Treyarch has apologized for a recent Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 marketing stunt in which the game's official Twitter account transformed into the "Current Events Aggregate" and began reporting on an explosion at Coalescence Coporation research laboratories in Singapore.
Although anyone with half a brain should have been able to tell it was completely fictional, this is social media we're talking about — a place where common sense eludes a lot of folks. Refusing to look into any details, the fake report resulted in some backlash, mostly stemming from the media blowing the story into something larger than it actually was.
"Here’s my view – and again, I’m a simple director and not involved in the marketing at all. However, it was absolutely not done for any kind of attention in any way," Treyarch's Jason Blundell told IGN. "It was not done maliciously, or as any kind of scare tactic. I personally am very sorry for anyone who looked at it and got the wrong idea because it genuinely wasn’t meant that way."
"It was done on our channel, and it was to talk about the fiction of the world. I think we were as shocked as everybody else when it started blowing up, because essentially we were teeing up ready for a story beat. So again, very sorry for anyone who took it that way. It wasn’t meant that way at all – it was supposed to just be getting ready for a campaign element."
Was it the best marketing tactic? Probably not. But again, common sense is all one needed to see that it was all fake. However, this day and age it's easier to just complain when you misinterpret something.
