Published 2009-07-21 11:35PM by Connor Beaton
Some of you might be aware of Evony, an online game with a rather interesting ad campaign. Others might not. Well, hopefully this article, in the form of a memoir of last month, will enlighten you to the tastelessness of online game advertising in the 21st Century.
On June 3rd, I saw the first ad for the online game Evony. What is Evony, you might ask? Well, I was wondering the exact same thing for quite a while before I signed up. The ad was definitely not informative; it was one thing, and one thing only: it was degrading. The ad depicted a computer-generated woman with unreasonably large breasts threatened with a sword, with large text superimposed on top reading “Help! Save the Queen!”
What the hell kind of game was this? Were we entering some kind of age where H-games like RapeLay are advertised on perfectly respectable websites? No, Evony, fortunately, is not a hentai game. It’s simply a Flash game that allows players to build up a city and form a guild and so on, pretty much like an online version of Settlers. Still, the ad was a little disconcerting and so I chose to ignore it.
On June 6th, a mere three days after seeing the original ad, I encountered it again, but this time, it was definitely different. The Queen’s pose was altered, the angle of the sword was altered, and... the amount of clothes the Queen was wearing was altered. The amount was lowered, to be more accurate, which begs the question: what the hell kind of advertising agency uses a progressive strip tease as a marketing campaigns for a city-building game?
June 7th, ad shows again. Well, it’s not the same Queen any more, but we’re still seeing a lot of skin there, not to mention gratuitous cleavage.
June 10th, and I don’t see how the **** the advertisers managed to come up with these two designs. Two Oriental girls staring at each others breasts? Yes, that is very representative of this game. There’s also another variant of the ad appearing on June 10th where what appears to be a dark-haired belly dancer is posed suggestively towards the viewer.
What’s with this? If the guys responsible for these tasteless, degrading ads are reading this, please just tell me, what drugs were you on when you made these?
