Honestly, it puts me off completely. I’m a woman and this is what gaming used to be: women are sluts. The ad isn’t even trying to be clever or anything. Like wtf is this this trying to say?
Seriously, that is not the message this ad is putting out. It’s about PlayStation being a drug, like ecstasy pills
Your right it’s not clever but it’s pretty clear it’s nothing to do with woman being sluts.
No, the imagery was supposed to invoke the rave culture at the time. Lots of men, women, boys, and girls doing X, and the pills usually were white like that.
The ad is saying PlayStation is as good as drugs? I’m assuming that the little tabs are supposed to be exctacy or something.
And why is it a “trashy hot” woman despite the target audience being 99% young men at the time? This is what I mean. The ad speaks to a target audience that is not on the poster.
Oh, she’s trashy? Why? Please don’t tell us you did not get whooshed by the ad now.
“Playstation is a drug”
It’s edgy marketing. You’re not wrong it’s also clearly sexualizing her, but they’re pushing a console like a party drug.
On the one hand, it’s a very dated ad, on the other I really wish marketing companies would do weird shit like this more. Just maybe with a bit less sex appeal?
Just maybe with a bit less sex appeal?
Counter point: sex appeal is fine.
It’s the people who are pushy irl who are the problem. IMO you can still be very “sexy” and as long as you don’t push it, that’s not a problem.
Said to another commenter as well, but listen I’m not going to respond to a woman saying an ad is gross and off putting by telling her to lighten up.
There’s nothing wrong with sex appeal. Removing sex appeal, drugs, whatever else is how you get boring corpo bullshit ads instead of edgy corpo bullshit ads.
Nah this is still corpo bullshit. It’s also one of the tamer specimens of that era. The only difference is, the corpos in charge of advertising at that time were all sentient hardons who heard stories about how drugs are and peaked at 14. None of them lived in the real world and they just churned out knee-jerk sexist bullshit because they wanted to appeal to boys going through puberty and men that never left that headspace.
<rant> A lot of the ads from that era are uncomfortable. Hell, a lot of the games were. It was rare to see a female character that wasn’t ditzy and helpless, a thinly-veiled copy of the writer’s mom, or exactly like a dude but hot. Those were the options. I’m not saying I needed every game to be a work of great literature with complex and tormented characters and copious backstory; I just wanted female characters in games that didn’t like someone doing a ventriloquism act with their fleshlight.
I ended up chasing gameplay and trying to ignore how fucking awkward and immature most of the shooters were in that era and I don’t think I was alone. I think a lot of gamers grew up and drove the market in a slightly more mature direction. Some people blame woke bullshit, but for me it was just being utterly sick of how fucking juvenile everything was and voting with my money. There’s still a vocal minority out there that wants the good old days back, but I’d stop playing if the industry went back to exclusively 3xtr33m l33t 4ct10n d00d bullshit.
Sidenote: I played the demo for some Cliffy B game a decade ago on my XBox and hard-quit and deleted when the guy on my comms told me to “fire a rocket directly up the bad guy’s poop chute.” I was in my 30s and Cliff was probably pushing 40 at the time. What the hell? Are we nine years old again? Then again, he was the guy that threw his cat into his scanner and posted a picture of it every day until the internet told him to stop. Ugh. Let’s never go back there. </rant>
Listen I’m not going to respond to a woman saying an ad is gross and off putting by telling her to lighten up.
