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

First Zelda commercial sold me

[setzman]

A couple of links (...) so you can see it for yourself:

http://www.fileplanet.com/files/110000/112186.shtm l

http://zc.zeldaxtreme.com/movies.shtml

and google

If fileplanet doesn't work for you, please use zeldaxtreme or google, but don't slashdot any of these fan sites.

Re:First Zelda commercial sold me

[JFMulder]

Does anyone remember that ad about a guy running in the dark screaming Zelda at the top of his lungs? I only realized years later that it was a Zelda ad, since when I saw it I didn't even knew what was a Nintendo, I was too busy playing with my Intellivision. ;)

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."

For some examples...

[WiredOni]

Try gametrailers.com's tv spot section.

I thought the one for GTA III was nicely done. It was just like a movie trailer; it showed some of the action, showed some of the cut scenes, along with clips of audio which gave us a feel for the plot and game.

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.

Do it like the Japanese

[bconway]

Video game advertisers in the US really need to take a lesson from the Japanese. If I saw commercials like this on TV, they'd get my money every time.

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.

One of the funniest ever.

[crazyphilman]

Now, I never played "Magic, the Gathering" because I never got into the card games and could never figure out the attraction (I'm more of a first person shooter kinda guy). But their commercials were hilarious.

There was one where a bunch of scientists are looking down on a lawyer type through a set of high-set glass windows. He was in the middle of a big, roundish room with huge steel doors in the back, and he was basically sitting around, fiddling with his watch, etc. So one of the scientist types says, "Ok, bring in the troll." They press a button and open the doors, and a huge, at least fifteen foot tall troll with a huge club comes in and roars. The lawyer shrieks, and the next thing you see is a view through the windows over the scientist's shoulders, as the lawyer flies up into the air, spilling papers all over the place. A scientist takes a note down on a pad, saying, "Troll beats lawyer..." (or words to that effect).

Those commercials were FUNNY.

Old sega commercials

[gades]

I really liked the old SEGA commercials. They seemed to be pretty popular with the target age group. Gotta love it when that guy would scream "SEGA!" at the end =)
some old sega aommercials