The mail sent to a video game publisher

https://www.gamefile.news/p/panic-mail-arco-despelote-time-flies-thank-goodness-teeth

by colinprince • 3 months ago

152 6 3 months ago

footydude2• 3 months ago

Interesting stuff - and lovely to see positive/nice examples of interaction with the game developers. Very cute.

It reminded me of a job nigh on 25 years ago I had - I worked at a large insurance firm as part of a team delivering a specialist service to high value customers...but it was often under-subscribed so if things were quieter we'd get roped into doing all manner of different tasks to keep us busy/help out.

One thing we occasionally got roped into was opening returned mail from mail-shots advertising 'over 50s whole of life' insurance (basically a policy over 50s would take out with guaranteed payment on death that would primarily be used to cover funeral costs).

The mail shots were sent with a pre-paid envelope and a form to fill in to buy the product. It's going back a while now but some days it'd be 100s of letters coming back - my rough estimate would be:

* ~2-3% of the return envelopes were people buying the product

* ~95% were people return the application form in ripped up form

* ~1-2% were people sending something weird back

The weird stuff we got back varied massively, but a few that have lived long in my memory:

* A sheet of paper with a hand written note saying they'd farted on it

* Toe-nail clippings

* A stash of cuttings taken from pretty graphic porn magazines

* Hand written notes, often so apoplectic in their rage that they were hilarious to read

* 'Filled in' forms but where all the information was clearly fake/puns/nonsense ('Mr Hugh Janus' that sort of thing)

* Randomly (to me at least) peeled off labels from jars/etc. were quite common to get back

For what was a pretty dull task (open envelopes, if genuine, scan for the processing team and return a 'parker pen' to the applicant, if not dispose of) the occasional weird responses we'd get made the task much more amusing.

{all mail had already been through some sort of security scan process for metals/etc. so we didn't tend to get anything truly dodgy back}

sefrost• 3 months ago

This must be Sun Life in the UK?

footydude2• 3 months ago

Nah, though I imagine every insurance company that did these sorts of mail shots got the same stuff back.

Apparently there used to be people who would buy the policy purely for the parker pen. They'd get the pen then cancel the policy for a full refund. There's some weird people out there.

pas• 3 months ago

oh, the weird stuff is amazing

reminds me of the Lizardman's constant

https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...

larrry• 3 months ago

I have a lot of respect and admiration for Panic, they make good quality software, made the Playdate (which hopefully has turned a profit, “spiritually” it seems like a huge win), and publish really cool games. It would make me happy to see more software companies follow that lead

I am working on a game myself, maybe I should reach out to see if it’s something Panic might be interested in publishing…

robotnikman• 3 months ago

The one with the fly gave me a good laugh.

The mail sent to a video game publisher

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