Give your blood for Bloodborne!
PlayStation Denmark promotes the upcoming launch of the PS4 exclusive game Bloodborne in a rather unconventional way: a blood drive!
On March 23 you can donate blood to the IT University of Copenhagen for a chance to win a free copy of Bloodborne. Instead of automatically receiving a copy of Bloodborne– which would be way too easy – donors have to give blood and then roll a dice to see if they’ve won a copy of the new game or another PS4 game. Anyone who donates blood also enters a competition to win a prize BloodbornePlayStation 4 themed console. The blood drive is being conducted by PlayStation Denmark in partnership with GivBlod, a Danish charity.
Updated: Frederik Hoelge, an Ars Technica reader and student at the IT University, sent us a picture of the Bloodborne driving blood. “The queue started forming half an hour before the event started, at 12pm, and the queue is still that long, two and a half hours later.”
Frederik Hoelge
While this is clearly a clever bit of marketing, GivBlod says this blood drive is important for another reason: Male blood donors are rare in Denmark. Presumably the implication here is that Bloodborne players are mostly male.
Late last year, some Canadians tried something similar on Kickstarter, called Blood Sport. They created a prototype Xbox 360 gamepad connected to a blood draw machine via an Arduino microcontroller. When the gamepad rumbled/vibrated, the Arduino activated the machine, causing it to collect a small amount of blood. The project was quickly shelved by Kickstarter, but the Blood Sport team never explained the reason for the suspension.
Bloodborne, which is being developed exclusively for the PS4 by From Software, will be released in North America on March 24 and in Europe the following day. The game is an action RPG just like the studio’s other famous titles, Demonic souls And Dark souls. Part of me wishes Blood Sport had met its funding goal – imagine the hardcore thrill of playing one Souls game where, every time you die, both your in-game and real life health bar are lowered.