this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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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”.
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.
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.
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
🤤
Like Fabio? Pretty much any depiction of a barbarian is some muscular dude wearing only a loincloth and his broadsword.
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
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.
looking in your direction, clive rosfield
Fair
I'm ok with that
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.
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.
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).
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...
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 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.