I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve had difficulty at times coming up with good, interesting stuff for this blog. Then I found out some video game is doing some cross promotion with a beverage company. To the 7-Eleven!
Bungie’s Destiny teamed up with Red Bull to partially promote the upcoming Destiny: The Taken King expansion. Unlike the many years where I’ve covered Mountain Dew Game Fuel, this is merely just a rebranding of the existing product to tie in with an upcoming game. Oddly, this is only available at 7-Eleven. It’s weird how 7-Eleven is always the place where I find the dumb video game drink stuff…
I’ve covered video games doing promotions with energy drinks before, like Call of Duty: Ghostchasers III did with Monster Energy back in 2013. You can read about that here. But Destiny is a different beast. It’s as if Halo and Borderlands had mixed together into a soup that’s somewhat edible.
I played Destiny during the early beta days, back when all that was available was Earth and that one brief time where they had a mission on the Moon. I liked the idea because not only did it have standard linear missions, but it also had free-roaming exploration akin to most MMOs. But it didn’t seem like something I wanted to jump into immediately since a lot of people were pretty down on it not long after release. Though I figure the game still has a modest following if Bungie and Activision are throwing advertising dollars at Red Bull for this.
The cans feature a code under the tab where you can redeem it for bonus rewards in Destiny that are timed exclusively to this event. Granted, they’ll be freely available to everyone in 2016, but if you want it right now, you’ll have to grab a can of Red Bull. Assuming it’s a code that hasn’t already been redeemed that is. I heard that the codes aren’t randomized very well, so people were redeeming the rewards by just guessing the codes.
Not only do the cans feature a Destiny Guardian and a silly code, they also feature noted eSports player Mike “Flamesword” Chaves as one of their big promoters for this, because he’s a “diehard Destiny fan” according to the website. Now I follow eSports fairly casually with stuff like Quake Live and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, but this guy is someone I don’t know about and can’t say much about when it comes to my eSports knowledge. Call me when they start putting members from Cloud9’s Counter-Strike team on energy drinks, then you’ve caught my interest.
Does Destiny even have a hardcore eSports community? Hell, I didn’t even know the game had competitive multiplayer until I stumbled upon Ray “BrownMan” Narvaez’s stream a few months back. I guess it makes sense considering how popular Halo‘s multiplayer was, but I always figured it built from the ground up to be a co-operative MMO.
But enough about me babbling about #eSports and Destiny, let’s talk about Red Bull itself. Now I don’t drink energy drinks very often. Coffee and Dr. Pepper are my jams for keeping me awake. The last time I drank an energy drink was Monster for the aforementioned Call of Duty promotion above, and I wasn’t too pleased with the taste. Here’s hoping Red Bull is better.
…Wow, it actually tastes good. Probably because the combination of ingredients don’t make it bitter tasting like Monster did. It’s not something I’d drink regularly, but this is actually something I can drink without the disgusting flavor. Though I’ll probably stick to my standbys of coffee and Dr. Pepper, I won’t turn down a Red Bull.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: This is proof video games are getting more ridiculously mainstream. If big-ass popular games start showing up on drink cans and fruit snacks, I’d say video games have officially made it in the corporate tie-in market. It’s like the 1980s all over again, except things taste better this time!
As for Destiny, I’ll probably snag the “whole enchilada” edition coming out later this year that comes with the normal game and the upcoming The Taken King expansion. I’ve been strictly PC gaming for the past year and a half, and it seems Bungie doesn’t want extra cash by porting Destiny to the PC, so I’ll have to settle with a home console version. PS3 obviously, since I don’t wanna pay $50-60/year for PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live. 😛
Hopefully Mountain Dew has something up their sleeve for this year’s model of Game Fuel. They are selling it normally rather than seasonally, but until they introduce a new flavor alongside it, it might be the first year I actually pass on what has become a yearly tradition on this site. Don’t let me down, corporate soda overlords.
