, they didn't deny the website was a viral ad and they even went so far as to have a CREDITS PAGE posted right on the site listing exactly who was involved and spelling it out in no uncertain terms that the site was meant to promote the game Halo 2. Beta-7 on the other hand is still denied by Sega even to this very day and will eventually evlovle into one of those "Never ever speak of this again" type of topics like Blast Processing has. Ever notice that back in the early 90s Blast Processing was what made the Genesis so great but today its mysteriously absent from Sega history just like the years between 1940 and 1960 are mysteriously absent from German history? The fact of the matter is that if it wasn't for the desire of Wieden Kennedy to take credit for their "creativity" during the hoax we never would have learned the truth because of Sega's massive efforts to cover this whole incident up.

And the second point is just common sense, people! Didn't your mothers ever ask you "If all your friends were jumping off a bridge would you do it too?" I won't deny that viral ads are quickly becoming a common place occourance but that doesn't by default make it right! Sure, its common place and legal for a man to visit a strip club but how many men do you think would be willing to admit to their wives, girlfirends or mothers that they would do something like that? You can bet the mothers of the employees at Sega and WK who pulled this hoax aren't sitting around patting themselves on the back for raising children who grew up and lied to people for a living. (On the other hand we are talking about Japan here so we can't be so quick to rule out the possibility...)

Another common arguement is that both Sega and WK should be not merely forgiven but also praised for their "creativity" and success with this hoax. As usual with Sega, these are two words that simply shouldn't be in the same sentence as Sega. You could argue the story was creative but as usual, Sega certainly wasn't the first one to try something like this. WK could take credit for creativity but I highly doubt this was their first viral hoax. That is, after all, what the people at WK do for a living. I remember reading somewhere that they were the ones who tired to convince everyone years ago that horrible "Blair Witch" movie was based on a true story. As for success, well, thats just a term Sega will likely never understand. To quote directly from the article above:

"Clever, no doubt, but did the Beta-7 campaign work? To be sure, it was not Sega's only marketing effort for the game. A TV ad run featured comedian Tracy Morgan. And measuring viral campaign effectiveness is as new as the technique itself. For instance, the superficial metrics were not especially impressive, about 70,000 unique visitors to the mock sites during the campaign and about 300,000 page views."

The article went on to mention that even though the site didn't get many visitors the movies on the site were seen by millions because of pass along refferals like those "You gotta see this" type emails. The thing is, if all those millions of people saw were the movies, do you think they EVER knew what they were looking at was an ad for ESPN Football? Hell, most people I've talked to who own Madden don't even know there is an ESPN Football game.

Beta-7 was without a doubt a lie and a hoax. Was it Successful? It certainly doesn't seem like it from where I stand. WK would like you to beleive it was but thats because they want you to think that its a good idea to hire them. It's the customer whos always right and in this case, for once, that was Sega. You have to admit, when Sega is calling off all future ESPN games, selling VC off and breaking off contact with WK, its damn hard to beleive they were happy with the quality of service they got from WK.

And now some entertainment

At one time the Beta-7 Boards were plagued by some lame Sega fanboy pretending to be John Madden. He shut up after I posted this message on the boards:

Its time I tell the truth.
Date: Sun Sep 7 [12:20 AM]
Posted By: Sega Slayer (www.segasucks.net)

I AM JOHN MADDEN.

Yes, its true. I, Sega Slayer, am actually John Madden the famous football coach. I hate Sega and thats why I created segasucks.net and beta-7.com. Its all fake and I did it because I, John Madden, hate Sega more than anything else in this world.

It all started back in 1969 when I was 32 years old. That year I was named AFL coach of the year. One night while I was sleeping with 18 super models at the same time I had a vision of Ralph Baer, the man who had invented one of the very first video games in 1949. Ralph told me that in the future Video Games would be more popular than any other form of entertainment and that if I was to become the greatest coach of all time it would be nessaery for me to team up with Robo Cop and become the master of the greatest football game of all time. I had no idea who Robo Cop was due to the fact that the original movie wasn't released until 1989 but I knew that video games were my destiny from that day on.

So when the Atari 2600/Video Computer System (VCS) and Mattel's Intellivision brought video games to our living rooms in 1977 and 1979, respectively, I knew my rise to fame as a video game legend was at hand. I'm sure everyone here has heard the rumors that EA CEO Trip Hawkins apporached me in a parking lot and asked me to endorse his games. ITS NOT TRUE! I asked him to start that rumor to draw attention away from my evil rise to glory as a video game legend. I actually approached him in his own home. I busted through the door much like in those old series of commercials for Miller beer. I cussed him out until he broke down in tears and agreed to give me anything I wanted if I would just leave him alone. I demanded he make the worlds greatest video game and put my name on it. I also demanded he continue to release a new version of the game every year from then on.

Then on 9.9.99 when the Sega Dreamcast was released I was afraid that the rumors of an upcoming sports title might pose a threat to my brilliant game series. Once again I paid a visit to my good friend Trip Hawkins and asked him to buy out Sega to stop their reign of terror before it had a chance to begin. Trip laughed at me and we had a long talk about why the Dreamcast was one of Sega's worst ideas yet and how very few people would actually buy it. In the end he convinced me that the PS2 which was being released one year after the DC would crush the DC horribly and our game series would be more popular than ever.

Trip Hawkins was as right about that as he has ever been. One year after the release of the DC Sega gave up and crawled back to Japan like they always do. However I still felt it was nessary to make segasucks.net and beta-7.com to try and drive the great evil of Sega back to their communist homeland for good.

And now we all know the truth. The truth that the *CENSORED* who posts here pretending to be me is just some loser Sega fan who wants to impose his communist ideals on us all and ruin my wonderful and successful game series.

John "Often imitated, never duplicated" Madden