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History Proves That Videogame Ads Are Awful
headcold writes "Scott Sharkey of 1UP just penned his third retrospective of Game Ads, The Best Worst Ads 3, this time culling the tragedies from a stack of old CGWs. Where the two earlier installments dealt with the atrocious videogame ads from the late eighties and early nineties, respectively, this episode explores computer game ads from the mid-to-late nineties — proving, at last, that advertising sucked as recently as eight years ago."
"Oh god, that woman is John Romero!"
Thank god I wasn't drinking any coffee.... at any rate, I've now found a new sig... score :)
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
a story about terrible advertisement in video games that strewn over 12 ad laden pages.
The next article will be about proving that oranges are orange.
Let's face it: ads suck. Sometimes, rarely, we might be happy to have watched one. But usually, and I mean a vast majority of the time, we just want ads to go away.
For video game ads the only thing I take from them is:
- The name
- The genre
- The platform
Ads for video games are like pictures of women in magazines like Maxim -- they're air-brushed extravagances of the real thing that in no way resemble what the actual woman would look like without all the extra work. Of course, YMMV.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
At least, they didn't say that video game ads cause violence.
However, that ad for Guitar Hero 2 with the two teens playing it in their basement, and the walls fall away to reveal the stereotypical screaming crowd of fans while they pull of every manor of rock god move, that's a damn fine ad. Gets the idea across about what playing the game is like quickly and in an entertaining fashion.
I've also been seeing the World of Warcraft spot that is basically a clip from Office Space, with Peter playing WoW instead of Tetris. Damn funny.
So, we know that videogame ads rocked as recent as 8 minutes ago.
1) How does one or two lone examples allow us to make sweeping generalizations?
2) People don't post on Slashdot because they're smart.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
1: The Toyota MR2 - one of my favorite cars, but I'm pretty sure I would not have bought one based on this commercial alone:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fHCVFrf5FKg
2: Nissan 280Z - check out this guys mustache! I'm pretty sure this guy was the basis for Ben Stiller's character in Dodgeball:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=owK0sWEMN3k
3: The worst of them all - the Buick Grand National. I haven't been able to make i through the whole commercial it's so embarrassing just to watch...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drBYWdKDCfg
Does anyone else think that the Gears of War commercial is one of the best, if not THE best, video game commercial ever made? Very memorable...
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
2) People don't post on Slashdot because they're smart.
Hey! No I'm...doesn't!
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
It's the Legend Of Zelda and it's really rad,
...I'll stop myself.
Those monsters from Ganon are pretty bad.
/* No Comment */
"shorter, and quicker"? If your time is that goddamn valuable, maybe you shouldn't be reading an article about old videogame ads.
Video game commercials are still bad, in the most part. It's only this year I've noticed video game commercials start to use actual in-game footage, rather than pre-rendered crap.
Using pre-renders is also a big problem on the net. When I hear about Gran Turismo 5 (or whatever), why do they always show us great pre-rendered shots that are totally unrepresentative of what you'll see in the game? I don't want to see a preview video of the cars from the outside.. I want to see the actual gameplay footage. Yet, people drool over the pre-renders, and then when the real game hits.. it's never as good.
I guess this is a problem with all advertising, however.. but it seems particularly dishonest with videogames to me.
Hey, clearly as an ad, that one kicked ass! Jesus, decades later you can still remember it? That's fricking genius.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I particularly liked the way he bitched about the lack of the female assassin characters in Half-Life, and used this as his entire basis for mocking the ad, and then obviously got emailed by a hundred thousand gamers saying "Dude, did you even play the game?"
I can't imagine anyone who actually played that bit of HL to forget the ninjas - it wasn't like they were easy to kill. Most people's first encounter with them was accompanied by the words "What the hell was that?!", usually quickly followed by some kind of death.
I also like the whole post-modern uber-cool irony employed about how dumb and shallow marketing people are to use sex to sell ads, and then to say something like "That's an extraordinarily ugly woman."
And the bonus of a "John Romero's hair is like a girl's hair!" joke. Maybe the brief for this piece was that his jokes had to be of the same vintage as the adverts.