Honestly, might be nostalgic for guys, but as a girl who was playing games in this era, it made me feel like I wasn’t a part of the culture, rarely if ever were there ads marketed towards me, but man were there a lot of half naked ladies. Glad we don’t do this as much, but god this caused a lot of younger girls to feel ashamed of playing games “for boys”.
The weird thing is, as a guy, I never even paid attention to the sexualized stuff in games. To me these are like two different brain activities. So, as far as I’m concerned, there was never any point in this kind of marketing. I’ve never in my life purchased a game because it featured sexy ladies.
It’s supposed to be subconscious, like with most marketing. It hits the animal part of the brain, rather than the thinking part.
It really sucks looking at the detrimental effect this had on gender ratios in gaming to this day. It’s gotten a lot better but it’s still not there yet.
Yeah, we need to level the playing field by having half naked sexy guys on the cover of games. ^please
Like Fabio? Pretty much any depiction of a barbarian is some muscular dude wearing only a loincloth and his broadsword.
Doubt that’s going to be enough, I think if you want to make a sexually objectifying 90s magazine ad that appeals to female nerds you’re going to have to break out the homoerotic innuendos
People used to bring up Kratos in these discussions but before these new games he seemed far more likely to bite someone’s face off than to kiss anyone. There’s a difference.
🤤
I’m ok with that
Fair
I’d rather we stop sexualizing characters altogether. If anything, it’s silly and makes it more difficult to take them seriously.
I think there is space for both sexualized and non-sexualized characters, as long as they are treated evenly. This is entertainment, they don’t need to be all business serious.
I dread that in trying to be perfectly respectable, the medium might err to the side of prudishness and sexual repression.
looking in your direction, clive rosfield
After a woman says she doesn’t like being sexualized, your response is to not worry because the sexualization of women will continue, but you’ll start to sexualize men, too?
Yeah. Even just around a decade ago I’d explain the demographics shift to more women gamers to clients and they’d not believe it.
Stereotypes stick around for a long time, even when (or maybe especially when) untrue.
It’s a shame that “girl gamers” were considered such a rarity when it really seemed like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Oh, a game with only male protagonists with activities only primarily associated with boys doesn’t have many girls playing it? I guess girls aren’t that into games and we should double down on the focus on dudes.”
As a result, the market effectively abandoned around half of two generations of a potential continued audience and had a significantly reduced pool of interested labor to make games.
It’s a bit frustrating given my love for games that they could likely have advanced even further had it not been an exclusionary industry for as long as it was (though that can be said about pretty much every business vertical in existence too given our generalized collective history of exclusion).
I was a senior in high school at the time and even back then I thought this kind of advertising was crass, gross, and unnecessary. No nostalgia here, just second-hand embarrassment.
There were lots of half-naked men, too. Including in this ad.
Most of them in games were more male fantasy stuff…ripped, shirtless dudes with big weapons. Not really appealing to most women, but checks the “I want to BE him” aspect for lots of guys, lol
Yeah, but that is just another facet of marketing for men. Sexy dress-up vs tighty whities. Definitely not intended to get women interested.
Are you really out here in public view still trying to use the “not all men” to tell a woman her feelings are invalid?
No, I was supporting the previous comment. The idea that the ads were mostly about “male fantasy”, and probably wouldn’t be (positively) nostalgic for most women gamers.
How does that comment invalidate the previous one? If anything it actually reinforces it. Are you just looking for an excuse to shame someone?
It’s not really nostalgic for me, TBH. It’s actually kind of embarrassing that marketing like this existed and that it worked. I love T&A as much as the next female-loving guy, but ads like this are condescending. But again, they sold units…
Yeah as a boy I didn’t like these either. They were sexy but made me feel a little weird. I was young enough not to realize it was targeting only boys, but now that I’m older I think that’s why I didn’t like them. I wasn’t in to sex at the time.
I can imagine. I’m glad this is less prevalent now. Seeing it now in middle age makes me go ick. I wished I had been much more aware of this kind of sexism as a boy.
Yep, those were different times.
Battlecruiser 3000AD. This advert was later revised and they drew black knickers on the model.
Psycho Pigs UXB. Another British classic?
Well-placed censorship of pictures was the best purpose of a Battlefield 3000AD box. That was one of those games where the drama around it was far better than the game itself.
Isn’t this the game that had to run full page adverts claiming a new, updated version was available and “the bugs have been squashed!” Obviously this was pre-internet, so updates like this were quite uncommon.
Might have been. That game was so bugged that the installer crashed for a lot of people. Once it got patched enough that you could actually play it–which took years–it was supposedly pretty good, but nobody cared by then.
Now i want to see the reviews for Psycho Pigs UXB because it cant have been very memorable.
