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?

Comments

SOCOM

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

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."

Are they that bad?

[Otter]

I haven't seen either but the Everquest one doesn't sound too bad.

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."

The commercials that really piss me off...

[Incoherent07]

are the ones that don't actually show gameplay footage at all. This was an especially big problem in the PS1 generation, where you'd have commercials composed entirely of the game's FMV. It's false advertising at best when you play off the entire game to look like the FMV.

And then, of course, there are the completely unrelated commercials, but those have always been around even before video games.

Haven't yet found a commercial that sold me

[Cecil]

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.