Quote:
Originally Posted by eriq
Or do you think they should have taken a more subtle, smarter approach? Perhaps drawing her with a trenchcoat on and a "hint" of a high-heel or sexy leg showing mysteriously peeking out?
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Kind of
like this, you mean?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Squinky
As I argued in the blog post I linked to earlier, I believe that with this kind of advertising, you are limiting your audience rather than broadening it. As a woman, if I saw the cover of this game and didn't know anything about it, I'd assume that looking at nearly naked ladies was a core element of the game, and would therefore feel uncomfortable buying it. And judging by the demographics of these forums, a lot of women play adventure games, so you'd essentially be excluding a large chunk your audience.
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I actually agree that it's not a great cover for selling the game. I think it's fairly well established that the core audience for most adventure games is middle-aged women (Dave Gilbert was not the first adventure developer to
discover that). But even as a twenty-something male, I can't say that image would make me inclined to buy the game, or even check it out. At first glance, it does indeed look like some Vegas girl posing in front of the casino floor (possibly in a 19th Century-themed casino, given the costumes of the guys behind her), so I'd assume that it was some sort of poker or roulette game. Given the generic pose and scene, it's not at all clear that the woman in the foreground is the character you play as, much less the nature of the game.
For my money, the above cover is better, not because she's wearing slightly more clothes (Really. In either case they're using sex appeal, and making the necessary concessions to modesty, so what's the difference? Does it matter whether or not you can see her bellybutton?), but because it presents a much clearer
game premise. It communicates violence, intrigue and even sex much more strongly than the cover for the newer game.
To take another example, compare the cover for
So Blonde:
As far as I can tell, this game is promoted just as much on sex appeal (her bikini top is hanging from the mast of the raft!), and is arguably even more sexist than the cover for the new Mata Hari game ("the blonde girl is doing her nails while attacked by pirates lol!"). But it certainly presents the premise for and tone of the game pretty effectively. I haven't been particularly interested in
So Blonde, despite being a Steve Ince fan, but if I saw this cover in the store I might definitely pick it up for another look, and perhaps buy it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dekaneas297
You are using the same argument that film companies use. "It's just a movie. It's not reality". Well, you are wrong. When you use historic persons in a movie/game/novel you HAVE to give the true portrait of them. Eitherwise it's forgery.
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Actually, you DON'T have to do that. That's called "fiction".
