The 90’s were just better.
People could have a joke and a laugh without everyone being so serious about everything and getting offended.
I’ve been joking and laughing with people for decades since then (today even), and nobody was all serious or offended!
And it isn’t even with a group of old white men all the time! Lol
The world has got far more serious.
My comment was obviously exaggerating for effect. You’d have to be stupid to think I meant there are no jokes anymore.
Honestly, might be nostalgic for guys, but as a girl who was playing games in this era, it made me feel like I wasn’t a part of the culture, rarely if ever were there ads marketed towards me, but man were there a lot of half naked ladies. Glad we don’t do this as much, but god this caused a lot of younger girls to feel ashamed of playing games “for boys”.
It’s not really nostalgic for me, TBH. It’s actually kind of embarrassing that marketing like this existed and that it worked. I love T&A as much as the next female-loving guy, but ads like this are condescending. But again, they sold units…
There were lots of half-naked men, too. Including in this ad.
Most of them in games were more male fantasy stuff…ripped, shirtless dudes with big weapons. Not really appealing to most women, but checks the “I want to BE him” aspect for lots of guys, lol
Yeah, but that is just another facet of marketing for men. Sexy dress-up vs tighty whities. Definitely not intended to get women interested.
Are you really out here in public view still trying to use the “not all men” to tell a woman her feelings are invalid?
How does that comment invalidate the previous one? If anything it actually reinforces it. Are you just looking for an excuse to shame someone?
No, I was supporting the previous comment. The idea that the ads were mostly about “male fantasy”, and probably wouldn’t be (positively) nostalgic for most women gamers.
Yeah as a boy I didn’t like these either. They were sexy but made me feel a little weird. I was young enough not to realize it was targeting only boys, but now that I’m older I think that’s why I didn’t like them. I wasn’t in to sex at the time.
I was a senior in high school at the time and even back then I thought this kind of advertising was crass, gross, and unnecessary. No nostalgia here, just second-hand embarrassment.
Yeah. Even just around a decade ago I’d explain the demographics shift to more women gamers to clients and they’d not believe it.
Stereotypes stick around for a long time, even when (or maybe especially when) untrue.
It’s a shame that “girl gamers” were considered such a rarity when it really seemed like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Oh, a game with only male protagonists with activities only primarily associated with boys doesn’t have many girls playing it? I guess girls aren’t that into games and we should double down on the focus on dudes.”
As a result, the market effectively abandoned around half of two generations of a potential continued audience and had a significantly reduced pool of interested labor to make games.
It’s a bit frustrating given my love for games that they could likely have advanced even further had it not been an exclusionary industry for as long as it was (though that can be said about pretty much every business vertical in existence too given our generalized collective history of exclusion).
The weird thing is, as a guy, I never even paid attention to the sexualized stuff in games. To me these are like two different brain activities. So, as far as I’m concerned, there was never any point in this kind of marketing. I’ve never in my life purchased a game because it featured sexy ladies.
It’s supposed to be subconscious, like with most marketing. It hits the animal part of the brain, rather than the thinking part.
It really sucks looking at the detrimental effect this had on gender ratios in gaming to this day. It’s gotten a lot better but it’s still not there yet.
Yeah, we need to level the playing field by having half naked sexy guys on the cover of games. ^please
🤤
I’d rather we stop sexualizing characters altogether. If anything, it’s silly and makes it more difficult to take them seriously.
I think there is space for both sexualized and non-sexualized characters, as long as they are treated evenly. This is entertainment, they don’t need to be all business serious.
I dread that in trying to be perfectly respectable, the medium might err to the side of prudishness and sexual repression.
After a woman says she doesn’t like being sexualized, your response is to not worry because the sexualization of women will continue, but you’ll start to sexualize men, too?
Like Fabio? Pretty much any depiction of a barbarian is some muscular dude wearing only a loincloth and his broadsword.
People used to bring up Kratos in these discussions but before these new games he seemed far more likely to bite someone’s face off than to kiss anyone. There’s a difference.
Doubt that’s going to be enough, I think if you want to make a sexually objectifying 90s magazine ad that appeals to female nerds you’re going to have to break out the homoerotic innuendos
Fair
looking in your direction, clive rosfield
I’m ok with that
I can imagine. I’m glad this is less prevalent now. Seeing it now in middle age makes me go ick. I wished I had been much more aware of this kind of sexism as a boy.
This kind of marketing ruined gaming culture.
There is a throughline between gendered marketing; the idea that young hetero men owned gaming; and chud gaming culture like gamergate.
The idea of the young horny gamer dude is sexist toward men too. Never mind the accompanying stereotypes of gamers as loosers and nerds.
Unfortunately, gendered game marketing was an issue long before the horny period of games advertising. The problem started right after the video game crash in 1983 that nearly ended the industry, and horny marketing at teenage boys was just a consequence of a much larger “video games are for boys” marketing that has been prevalent ever since.
cough big bang theory
Nerd blackface.
That’s not an ad. That’s just some cosplayer showing off her muff.
No, no, no, this was from 2008 and the “release” of the new LC model: https://www.ign.com/articles/2008/08/15/lara-croft-i-presume
They actually went with this photo (and others), but have since moderated themselves
Holy shit you’re spot on.
