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.
Oh, man, you have NO idea:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2002/mar/15/games.advertising
Oh my god, this is dark.
Bro, using ads in the graveyards this is new for me…
I bet this will make a comeback…
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.
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”.
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’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.
Fair
🤤
looking in your direction, clive rosfield
I’m ok with that
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.
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 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.
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.
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…
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?
How does that comment invalidate the previous one? If anything it actually reinforces it. Are you just looking for an excuse to shame someone?
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.
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.
Media today might be less sexist but I think part of it is also that it became drastically more sex averse. Mortal Kombat is gorier than ever for anyone to see, but god forbid anything shows a nipple.
Characters with big breasts must be inherently sexist, or else we can’t explain why characters who used to have big breasts now need to have them toned down.
However, it’s perfectly okay if the supposedly feminist prequel you’re going to release has references to the female player character being about to be sexually abused if you lose, because nothing speaks about female empowerment like threatening the player with turning their character into a SA victim if they don’t play well enough.
The thing that gets me about the Tomb Raider reboot is they toned down the sex appeal, but apparently graphically brutalizing Lara is perfectly okay.
Sexy Lara: Sexist!
Beating the ever loving shit out of Lara: Not sexist!
but why is he wearing a diaper?
No kinkshaming please…
Since she’s a a Tomb Raider, a dungeon crawler, a spelunker, does that mean he wants her to peg him? Color me interested.
Am I the only one cringing at the perspective in the mirror more than literally anything else in the ad?
Man, 90s video game ads were wild lmao
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.
I’ll fight anyone who says 1998 is retro. I’m getting old, but give me a few more years damn.
If you really want to get depressed, Farmville is probably retro for some people.
Bro, we lost that fight. I was watching a Youtube video of a guy clearing games from his Steam backlog and introduced one with, “So, many of you watching probably weren’t alive when this game came out. Everyone talks about what a classic this is, but I don’t think I’ve met anyone who has actually played this game.”
I died a little inside when it turned out he was talking about the first Half-Life.
I understand saying you don’t feel like 2010 is retro, but 1998? That’s been retro for a long time. You’re in a really extreme place in your head when you stick to not calling something that’s 25 years old retro.
Hell, I can remember when the word retro meant something new inspired by something older. Now it just means old / classic.
Those few years between 1992-1998 were as … game-changing … for games as probably the two decades that followed. We started it with side scrollers, Dune and Doom and ended it with Diablo II, StarCraft and Half-Life.
For the kids here who haven’t experienced Half-Life, you should play Black Mesa. For the retro farts who have played Half-Life, you should also play Black Mesa. It’s the Half-Life you couldn’t have in 1998 because of the slow hardware. I weeped from feels playing it.
I spent sooooooooo much time on StarCraft and Diablo II. First video game I remember playing was Wolfenstein 3D, then Duke Nukem. Found RTS soon after.
I remember upgrading my PC from 4MB to 8MB, just to be able to play Duke3D, cost me a pretty penny as well
Old fart here. I played Wolfenstein 3d, then played the shit out of Doom and Duke Nukem 3d but missed out on Half life until recently. Knowing the context of the era it came out in, I can totally see how amazing it must have been. Hell, it’s still incredibly fun for me in this era.
Blizzard used to give me such warm fuzzies.
Now they just price gouge you, and sexuality harass the employees.
You and me both, but to be fair it’s a year closer to the creation of console gaming to modern day. So I’ll let it pass.
People who call my music vintage or classic can get right the fuck back, though.
Bro that’s so last century
Last millennium, even.
Hate to break it to you, but they play rock from the 90s and 00s on the CLASSIC rock stations now.
You mean the late 1900’s
Bro, 2010 is retro now
If in 1998 you would have argued that 1972 is retro, then I’m sorry to tell you that 1998 is retro
I thought they were cringy even then.
I was hitting puberty, this was prime material
I’m still waiting for John Romero to make us all his bitch.
He can’t do it without his friend Superfly.
and above all - sexy new outfits
The most important part of a game.
It was a super gross and embarassing era.
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
