submitted:

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?)

Yet another arms race of terrible advertising for painfully generic games has escalated again.  And why would a game like GodGame of ThronesWar engage in this kind of ridiculous nonsense?

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-somegeneric-sexy-lady-artandinnuendo-taglineon-aweb-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.

~Ozzie

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