Tag: marketing

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While it may not seem like the initial bingo material – I invite you consider how the fuck she is supposed to do literally anything in this plate armor.  

  • The helmet literally covers her eyes so she can’t see anything past her toes
  • Her exposed mouth and lower face, combined with clawed gauntlets, mean any attempt to adjust it would mangle herself 
  • The armor is form fitted to her torso so she can’t bend, turn or even make big movements with her arms. I doubt she can even breathe with that boobplate.
  • Leg legs are locked into the “maximum thigh gap” pose. so she can’t even walk, let alone engage in combat footwork

This is not armor, this is some next level BDSM shit for people who find vacuum bondage too vanilla. (nsfw)

Bless Unleashed has been around since 2019 but has recently started more aggressive marketing – and um… wow… it’s… marketing… some of it really, really leans into the old myth, double standards, suspicious dimorphism and mistaking satirical parody for a style guide. 

(Honestly glad there is no mantis race… at least I think there isn’t…)

Unsurprisingly a large part of the Steam community screenshots etc is ogling even more ridiculous sets of armor. 

I don’t know which is worse, the weird horny marketing put together by the Creepy Marketing Guy or the more generic, family friendly marketing that tricks people into downloading the game and finding the options for female characters are fighting fucktoy, sexy sorcereress and bad archer..

– wincenworks

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As it approaches Cult Classic status, its worth thinking about how Jennifer’s Body is both a brilliant deconstruction of gender in horror but (sadly to its box office detriment) a great example of the old notion of sex sells doesn’t just fail to generate sales, it actively harms many productions.

The movie was horribly misrepresented in marketing, largely because the studio was convinced the only reason anyone would want to see a Megan Fox movie was to ogle her body. That is: They assume all decisions about whether a movie is worth watching are made by developmentally stunted cishet men (the only demographic who wouldn’t work out there were plenty of places you could already ogle Megan… largely due to movie studios).

Despite what overpaid executives in suits who paid someone to do their exams for them will tell you, nobody actually benefits from the proliferation of this sort of marketing.

  • People interested in feminist themes don’t get works containing them identified as such to them
  • People wanting to watch stuff not about conventionally attractive women have to search to find out what things are actually about
  • Developmentally stunted cishet manchildren end up watching lots of stuff that they don’t understand and sometimes they get upset and review bomb it or cry at everyone in public

It’s just not good for anyone.

– wincenworks

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Okay Google… show me what happens when Nier: Automata imagery gets to outright fetish levels….

Now, my housemate assures me to that 2P is a quality character but this is really an eye gouging example of what happens when certain types of executives lean into a particular mythical aspect of a complex work of media that happens to have some uniquely honest rhetoric.

Particularly I would like to draw attention to who’s not present in this marketing material ignores literally some of the most important characters in Nier: Automata.

This is why we don’t trust explanations for why female protagonists have to have convoluted sexy costumes…. because if nothing else it means that they’ve decided they’re comfortable with making that a cornerstone of their brand.

And… I don’t even know what to do with this except cringe.

– wincenworks

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bikiniarmorbattledamage:

grubwizard:

if your female character doesn’t look like she has lived the life she leads and you can’t get a sense for her actual personality by looking at her because you’re too focused on making her pretty and perfect and palatable it’s bad character design and you should feel bad

It’s worth noting that, generally speaking – this is why concept artists want to be concept artists. They want to convey feelings, story and inspire the imagination. It’s not uncommon for concept artists to do staggering amounts of research in order to find ways to convey a type of character in a type of time period.

So, if you come across a product created by a major studio where they have extensive executive and production staff – it’s safe to say that any aggressively boring female character designs are done at the behest of a particular type of individual pushing a ridiculous myth to try to seem like a genius.

It is important to call out this kind of absurdity, not just to try to reduce the amount of gratuitous objectification in media – but to also spare these poor artists the indignity of having a guy try to convince them he invented anime tiddy.

– wincenworks

Also to note, some creators try to “justify” their boring, pandering designs. Character design should speak for itself. You shouldn’t need someone there to explain it, unless there’s worldly lore the viewer needs to know (like family crests, or magic stuff, etc). 

Does the character look nothing like a sniper, while the creator insists that she is? Probably a bad design. Is the character’s backstory strangely convoluted, while also not impacting the character at all besides making an excuse for her to look hot? Probably a bad design. Is the character wearing clothes anachronistic with the setting, just to look hot? Definitely a bad design, unless she sneaked in some stockings from a parallel future universe. (Looking at you, Witcher 1.)

Don’t let em fool ya.

-Icy 

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Jennifer Scheurle on Twitter

Jennifer Scheurle on Twitter

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

This whole thread is definitely worth reading for a better understanding of The Creepy Marketing Guy and why so many games, particularly in early campaigns, seem to rely on generic strategies like sex sells.

