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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"."
Those ads ran in the states with the words "Actual Game Footage" on the screen.
:/
Well, it was an "actual" cut-scene from the game.
It would be nice to see the end of this practice.... not only because it will make the ads more honest, but it will mean game devs might finally stop filling up disks with little video clips in lieu of playable content.
Personally, I thought the little cut-scenes in Ms. Pac-Man were too long. If I ever gotta sit through the opening scenes of GTA:SA again, I'm going to pop a gasket.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I was one of the people responsible for the UK's PCWorld having to remove their advert for a Centrino laptop that promised "the internet wherever you are"
http://www.proweb.co.uk/~matt/asa_pcworld_haha.ti
It is in our hands as knowledgable people to notice such rip-offs and report them :
http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Bloody right an' all. For ages I've been cursing ad's for not showing what the game actually looks like. Even the use of in-game cutscenes is misleading to the uninitiated as they might believe that all the game was that pretty. What's to stop me producing a game that's text-only and then including a 20-minute MPEG cutscene halfway through it which was made by some major CGI studio? The cutscenes are NOT representative of the game as a whole and therefore should not be allowed to be used in a 30-second advert.
I actually noticed the initial adverts for Call of Duty 2 and had this exact concern. I don't buy games any more (nothing worth buying, nothing decent enough to play them on, no way I'm paying that amount just for a game) but it was obvious to me that there was no way the game could be anything like the adverts showed, even though they looked like they *could* be to the average parent/new gamer.
I'm glad this has been upheld and hopefully this will make companies spend more time making the entire game look and play better rather than just spending the money on pre-rendered cutscenes.
So wait... When McDonalds shoots photos of their giant delicious burgers, they don't just grab the next big mac off the line and snap a shot? They grill a prime patty to perfection with delicately sliced tomatos and onions and put it together like it was "staged" or something!? BOO!
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.
Disclaimers hardly make up for deliberately misleading. And it's quite obvious that some people will beleive the game looks that good, simply because otherwise, why would the advertisers not show some of the actual playable game footage?
The Advertising Standards Authority has fairly strict guidelines that ensure that the public are not misinformed. Is this in any way a bad thing?
Is it deceptive? (Yes, by your own admission.)
Is deceptive advertising illegal? (Usually yes.)
Therefore, the ads should have been pulled, as they were being illegally deceptive. That it's "common practice" does not excuse the fact. If it were common practice to murder your enemies, should that then be legal?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I think this makes the offence so much worse. Since it's plausable that what you see on the screen is what you'll get, then you're far more likely to believe what you see is what you'll get. They can give incrimental improvements in smoothness and texture then when you plunk your money down, you'll find out it isn't what you had thought it would be.
Put another way, If I told you I saw batman today, you'd know it was some kind of joke. But if I told you I saw the president, it's plausible, especially if you live in the DC area like I do. Saying I saw the president wouldn't be a joke. It would be a lie.
TW
It is true that experienced gamers can, and usually do, see through these pre-rendered ads as a bunch of BS, but then again, the experienced gamers already learned about that game online or through their magazine subscriptions to EGM or PSM or other gaming M's. These television ads are targeted at Joe-Couch-Potato, or more obviously, Joe-Couch-Potato Jr. And since the majority of people who would need TV ads to learn about games are usually the ones who are gullible and don't even understand what pre-rendered is, it is important for TV ads to not be misleading. And passing pre-rendered movies off as implied gameplay footage definately falls into the category of misleading.
If video games are created by teams of designers and artists, how are they not art??? www.skylarscaling.com
Any non-solid in food advertising (hamburger ketchup, cereal milk) is actually glue.
Advertisers are much more creative than that actually. Cereal milk is often glue but there are far more diverse and creative techniques out there for food ads. Ice cream is usually a concoction derived from potato flakes (though not quite made into the same mashed potatoes tha the manufacturer intended). Bread is rarely if ever real fresh bread--it is usually shellacked with a "tasty" varnish and has the consistency of croutons (except more durable--artsy-crafty folks are probably familiar with that sort of modelling dough used to make those ornaments that look like real pastries...). Actual use of real food is pretty commonplace however it is generally room temperature and sometimes horribly altered. As a rule, anything that LOOKS good and can stand up to studio lighting and sit for extended periods is what goes. That is why most "fragile" food is totally fake.
Other industries are "extra flattering" as well...show me an automobile ad that showcases the base model during normal use--it is always the one equipped with the handsome upgraded appearance package and driven by a "professional driver on a closed course". Clothing companies use fashion models that are far from the average physique, and you are kidding yourselves if you think that every one of them is wearing a regular size right off the rack in a store--in a lot of cases the clothes are tailored to fit the specific model. I'd say that the more expensive the clothing label, the more likely clothes have been specially altered to fit the model for the ads.
The video game industry has operated this way since the beginning and I remember in the early 80s that there was a fracas about the use of "artist's renditions" in print ads. Some companies relented and pit in very fine print somewhere in the ad "artist's rendition - actual appearance may vary". One company (Parker Brothers? The publisher of the Popeye and Frogger games for home systems) took out a series of full page ads that showed the same screenshot for ALL the systems (so you'd see variances bewteen the Atari 2600, 5200, Colecovision, Commodore, Apple, etc)--implicitly boasting that they weren't ashamed of their graphics and suggesting that they made an honest effort in developing for ALL platforms while some other game makers did not.
I think the practice was somewhat dishonest but understandable back in the day, since the hardware wasn't capable of making very exciting visuals on its own, and the market was fragmented amongst more platforms with a greater range of capabilities (bigger titles that were published for many platforms would have to resort to full page ads as described above to be completely truthful in their marketing). Today, however, such practice is inexcusable--it is plain dishonesty. Video displays do not melt like ice cream under studio lights, consoles are powerful enough to render great graphics, and the differences in contemporary platforms are pretty much NEVER evident in screenshots or quick flashes of action in ads. By relying on pre-rendered footage and artist renditions modern game publishers are just playing a crooked game of bait and switch. Old habits die hard though--much harder than the justifications for those habits.