Case Study

They say there's no such thing as bad PR. After releasing a video game based on the Iraq war, Kuma Reality Games put the notion to the test.

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The Problem: Kuma kicked up a controversy with video games based on the Iraq war. Is it true there's no such thing as bad PR?

Keith Halper always felt that "PR is free advertising." So the CEO of Kuma Reality Games, a New York City-based developer of Web-based video games, launched a massive buzz campaign before releasing the start-up's first product last spring. The game, called Kuma: War, certainly seemed pressworthy. Based on the current conflicts in the Middle East, with scenarios ripped straight from the headlines, the game lets players march in the boots of U.S. troops. Each week, subscribers download a new "mission" -- from fighting Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan to defending U.S. battlefield commanders from assassination attempts in Iraq -- replete with actual images from the battlefield. The publicity, Halper hoped, would establish Kuma as a different kind of gaming company -- one that offered "a new way of experiencing the news" -- and help the one-and-a-half-year-old company attract both subscribers and new business partners.

But as the buzz around the brand grew louder, Halper sensed that Kuma was losing control of its message. A radio reporter for the BBC grilled Halper and one of his key investors, Gen. Thomas Wilkerson, who commanded U.S. Marine forces in Operation Desert Storm, in a segment broadcast worldwide. Won't this have a negative impact, the reporter wanted to know, on U.S. combat troops and their families? "You Too Can Raid an Iraqi Police Station," blared a headline in the British daily The Guardian, which portrayed Kuma as a new kind of war profiteer, "cashing in on a conflict." When Wired magazine asked for Halper's reaction to the capture of Saddam Hussein, Halper admitted that the development was "depressing for Kuma" -- which now had to delay its product launch while developers created a new set of missions based on the news. One angry critic even e-mailed Michael Moore in an attempt to get the rabble-rousing filmmaker and antiwar activist to target Kuma.

And charges of exploiting the troops overseas were just part of the problem. Others were assailing the company -- which has two military advisers on its board and bases some of its scenarios on declassified material from the Department of Defense -- as a propaganda tool of the U.S. government. Says Halper: "It's hard when people accuse you, on the one hand, of exploiting the military and, on the other, of working for them."

To be sure, not all of the buzz was negative, and many gamers were itching to start playing. But it was hard not to worry. After the BBC interview, for example, the company's marketing chief, Sarah Anderson, received an urgent call from Wilkerson. Such politically sensitive questions were bound to come up again, he warned, and Kuma needed to craft a forceful response. Anderson and Halper agreed, sensing that unless they acted fast, the company risked being branded a one-trick pony making a quick buck off the war.

Halper and Anderson soon realized they were in over their heads, that their start-up, which had just seven full-time employees, would need some help. They contacted their PR firm, Los Angeles-based Bender/Helper Impact, which specializes in digital entertainment. Anderson and Halper signed up for a kind of public relations boot camp, in which the PR pros helped them anticipate and respond to tough questions and stick to their own message.

Indeed, Halper never considered Kuma as a "war games" company in the first place. Instead, he hoped to do for computer gaming what shows like The Real World and Survivor did for cable and network television -- rev up consumer interest by introducing a new "reality" category. He envisions a future in which all manner of "news" is available in an interactive game format, and had plans to create new games based on sporting events and crime stories, similarly ripped from the headlines with painstaking attention to detail. But that would be a lot harder if Kuma could not regain control of its message.

The Decision

Kuma: War launched on March 30, 2004. The first mission: "Uday and Qusay Hussein's Last Stand," a two-part game in which players must clear opposing forces and capture or kill the Hussein brothers, holed up in a Mosul, Iraq, villa. Accompanying the launch was a new advertising campaign created by RDA, the New York City agency famous for marketing the controversial game Mortal Kombat to mainstream audiences. RDA developed a campaign based on images from Kuma: War, touting the game as "real war news, real war games," and calling on players to "re-create the news" and "remake history." While some ads featured pictures of Osama bin Laden or Iraqi police officers, "there was not a single violent image," says Bunny Rivera, RDA's director of brand strategy.

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