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On The Quality Of Videogame Commercials
Thanks to GameSpy for their opinion piece discussing why many videogame TV commercials sell the product short. They cite the Final Fantasy Tactics Advance spot, in which: "Three kids, pretending to be three characters from FFTA, were pretending to man phone lines, urging kids to call in to help them progress in their quest", and a recent Everquest PS2 commercial in which "a businessman, a slacker/skater, a punk girl, and some other stereotype get together to play EQ after the businessman makes a call on his cell phone, proclaiming, 'It's time to slay the dragon.'", suggesting that "If gaming is to truly grow up... then it really needs to get its act together with its commercials." Which game TV commercials work for you, and what do companies need to do to improve them?
The PS2 online commercial where the guys are getting smacked down by the actual Navy Seals is priceless.
Fragged: "Who are these guys?"
Seal: "Like shooting fish in a barrel."
MORTAR COMBAT!
And both are certainly better than that athlete's foot cream commercial where the animated fungus rips off a toenail and starts creating boils on the exposed flesh. With that one, I usually close my eyes first and only then blindly grab the remote and hit a random button.
So, no, I game commercials don't strike me as worse than anything else. The best ever, by the way, were the old 3dfx commercials, "We have a chip with undreamed -of power. It can make the world better in all sorts of ways. So we're using it to play games."
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Right. Great way of showing the game.
I hate when they just show FMV scenes, or scenes not even from the game. Wow me with what the game actually looks like.
And then, of course, there are the completely unrelated commercials, but those have always been around even before video games.
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Game commercials in the UK are truly awful. I hesitate to say that they're consistently the worst commercials, but I can't immediately think of any worse ones. (Okay I've thought of one now, a pan-European tampon advert that was dubbed very badly, but that's one ad out of thousands.)
:-)
Suffice to say that game ads seem more concerned with showing the publisher's logo and announcing their (generally cringesome) slogan with a laughable voice-over. I always feel kinda embarrassed when a game ad comes on TV because they're just so silly. They would have been appropriate, maybe, 10-15 years ago, but they're unsuitable for the multi-billion dollar industry that games are nowadays.
Methinks most game ads are dreamt up by the publisher, not a professional ad agency that might actually have a clue how to, ya know, sell stuff to people. No doubt a lot of them are produced in-house too.
And the worst offender? Well, I imagine the boys and girls at Electronic Arts are already waving frantically so let's all wave back now. Hi guys! Your ads suck!
That Grand Theft Auto 3 commercial with the mafia guy saying "You do this and you'll be a made man" that ends with a car jumping over the footbridge accompanied by opera music. I like my video games to have a story and Damn if there wasn't a good narrative to that commercial. That commercial made me want to get a PlayStation just to get that game.
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I have trouble believing that people can actually watch some contentless logos and pictures and find that it somehow entices them to buy a product in any way shape or form. I know it's supposedly true, but I simply can't fathom it.
It does admittedly make people realize that this product exists, but I can't imagine anyone wanting to buy it on anything other than it's merits. I don't see how having a sexy woman or a hilarious concept in your ad will help. But then I guess that's why I'm not in marketing.
Personally, I've given up on the "push" style of advertising, and gone with "pull" instead, especially for things like video games. Check out companies I like to see if they've released anything new, check review sites (admittedly a form of advertising, but with a lot more content and a lot less biased, although that's not neccesarily saying much.) It's kind of the Internet way of doing things; Go out and do it yourself, rather than waiting for someone to shove things in your face until you see one you like, which may not be for a very long time.
I dunno. I just don't see how video game commercials, of all things, have any effect on a largely intellegent and information-enabled group of gamers. There are just so many better ways to do it.
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All of the GTA ads that I saw were great. They were classy aand had real productions values (just like the games)
You get out of the trailer thinking that "this game isn't like any other" since they don't try to pander to anybody. Plus they say right in it that it's a "Mature" game
I enjoyed the DOA3 and DOAXBV commercials. They were funny and surprisingly honest, plus they showed actual game footage.
The commercials I really hate? The ones that show gameplay footage but then show the sections of the game where the framerate drops to the 10-20 FPS range. If you're trying to sell me a game, for goodness sake, don't show me how it sucks!
It occurs to me that the 30 seconds or so an ad lasts isn't the ideal medium for selling games.
People like gamespot, ign, penny-arcade and the myriad of smaller more specialised sites are the only people I go to when looking to buy a game. Because they either give me the article+screenshots+video clips I need to make my mind up or they give me the opinion of people who's opinion I've learned to trust.
30 seconds of eye candy just isn't ever going to convince me to part with 60.