If you played video arcade games in the late 80’s or early 90’s, you might remem­ber Zero Wing — a game in which a bat­tle takes place in the year 2101, where you must defend the planet Earth from an alien invasion.

Zero Wing may have been a favorite among teenagers, but like the Cab­bage Patch doll the fad faded… until Sega Gen­e­sis came out with their ver­sion of the pop­u­lar arcade game in ’98, giv­ing Zero Wing new breath.

But this time, one is offered an ani­mated intro­duc­tion in prepa­ra­tion for the space bat­tle, which started with: “In A.D. 2101, war was begin­ning.” And a dia­logue between the ship’s cap­tain and the dreaded war­rior Cats ensued, offer­ing these price­less gems:

• “You Have No Chance To Sur­vive Make Your Time.”
• “What you say!” “Some­one Set Up Us The Bomb!”
• “You know what you doing. Move ‘Zig’ For Great Justice!”
• And of course, “All Your Base Are Belong To Us.”

The result became a viral phe­nom­ena that spread quickly, first among early adopt­ing geeks, then to main­stream media. It has become so per­va­sive that it inspired a new gen­er­a­tion of web­sites show­cas­ing bad trans­la­tions, and the explo­sion in fail blogs.

Now, what does a video game have to teach us about copywriting?

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What­ever hap­pened to sales and marketing?

Sim­ple ques­tion, I know. But think about it. How many busi­nesses have you come across lately spout­ing the lat­est and great­est trick, tac­tic, or cashgrab?

You’ve heard of the say­ing, “Hate the game, not the player?” I’ve heard this many times too, and lately I seem to hear it a lot within our industry.

When my wife, Sylvie Fortin, wrote Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins, her premise was sim­i­lar. She said, “Hate the sin, love the sin­ner.” But her rea­son­ing was, she wanted to expose, focus on, and pro­vide alter­na­tive solu­tions to spe­cific prac­tices and behav­iors, with­out fin­ger­point­ing any­one.

How­ever, the more I think about it, the more I’m com­ing to the con­clu­sion that the player wor­ries me more than the game itself. And here’s why…

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