She’d be teenage me’s dream Chung Li.Edit; adult me would be fine with it too
The Rayman one was great, “small man, huge features” iirc :d
and he was at a urinal right?
I thought they were cringy even then.
I was hitting puberty, this was prime material
It was a super gross and embarassing era.
I’ll fight anyone who says 1998 is retro. I’m getting old, but give me a few more years damn.
Those few years between 1992-1998 were as … game-changing … for games as probably the two decades that followed. We started it with side scrollers, Dune and Doom and ended it with Diablo II, StarCraft and Half-Life.
I spent sooooooooo much time on StarCraft and Diablo II. First video game I remember playing was Wolfenstein 3D, then Duke Nukem. Found RTS soon after.
I remember upgrading my PC from 4MB to 8MB, just to be able to play Duke3D, cost me a pretty penny as well
Blizzard used to give me such warm fuzzies.
Now they just price gouge you, and sexuality harass the employees.
Old fart here. I played Wolfenstein 3d, then played the shit out of Doom and Duke Nukem 3d but missed out on Half life until recently. Knowing the context of the era it came out in, I can totally see how amazing it must have been. Hell, it’s still incredibly fun for me in this era.
I understand saying you don’t feel like 2010 is retro, but 1998? That’s been retro for a long time. You’re in a really extreme place in your head when you stick to not calling something that’s 25 years old retro.
If you really want to get depressed, Farmville is probably retro for some people.
Bro, 2010 is retro now
You are a bad person.
Why must you be so hurtful.
I launched Arkham Asylum on steam earlier this week and it recommended a 9800GTX lmao.
1GB ram, 2GB if you were running Vista.
We’re gonna have to rethink definitions at some point. Yes, video games are still a comparatively new medium, but nobody would call a 2010 film a retro film, nevermind books or paintings.
I define “retro” as anything made before an average Army Private was born, so about 19-20 years. By this standard, games released in the early 80’s were retro when the current generation of Privates was born, so how do we call that ? I propose the term “paleogaming” for those.
By that definition, 9/11 is retro.
If in 1998 you would have argued that 1972 is retro, then I’m sorry to tell you that 1998 is retro
No, you’re retro! runs away sobbing
I am retro. You have no power here.
Embrace it! Gonna happen anyhow whether you want it to or not
I’ve hurt my hip. Leave me alone.
Come, now. Let’s settle you down for your 3rd nap, huh?
Hell, I can remember when the word retro meant something new inspired by something older. Now it just means old / classic.
Hate to break it to you, but they play rock from the 90s and 00s on the CLASSIC rock stations now.
You mean the late 1900’s
You and me both, but to be fair it’s a year closer to the creation of console gaming to modern day. So I’ll let it pass.
People who call my music vintage or classic can get right the fuck back, though.
Bro, we lost that fight. I was watching a Youtube video of a guy clearing games from his Steam backlog and introduced one with, “So, many of you watching probably weren’t alive when this game came out. Everyone talks about what a classic this is, but I don’t think I’ve met anyone who has actually played this game.”
I died a little inside when it turned out he was talking about the first Half-Life.
Bro that’s so last century
Last millennium, even.
Yep, those were different times.
Battlecruiser 3000AD. This advert was later revised and they drew black knickers on the model.
Psycho Pigs UXB. Another British classic?
Now i want to see the reviews for Psycho Pigs UXB because it cant have been very memorable.
Well-placed censorship of pictures was the best purpose of a Battlefield 3000AD box. That was one of those games where the drama around it was far better than the game itself.
Isn’t this the game that had to run full page adverts claiming a new, updated version was available and “the bugs have been squashed!” Obviously this was pre-internet, so updates like this were quite uncommon.
Might have been. That game was so bugged that the installer crashed for a lot of people. Once it got patched enough that you could actually play it–which took years–it was supposedly pretty good, but nobody cared by then.
Holy fuck, where to start haha
Is there a reason they used the “You wouldn’t download a car” font?
Default late-90s design intern font.
Gen X edgy font?
Hmm, 1998. Is that Gen. X or Millenials? Makers are Gen. X, target group probably Millenials.
The entire design is just janky somehow.
Also, do y’all remember the time Arby’s of all people used this concept for an ad? It was a TV commercial, we see a guy waiting on a bed and hear a woman’s voice from the bathroom “This is really what you want? Well I’m only doing it once.” and she comes out dressed as an Arby’s cashier with a tray of meat sandwiches.
Tomb Raider 3 came out in 1998. Well before the anti-piracy campaigns.
I remember TR3 was a huge disappointment after 1 and 2. The new mechanics weren’t very good and the level design was more confusing. I remember they added the Desert Eagle pistol and it was a giant brick (seriously the model consisted of probably 3-4 polygons total).
It really felt like they were just milking the franchise at that point.
milking lara croft? 🤔
let’s not kink shame…
This is a case study in the phenomenon where reading comprehension drops at the mention of Lara Croft
Am I the only one cringing at the perspective in the mirror more than literally anything else in the ad?
but why is he wearing a diaper?
No kinkshaming please…
My cock is lost in the jungle and it’s up to you to find it~~~ Oh Laura, no panties… You know I like it like that…
I can’t believe you came on my mom
