Indie-Resource.com

I have been seeing more and more of this. You have a regular city-building PBBG strategy game. So what do you ads look like? They insinuate some kind of adult content in the game

Evony really kind of started this, where they would have some scantily-clad woman calling you "Master" or something like that. OK, I get it. It brings some people in I guess, and you could perhaps say that since you are building the city, that you could pretend there is a scantily-clad woman in your pretend city who is calling you Master lol.

But this one has me completely scratching my head. It is for Wartune, a fairly popular city-building strategy game (yet again). Anyway, here is the ad I saw today:

(right in the middle of the page)

They are straight-up saying it has adult content, is NSFW and call it a "dirty fantasy game". No more insinuation. But...it isn't that. At all. I actually tried Wartune when it first came out and realized it was building momentum just to see what it looked like. It is just a standard city-building strategy game, like dozens of others out there.

This just seems very weird to me. I understand sex sells, but aren't you setting people up for disappointment if that is actually what they wanted and why they clicked the ad? And doesn't that embarrass the regular playerbase when they tell their friends they play it, and the only thing their friends know about it is its "adult content" and "NSFW" ads? This just sounds like a clumsy attempt to get more eyeballs looking at the page, without a care at all for expectations and perceived game image.

It's funny that the product ends up more staid than the advertisement!

In regard to clumsy - maybe - if one were to test it scientifically, contrasted against a control goup, this sort of manipulation might very well be very efficient for a ruthless corporation.

Plenty of adults go to MC donalds, for example, even though their adds tend to (or definately used to) heavily target children. If only because of the long term strategy that children become adults anyway, so going there doesn't seem childish.

I suppose it may work out if someone actually was interested in the "adult content" and kept playing and playing waiting to see it until they found they liked the game as it is.

But then it just seems inescapable that many people would be disappointed if you were selling porno, but it turned out what you got in the package was a DVD of Sleepless in Seattle. Just like some people may be offended if Sleepless in Seattle was suddenly and oddly advertised today, years after its release, as being a "dirty" adult movie, years after many straight-laced people have added it to their Facebook likes list.

The whole ad world is turned upside down!

Now on my tv here in portugal, EVEN Browser Based games do commercials to gain players -.- (Grepolis and Other) They even DO A CINEMATIC TRAILER! A CINEMATIC TRAILER FOR A BROWSER BASED GAME? CMON!!! SERIOUSLY? I played ogame in 5th grade not for the trailers (there weren't any), but for the game!

And now this.. nowadays every MMORPG female has large boobs (breasts).. Seriously?... This world is all f*cked up.. some kind of apocalypse would do great things.. something like a natural selection. No more kids with "SWAG" no more "YOLO" no more of that crap..

Yeah, I am getting tired of the cinematic game ads, too, and yep, we have some of them for even PBBGs over here, too. It is particularly pointless when your game doesn't even have motion graphics lol.

Jackolantern wrote:Yeah, I am getting tired of the cinematic game ads, too, and yep, we have some of them for even PBBGs over here, too. It is particularly pointless when your game doesn't even have motion graphics lol.

Yeah that was my point, the game is text-based with a few images and VERY LOW (if none) gifs, and they do a cinematic trailer? You got to be kidding me.. I blame the newest games, they have much to show, they just record it, add some dubstep, some cool captions with a nice font, and you got a trailer full of action that will move the player opinion to BUY-MODE. The text-based RTS and browser based games need to keep up ofc.. But it looks very overused.

Yeah, but I guess you can't argue with the fact that it works. Just like no TV or web commercial ever shows gameplay anymore. But while that trend has taken over, sales have gone up. So while it is annoying, it is hard to say that they need to change lol

Jackolantern wrote:Yeah, but I guess you can't argue with the fact that it works. Just like no TV or web commercial ever shows gameplay anymore. But while that trend has taken over, sales have gone up. So while it is annoying, it is hard to say that they need to change lol

Well, it is working yes, but only if people listen to it. I bet that if me and you and others complaint about the Browser based cinematic trailers they would drop them

vitinho444 wrote:

Jackolantern wrote:Yeah, but I guess you can't argue with the fact that it works. Just like no TV or web commercial ever shows gameplay anymore. But while that trend has taken over, sales have gone up. So while it is annoying, it is hard to say that they need to change lol

Well, it is working yes, but only if people listen to it. I bet that if me and you and others complaint about the Browser based cinematic trailers they would drop them

Now I don't agree with PBBGs having cinematic trailer ads at all. I can let it slide for something like God of War, or the latest Battlefield because at least the cinematics you see would at least be similar to the cinematics actually in the game. And the cinematics are made with 3D models, just like the game is. But a cinematic trailer for a text-based game just seems silly lol.

Aww, if you can advertise books, can you advertise text based games?

Though I don't see many adverts for books, granted.

Some of the runescape adverts I've seen seem pretty missleading, though...