pPosted by: Nik Taylor pIf you're going to chuck money at publicising something, why not make people happy at the same time? pThat seems to have been the thinking behind last Friday's publicity stunt, where the PR firm charged with boosting the profile of new sandbox shooter Mercenaries 2 decided to hand out £20,000 of petrol to lucky passing motorists. pa href="http://byfiles.storage.msn.com/y1pYA83CjuRZwF9smGDwbr2NK9YTnxP0Y3x7VWlselH3ACbEZ_NhHyExijqH74359x_?PARTNER=WRITER"img style="border-right:0px;border-top:0px;margin:0px 0px 0px 5px;border-left:0px;border-bottom:0px" height=148 alt=gx9j3164 src="http://byfiles.storage.msn.com/y1pOj87G3EvrHRHw8Lv49DspcP5jrTkmjYV_SO2uQ7dVKbIBfE6yDksXGF-UBlerEWkls-6VHn6fn4?PARTNER=WRITER" width=220 align=right border=0/a pNot only that, they also did up the petrol station to look like some remote army back-post, along with PR lovelies toting replica machine guns. It was an awesome idea, and what I love most about it is that no-one in the planning process ever cut in and said, quot;Er, do you think we might get in trouble for this?quot; pWhich of course they did, since news of free fuel spread quicker than wildfire and caused massive gridlock all around the petrol station in question - prompting MPs and the like to wade in, wailing about irresponsible actions. pOf course, it wasn't irresponsible, it was fun. In fact, the only bad thing about the whole idea was that I wasn't driving past the Finsbury Park garage at the right time to get a free tank-full. pIt's quite clear more game-makers should be doing this sort of thing. We don't want exclusive trailers, or drip-fed screenshots. We want free stuff. pa href="http://byfiles.storage.msn.com/y1plyhPPpeh_Rd0w8IKIuCPcWffpxf5285zlcTXP-vb4dnnTI1seCAu1eg0u9NNBX9VHpynSRAGei0?PARTNER=WRITER"img style="border-right:0px;border-top:0px;margin:0px 5px 0px 0px;border-left:0px;border-bottom:0px" height=154 alt="01_Free_Fuel_Giveaway" src="http://byfiles.storage.msn.com/y1pBnFV1N588tS-khi4Ef4pQk5177DmRBrEtXU4xs1VSJFMlIR-X43rLJWEkyHR1nlj?PARTNER=WRITER" width=218 align=left border=0/aThe game-makers only need a fairly tenuous link. Mercenaries 2 was giving away free petrol because its story has something to do with a war over oil. Other games could follow suit. pFIFA's coming out soon, for a start - so why not pick a match somewhere and give away all the tickets for free. An England game would be a good idea. We're playing Kazakhstan soon - no-one's going to turn up for that anyway. EA could buy up Wembley for the night and hand out the tickets in a massive bun-fight. pIt doesn't have to be on such a grand scale though. Lego Batman's on its way - I'd be quite happy if I was walking down the street and was handed a free box of Lego. Or maybe a pet bat, instead. pEither way, if something's being given away for nothing, it will get my attention. Whether it will make me go out and buy the game is another matter.img src="http://c.services.spaces.live.com/CollectionWebService/c.gif?cid=5477825663072194460page=RSS%3a+Mercenaries+petrol+stunt+backfiresreferrer=" width="1px" height="1px" border="0" alt=""img style="position:absolute" alt="" width="0px" height="0px" src="http://c.live.com/c.gif?NC=31263amp;NA=1149amp;PI=73329amp;RF=amp;DI=3919amp;PS=85545amp;TP=msnuktech.spaces.live.comamp;GT1=msnuktech"