Borkachev said:
Just about every game commercial ever made. As a rule, they're atrocious.
At some point 15 years ago, somebody decided that games weren't "cool" enough to stand on their own in ads, so the "gimmick ad" was born: basically, it's 25 seconds of live action footage showing some really bad joke or artsy scenario that vaguely relates to the game, then 3 seconds of game footage, then 2 seconds of logos. And even now, when games have reached a storytelling and visual level where there should be no question that they can be the focus of the ad, we're still stuck with this crap 80% of the time.
Can you imagine if they advertised movies this way? Never actually show any footage from it, and instead show a bunch of doofuses reenacting a scene from it or have a guy in a mascot outfit describe it to us?
Sony has to deserve a lifetime achievement award for Ads that Pissed Me Off. It's difficult to pick the worst one... the "woman on a toilet" ad in Europe was pretty awful, but on the other hand, once the whole 5 minute ad was released it wasn't that bad as a sort of indie film... it just didn't have the slightest chance of making anyone buy a PS3. The white room ads were inarguably godawful, of course... But I think the very worst has to be the talking squirrel/rat/whatever PSP ads. Nothing, nothing could top those pieces of utter crap.
The last really good game ad I remember seeing was for Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles on GC. Basically, it was just the theme song to the game (the actual theme song, not some pop piece the marketers decided would be better) played over footage of the game for 30 seconds. Simple and refreshing.
I couldn't find an upload of it on youtube though. Ironically, all I could find was this one, a perfect example of the lame gimmick ads I was just complaining about: There have been other good game ads, definitely. Not many have stuck with me though. |
Damn your analisys couldn't be more accurate, I hate those commercials too, full of non-game footage and almost no gameplay, and the worst is that people actually buy games from cool commercials even if they don't have gameplay footage at all. I think there would be no other way the army men series could have survived for so long...