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So the next time you see a promotion for a game that seems to focus entirely on boobs, butts and explosions then you can be sure that it’s because the marketing guys are getting paid for the campaign, not the sales of the game, and they probably got to interfere in the process of game development, messing with the original vision of the developers, to make that happen.

– wincenworks

Jennifer Scheurle’s Twitter | Website

I completely forgot it’s been over two years since we posted this. And, of course, still every word about the “sex sells”-driven marketing rings true. 

And since some iteration of “you just hate for women to be sexy!” continues to be an “argument” constantly brought up in defense of such advertising (and of in-game framing – just look at the predictable replies under our Tuesday reblog), let’s quote the closing tweet from the thread: 

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As we’ve been saying since the beginning of the sex sells tag, you won’t go far with “selling sex” unless sex is the actual product. And the Creepy Marketing Guy will laugh at you all the way to the bank. 

~Ozzie 

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This artwork by (nsfw-warning) @cutesexyrobutts2​ (who explicitly is paid money for doing NSFW pics) is not just concept art: it’s an impressive self-own by Mark Kern (GamerGater & general terrible person) AND a great illustration of the folly of the “sex sells” myth. (Turns out sex doesn’t even get attention anymore)

(Before we continue – for the benefit of those about to frantically type a comment – the artwork is very much on brand for the artist, and would even be very suitable in an explicitly erotic game or just as softcore erotic art.  The problem isn’t the art itself, it’s that it’s for a game about mechs vs kaiju)

This art was used heavily in a “buy now” promotion a few days prior to releasing  the first playable demo* of the game that’s been in development for three years.

As of time of writing:

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It’s probably good that the majority of people who like this art like it as a pinup and not as a promise of content to be in the game then.

If the most interesting thing about your game is a thing that isn’t central to the game or in even in it… a giant stop sign, clearly your game is going wrong. I mean at the very least, stop asking people to hand over their money for a product that’s guaranteed to disappoint. ***

This is of course, the most extreme example – but it’s probably something to consider the next time you see a game promoting itself with bizarrely incongruent sexual imagery, big promises and little substance.

– wincenworks

* Playable in the absolute vaguest sense possible – there’s only movement mechanics so it’s not even an alpha release. Incidentally, from the second indiegogo (the first one was just for the site):

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(Due to Mark’s forementioned affiliations – it is safe to say that a lot of these backers lost their shit at @femfreq​ for extending their deadline due to unforeseen support… I wonder what the difference could be…)

** The gameplay video has 5,681 views ** and 469 thumbs up but according to the site, “Em-8ER is a co-op game pitting hundreds of players against an invading NPC horde of aliens in a massive war.” So far he hasn’t clear 250 subs and is offering to maybe allow up to FIVE people people at a time on the same demo map. Good luck with match making.

*** To date Em8er as a product has had three indiegogos and is pitching for people to buy pre-order packages starting at $34.95 US and going up to…

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Most popular content (the sexy lady) possibly not included. 

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De-failing League of Angels Part 1: Stabby leather lingerie

Apparently we felt like taking a challenge the day we made those edits, because, well, it’s League of Angels, the epitome of creative bankruptcy in video game marketing. 

What I decided to redesign was this extra-stabby leather… um… outfit that I bingo’d before. 

After the initial shock of how uncomfortable that “armor” must be, the literally biggest thing that caught my attention in this artwork were her thighs. HOW FREAKING HUGE ARE THEY IN PROPORTION TO THE REST OF THE BODY? Unfortunately this seemed mostly like an epic fail at foreshortening rather than an attempt at ‘thicc’ fetish, let alone at earnest fat representation… So I decided to reverse that. 

Instead of shrinking the thighs to give her conventionally attractive model proportions, I readjusted the rest of the body to fit them, resulting in a chubbier figure.

Her arms now have some heft and her head isn’t tiny anymore.
Though most important changes went into the torso, which now has a human-sized waist and connects to other body parts at humanly possible angles, instead of those of a Tetris puzzle. 

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I am very satisfied with what I managed to do with that shameless boobplate. The idea was to still have it be a breast-oriented armor without making it look like two coconut halves with extra-emphasis on cleavage, and while retaining as much of the original’s decorative aesthetic. Basically a more sophisticated attempt at what I did with Regime Wonder Woman waaay back. 

I also slightly reshaped the stabby laced leather part under it, because it looked cool enough… just not on bare skin. Speaking of which, of course there was no way I left this poor woman with no padding, so in place of all this pale skin I painted white gambeson, retaining the original color scheme. She also now has full leather pants, because why wouldn’t she? 

All in all, I think I managed to improve this image significantly. Not all edits are seamless, but I’m quite proud of the way they came out. How do you guys like it? 

~Ozzie