-
We have a class on advertising. Unsurprisingly, the lecturer gave us a task to present the ads of some magazine, newspapaper, TV channel or some other media thingmajig.
Since my thinking is so inside the box that it pops out outside the box in some alternate dimension, I chose Playboy.
Now, a run-of-the-mill Playboy ad looks like this:
While a Playboy ad that confounds some girls looks like this:
And then I found this: a forum thread where a guy ask if there is a way to turn off the Playboy ads in Dead Rising 2. Why? Because his wife would get angry. Unsurprisingly he promptly gets laughed at and the thread derails itself into another meaningles quagmire.
Now, I do admit there are some games that tempt men with pixelated pornography. I mean, turn on Saboteur and - BAM - facefull of digital tits. However, Dead Rising 2 is not like this. Here’s an example of the ads.
If you have ever played Dead Rising 2, you probably didn’t notice them. My room mate didn’t, neither did I. Why? Because at any random moment Dead Rising 2 looks like this:
It’s 60% zombies, 30% ultraviolence and 10% places sort of maybe suitable for ads. That you do not see because you’re preoccupied CHAINSAWING PEOPLE. If blood and rotten limbs aren’t flying everywhere, you’re playing it wrong and your grandma is ashamed of you. No wonder the ads go unnoticed.
And if you do spend enough time staring at them to anger your missus, then it’s clearly your problem and not the game developers attempt to create a digital Sodom and Gomorrah.
On the other hand, if your wife catches a glimpse of some zombie fluid splattered playboy ad that shows less skin than Facebook pics of a statistical 15-year-old, then…it’s still your problem for marrying someone that crazy. What were you thinking?
The whole thing wouldn’t offend even the Pope himself. He would probably be more worried about the mental health of a person, who fusses over some ad in a game where you’re dispatching zombies in extremely gruesome ways.
I’ll go and assume that the guy living under the iron stiletto of female oppression is American. I mean, they are the people that censored “Witcher”…ok, bad example. They censored tits in Giants: Citizen Kabuto, a game rated M, T and all the other “I think were way past birds and bees” audience codes.
(warning: the following picture could be offensive to that guy’s wife)
Well, that just makes me want to sodomize everyone I see.
It’s like the time when they had a scandal about sex in Mass Effect, when the supposed whistle blower had not even played it. Or about the “Hot Coffee Mod”, when you actually had to mod the game to see some horribly rendered sex. In a game where you engage in murder, theft, arson and other kinds of fun. And it’s all fine and dandy, because the game is marked M and 18+. Sure, the kids get it on the internet, but so can they get hardcore pornography.
And all this sex related immaturity. Oh, how shocking it was during the Nipplegate. Pah, I remmember when I was a wee lad we had a lady strip during a prime time talkshow that I watched with my parents. I was ever so unimpressed. And that was before the internet made me so desensitized about sex. And no one raised a shitstorm back then. Here, in a conservative Eastern European country that spent 50 years under Soviet oppression and thought that an orgasm was a part of a missile aimed at the workers by the decadent West. Americans, living in the land of the free, are shocked out of their liberty and apple pies by a flash of a nipple. Where did the times of Porky’s Revenge and Life of Brian (not an american movie, but still, an old one), movies with more naked scenes than art flicks, go? How?
Then again, I’m ranting about some stupid little forum post, so the joke’s probably on me.
