Some of you who are old enough will remember going to a friend’s house when you were a kid and sitting down to play N64 or the original Playstation. If so, there’s a good chance you were stuck with the ‘other’ controller. You know the one – it was bulkier, the triggers felt weird and for some reason it was pea-green. Third-party controllers have been around for as long as consoles and their  bizarre designs have always tried to give players a more ergonomic or responsive interface, but more often than not they end up looking impossible to use for human hands. I introduce to you, for illustrative effect, the Avenger N-Control:

This piece of hardware, that appears to have gained sentience and a few too many tentacles, is supposed to make button-mashing faster and easier for our primitive arm-stumps; an appealing concept for thousands of hardcore gamers, if they can figure out where to put their fingers on the damn thing. I’m saying the third-party controller racket is a weird place to find arrogant businessmen, but that’s what one customer, Dave, got when he ordered his Avenger N-Control from Ocean Marketing and found his shipment inexplicably delayed. Receiving no personal notice or public updates from the company at all, Dave sent an e-mail asking about his purchase, and what followed was an ugly exchange that Dave was kind enough to link to Penny Arcade. Some highlights:

“From: Ocean Marketing
To: Dave
Dec 26, 2011 10:14 AM

Yes it can be used with xtend play if you remove the stand and no one is allowed to cancel and re order if we catch anyone doing it we will simply just cancel your order all together and you can buy it retail somewhere else.

Things happen in manufacturing if your unhappy you have 7 days from the day your item ships for a refund. You placed a pre order just like any software title the gets a date moved due to the tweaks and bugs not being worked out and GameStop or any other place holds your cash and im sure you don’t complain to activision or epic games so put on your big boy hat and wait it out like everyone else. The benefit is a token of our appreaciation for everyone no one is special including you or any first time buyer . Feel free to cancel we need the units were back ordered 11,000 units so your 2 will be gone fast. Maybe I’ll put them on eBay for 150.00 myself. Have a good day Dan.”

And later on, Mike from Penny Arcade jumped in:

Continue reading An Ocean of Bad Marketing: Third-Party Controller E-Mails From Hell →