Nathan Blades looks at the polarising RPG for PS3 & 360.
Jason Rose brings us a buyers' guide to smartphones available this Christmas.
Nathan Blades covers some console and industry-defining titles for the Sony PlayStation
Nathan Blades burns rubber in Mario kart 7.
On the other side you have more ‘hard core’ gamers. This is seen in the proliferation of First person military shooters, real time strategy games and MMORPGS (massively multiplayer, online role-playing games). This is the territory, like Lynx Africa, still associated with hormonal virginal teenage boys. What exacerbates and continues this divide is the advertisement of these games. I’ll take two to show my point: Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, and Wii Fit.
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is always a game that is going to have a large male following. Sauntering round Renaissance Rome like you own the place, assassinating corrupt Cardinals coming out of nowhere, employing mini-me assassins to kill those you can’t be bothered about - all the while building up an economic empire. So obviously the advert for ACB shows our hero conducting his daily task to the oh-so Renaissance sounding tune of… Tinie Tempah?! Now I’m all for mash-ups of the medieval and modern, but this feels totally forced, like a rhino in a sorting cupboard. It feels like the advertisers have just gone through a list of things they think boys like (rap music - check; killing people - check) and just made an advert to appeal on a base, Pavlovian level. However there are lots of nice shots of Rome and no blood so parents will still buy it when their thirteen year old child begs them hard enough so they can digitally enact their fantasy.
Wii Fit, on the other hand, firmly places itself at the level of those for whom exercise is a dirty word, and who were picked last at school for football. Louise Redknapp personally vouches for the efficiency of the product, especially when trying to raise two kids, and this is the excuse to have her gyrating on the Wii Fit platform in lycra. Why is she wearing lycra if she can only do 10 minutes at a time (presumably this includes time to change)? I am certain within the bounds of probability that Wii Fit is not Louise Redknapp’s primary workout tool and I bet that most people watching it feel the same way, so why have her endorse it? Because Nintendo are marketing this as a fad; hoping to sell enough copies to people so desperate to burn off the chub and students running out of drinking games to play they’ll literally buy anything. This is the gaming equivalent of one of those nauseating bio-yoghurt commercials.
Unfortunately, as long as the current gaming divide between casual and serious remains so evident, advertising in this manner will continue.
You must log in to submit a comment.
