Saw this ad on TV tonight and thought of you. I don’t so much mind the teasing “come and play with me” pitch – I’ve burned out my get-offended circuit for that – but walking through the battlefield in that dress? (And wouldn’t it have been more interesting if they’d put her in good armor?)
Because whether they use sexual imagery or franchise names to sell, these products are basically horrible rip offs employing graphics and game mechanics that were exciting in 2001.
This is not to say that a simple game mechanic can’t be fun and engaging, I mean look at Candy Crush Saga’s success. The main issue here is that these are basically stripped back versions that – instead using sophisticated AI and scaling difficulty – they just use other players (which means that they also want you to be both part of the product and pay for the privilege of doing so).
And this is why “sex sells“ for these games is a myth – it’s simply the company with the biggest market exposure gets the most sales. After all, they games are all more or less the same and are only playable before the volume of unbearable jerk players reaches critical mass.
– wincenworks
What I find particularly ironic about it… That’s not your typical cheap “sex sells” slap-some–generic-sexy-lady-art–and–innuendo-tagline–on-a–web-banner ad, but a TV ad! They actually invested money into shooting this at a relatively high production value… And still decided that making it all about a sexy lady selling you The Thing was the best way to market their game.
how to “pander to sjws / feminists”: in depth characters and storytelling, non objectified female characters, characters of all manners of races, identities and backgrounds
how to pander to gamer boys: make titty wobble
Wow no wonder they don’t want to make games more accessible to women, they’d have to reveal their lack of actual talent.
Then they end up promoting the wrong people and we end up with this guy.
– wincenworks
Posted on
‘Sex’ doesn’t sell. Erosion of female self esteem does. The feeling of superiority over women does. Turning women into ‘things’ to be studied, scrutinized & judged and then calling it ‘sex’ does.
I find it amusing that these games go into predictable advertising spirals. It happened with Evony and now it’s happening with League of Angels.
First it’s sexy images with generic taglines.
Then it’s softcore porn images with taglines befitting hardcore porn.
Then it’s annoying as affiliate/spamming programs.
It’s pretty much the predictable pattern of a mediocre product that’s sustaining by the wishful thinking of executives and investors who are unable to learn from history.
The problem with crediting “sexing up” the game with increase in sales is that it assumes sex was the only avenue of generating interest – a theory that doesn’t hold up when you consider that some of the biggest selling game types (flight simulators, first person shooters, side scrolling platformers) often don’t include any sexual angle at all.
Back in 1970, Marvel comics experimented with putting Conan the Barbarian in comic format. After the first few issues sales began to decline and the writer, Roy Thomas (who loved Conan), went to Stan Lee (who was indifferent to Conan) for advice. Stan looked at the covers and the sales, and told them to shift away from putting animals on the covers and instead use more humanoid monsters.
They followed Stan’s advice: Sales went up again and the comic continued for twenty-three years. However you don’t see many people campaigning that “Humanoid monsters sell!“ then trying to fit them into all marketing regardless of product or target market. (And sex obviously wasn’t selling Conan, they had bikini damsels after all)
Conan the Barbarian, in his loincloth and flexing his muscles, looked like a poor man’s Tarzan (which had been the popular comic fifty years ago) when battling animals – but when battling humanoid monsters he looked like a more mature fantasy narrative that was new and unique in comics at the time.
The only narrative that sexing/male gazing up a game really provides is “This game is made to cater to the fantasy of straight men.” So if swapping out your old narrative for this one increases interest and sales dramatically – then your old narrative must have been pretty boring.
There have been numerous warrior women in video games over the years. Most of them have been under marketed, relegated to sidelines, ignored or otherwise mishandled due to general fear that they weren’t meeting the “make straight men feel important” factor that modern markets cling to as their sacred idol.
Cate Archer is essentially a light-hearted, distaff James Bond in the No One Lives Forever franchise dresses in the attire of a fashionable lady in the 60s. Often sexy but out of character for the production. Monolith would later try to replace her with “Contract J.A.C.K.” and have since lost the paperwork so nobody knows who owns the intellectual property.
Mona Sax was, until the end sequence of Max Payne 2, a badass assassin who liked her tight tops but also pants and a jacket to side her gun (Mona starred in more or less equal space with Max on the cover of Max Payne 2, but is barely even mentioned in Max Payne 3).
Aveline de Grandpré dresses in badass leather when assassinating and very becoming gowns when socializing as a noblewoman. It was originally released on a handheld device and if you want to play it on the PC or console that you play the rest of the Assassin’s Creed franchise on you need to buy it online at very specific places that weren’t marketed. (PS3) (X-Box 360) (PC)
Left 4 Dead has Zoey and Rochelle are both attractive young women who possess the will and the skills to survive the zombie apocalypse.
Casandra Pentaghast in Dragon Age certainly does not wear bikini armor or anything exploitative – but there’s no shortage of folks who find her incredibly attractive.
It’s actually not that difficult for creators to make female characters who are sexually attractive without going into bikini armor or other exploitative tropes. I mean, if you give a woman agency, ability and personality – odds are good people will find it sexy.
Essentially the problem is that the gaming industry, and many other mediums, are reluctant to take the risk of incorporating different perspectives and different priorities over “games to reassure straight white men that they’re straight and awesome”.