Holy fuck, where to start haha
It was a super gross and embarassing era.
and above all - sexy new outfits
The most important part of a game.
The early 00s was pretty mysoginistic.
I originally came from a conservative country, and yet there were plenty of ads for softcore porns in TVs and billboards in those days. Even as a child, I questioned why do they show such images in front of full view to everyone.
The thing is, such mysoginy was the norm without us even realising it. I remember reading an article of a woman reminiscing her college days in early 00s. There were pictures of college girls on pin up boards and they get graded on how beautiful they are. The author said no one thought bad about it but looking back, it was very degrading and also invading privacy. There was also the matter of the infamous wardrobe malfunction of Janet Jackson. She got all the public spotlight afterwards because she is a woman, but Justin Timberlake pretty much got away with it for free. JT also shamed Britney Spears about losing her virginity to him, instead of keeping his mouth shut, while Britney was branded as slut.
Oh, man, you have NO idea:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2002/mar/15/games.advertising
This would’ve been great for a game like DOOM.
[Here lies your loved one]
“Ah! Fresh meat! Journey into Tristram and see what the Butcher is up to today!”
Please be the onion…
Sorry, but Acclaim really was that wild for a bit there. They also had a promotion where you’d get a free copy of one of the Turok games if you named a newborn child after him. For what it’s worth, I don’t think anyone took them up on either offer, but it certainly brought in the publicity.
I currently work with someone who worked with acclaim back then and Virgin at one point too. The stories he tells me of some of the game Devs of the time. Insane. Some of them Devs still exist to this day and knowing what happened behind closed doors I have no idea how they got more business.
I feel that you owe us some anonymous gossip now.
One UK based dev that worked on some edgy PC games had a “Red Room” at their offices that was purely there for them to take drugs and trip inside. It was just a room completely painted in red.
Hahaha, yeah, that one was great.
Also the one where they paid parents to name their baby ‘Turok.’
I sometimes wonder what those little Turoks are up to today (at least a half dozen parents took them up on it IIRC).
The shock advertising campaigns around games really were something. They worked - got a ton of free media coverage. But this was also at the time that video games were the Boogeyman like rock n’ roll had been to a generation before. The media loved nothing more than a “look how terrible video games are” story and PR firms were playing into that environment.
So campaigns like this were basically the equivalent of Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a bat.
As games became more normalized, the campaigns shifted accordingly and - like Ozzy - tamed quite a bit out.
Bro, using ads in the graveyards this is new for me…
I bet this will make a comeback…
Oh my god, this is dark.
but why is he wearing a diaper?
No kinkshaming please…
It took me a couple seconds to understand that it wasn’t a before/ after set of pictures. It was a little confusing.
The Rayman one was great, “small man, huge features” iirc :d
and he was at a urinal right?
That’s not an ad. That’s just some cosplayer showing off her muff.
No, no, no, this was from 2008 and the “release” of the new LC model: https://www.ign.com/articles/2008/08/15/lara-croft-i-presume
They actually went with this photo (and others), but have since moderated themselves
Holy shit you’re spot on.
She’d be teenage me’s dream Chung Li.Edit; adult me would be fine with it too
I can’t even process what’s going on with the reflection in the mirror being from an angle at about head height over the bed. I like that they didn’t even trust teen gamers to understand the allusion of a woman standing in a bedroom doorway without comping in this extra element.
Not if you’re a literalist exec that saw the creative and didn’t think it was clear enough - “where’s the target audience? How are they going to see themselves in this ad?, she’s clearly out of our average user’s league”
In order to make the reflection work the bed would have to be angled against the wall.
It’s funny how the brain instantly notices that the perspective is nonsensical but can’t really pinpoint the issue ^^
It’d also need to be pressed against the mirror I think…?
Yup it sure looks like it.
Man, 90s video game ads were wild lmao
My favorite old school game ad is one for Quake 3 Arena:
This German ad for Quake is awesome too!
Ah, fun for the whole family. Very wholesome, that Quake game is.
Is there a high res version of this anywhere?
Im still a little bit miffed they didn’t give me any compensation for using pictures of my setup
And people make fun of that one ad where John Romero was going to make us all his bitch.
To be fair, Daikatana sucked so the ad is mostly funny in retrospect because it didn’t make everyone his bitch. If it had, I’m not sure we’d be making fun of it.
I remember TR3 was a huge disappointment after 1 and 2. The new mechanics weren’t very good and the level design was more confusing. I remember they added the Desert Eagle pistol and it was a giant brick (seriously the model consisted of probably 3-4 polygons total).
It really felt like they were just milking the franchise at that point.
milking lara croft? 🤔
let’s not kink shame…
