Instead, they're misleading people, a common thing in advertisements, I guess. Isn't that one prospect of an advertisement is to let people know at least a little bit of what you're advertising about? I guess these guys missed the message. I'm not even sure what the game's about now, although I never cared in the first place. The first time I saw one of those images with the women, I seriously thought it was for a dating site, until I looked closely. I mean really, the jokes on them, isn't it? To be honest, I find the notion of sweaty gamers feverishly questing their way through hours of generic fantasy RPG, desperate to reach the point where oodles of softcore animations are unlocked more funny than anything else.

However, no doubt the developers feel their target audience will be very tempted by the implied erotic nature and 'discreet' gameplay. Hastening to add that I don't click on the Evony one either, I can say that the later ones did 'cut through' to use an industry term, if only to elicit a 'what is that smut doing on my Facebook?' response. I can confidently say that in, what, 10 years or so, I have NOT ONCE clicked on a banner ad from a website. My impression is most people who spend a sugnificant amount of time online are very adept at ignoring most of them, looking between them at the content you're interested in. Internet ads must be among the least resonant forms. This is more than a little sad, but I can understand the phenomenon. I cannot find it now to share it, sadly, though if anyone knows where to look I do think it's pertinent to this post. 2, which purportedly sold a 'protection plan', wherein a scantily clad 'nurse' would come make you feel better after being scared by the game. I saw another such some months ago, which I believe was for F.E.A.R. So it's not surprising to see another example of a ridiculously sexist videogame ad, which has nothing whatever to do with the content of the game, and which works to estrange female gamers. I'm pretty sure this is another example of targeted backlash, as seen in other arenas (such as sports and certain careers) that have traditionally been seen as 'masculine'. But the gamer culture is hugely sexist, and it seems that-as more women become interested in games and overtly express our videogame nerd-dom-the more sexist the ads and the views expressed by male gamers seem to be. I'm a big videogame fan, and most of the games I play are very unsexist in their content. In total agreement with Jennifer and Ryan. It reads, “She is actually in our game, my lord”:

sent along the ad below making fun of the Evony ads. ’09)! Apparently the Evony ads have become such a thing that other games are referencing them to advertise themselves. I’ve always wondered what that would be like. from Coding Horror says,Įvony, thanks for showing us what it means to take advertising on the internet to the absolute rock bottom … then dig a sub-basement under that, and keep on digging until you reach the white-hot molten core of the Earth. Presumably some players will be disappointed that there isn’t a female “queen” to be saved or oogled in the game at all–the women were invented only for the purpose of adding boobs to the ads. Or sometimes apparently you get this view: When you click, you are taken to this site, which asks you to sign up for the game because “obvious,” “it makes you feel like King!” You simply see this image and are invited to click on her boobs, butt, or lips to turn her into the “ideal woman”: ’10)! Thanks to Chris M., Tinpantithesis, and Ryan, we now know that there is an Evony ad that doesn’t say anything about the game at all. Using the term “discreetly” to imply porn, it reads “join the fun”: sent in this next one with a nice “we’re lesbian, but just for you” flair. No longer content with boobs, they seem to be moving towards implied female masturbation: seems to be taking the advertising to a whole new level. If that didn’t work, why not straight up near-nudity. found a close-up version similar to the one above:Īnd then they realized they could just dispense with all subtlety and get to the important part: sent us one with a woman actively disrobing and saying “Come play, my Lord”: Moving on to a slightly more realistic look:Ĭhristina W. In case people weren’t noticing the cleavage, the ad evolved into one where the boobs are pointed out a bit more explicitly: Then they added a woman with a little boob showing: Online ads for the game started out like this: (images found at Gawker and Coding Horror, and hope I didn’t miss anyone who sent it in). Readers’ minds think alike, sometimes, and the changing advertising campaign for the “empire building” video game Evony caught the attention of fds, torenc, Assaf N., Elisabeth R., Sabriel, Nicole O., and Liz B.

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