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'Misleading' COD2 Ads Pulled From UK
GamesIndustry.biz reports that Activision has been ordered not to air Call of Duty 2 ads in the U.K. that use pre-rendered imagery to sell the game. Three Television viewers apparently complained to that country's Advertising Standards Authority that the imagery constituted misleading advertising. From the article: "The adjudication is likely to send shockwaves through the industry as it focuses on the question of whether pre-rendered footage is an acceptable representation of a computer game - in its defence, Activision didn't argue that it was, but rather that using pre-rendered footage was "common practice"."
Surly this was dealt with eons ago (in computer terms). All the old CPC tape covers had a very tiny disclaimer on the bottom saying that the screen shots were taken form a C64 or some other computer with better graphics.
The box cover was a picture that claimed to be an actual screen shot from the game. They made a big deal about it, as few games had graphics worth sticking on a box at the time. Buit it wasn't actual game graphics. There were weapons and ships on the HUD that didn't exist in the game. There were also asteroids featured prominently in the shot, and they were much more detailed than the asteroids in the game. It's about time the ad monkeys got called on their BS.
I remember seeing those ads here in Canada. What pissed me off the most was that they showed a review snippet that said something along the lines of, "visually breathtaking." I kept wondering, if the graphics are so great, why don't they just show them in the commercial?
Still, ask any Playstation owner about graphics and they'll swear on their life that Final Fantasy 7 had much better graphics than, say, Mario 64, as they gesture wildly at screenshots of FF7's (admittedly amazing) prerendered cutscenes. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
Reminds me of when I was a kid buying C64 games, they ALL had screen shots from the Amiga version. I fell for it once with some car game.. I remember my buddy and I taking turns playing it to the end thinking we were going to be rewarded with the "better graphics". I was sorely dissapointed. At least back then you could return opened software to EB.
-Guns kill people like spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat-
A fast Google did not turn up any results, but I do not believe that any of that is legal for food marketing in the US. They do specifically mention advertising in that article, but I do not believe that is the case. More so some thing used for cookbooks.
I recall viewing a show on the Food Network which said that images of food for advertising have to be the real deal. They may dig through 10 shipping crates of hamburger buns for a single McDonalds advertisement, but it's a bun you _could_ get. That show specifically pointed out them digging through multiple boxes of cereal to find the best looking pieces for the image on the front.
Can the milk be glue based? I believe they mentioned that it was, I cant fully recall, though.
If companies were required to show actual in-game footage, we wouldn't have to ask if the PS3 footage was real or not. Remember the next-gen Madden footage versus what actually came out? THAT was misleading.