It took me a couple seconds to understand that it wasn’t a before/ after set of pictures. It was a little confusing.
That’s not an ad. That’s just some cosplayer showing off her muff.
No, no, no, this was from 2008 and the “release” of the new LC model: https://www.ign.com/articles/2008/08/15/lara-croft-i-presume
They actually went with this photo (and others), but have since moderated themselves
Holy shit you’re spot on.
She’d be teenage me’s dream Chung Li.Edit; adult me would be fine with it too
Media today might be less sexist but I think part of it is also that it became drastically more sex averse. Mortal Kombat is gorier than ever for anyone to see, but god forbid anything shows a nipple.
Characters with big breasts must be inherently sexist, or else we can’t explain why characters who used to have big breasts now need to have them toned down.
However, it’s perfectly okay if the supposedly feminist prequel you’re going to release has references to the female player character being about to be sexually abused if you lose, because nothing speaks about female empowerment like threatening the player with turning their character into a SA victim if they don’t play well enough.
The thing that gets me about the Tomb Raider reboot is they toned down the sex appeal, but apparently graphically brutalizing Lara is perfectly okay.
Sexy Lara: Sexist!
Beating the ever loving shit out of Lara: Not sexist!
They were going with a “sex sells” approach to marketing, but what they got was just an unrelatable and cringe piece of 90s trash.
Never played it, did they fuck up the triangles?
That shiny green top is definitely not as sexy irl
Yeah I’ve seen several IRL actresses portraying classic Lara Croft as wearing like a polished vinyl top for some reason?
It’s like older superhero movies with spandex. No imagination.
Well I mean, Superman’s costume is pretty unusual. People don’t dress like that, so when you turn to your wardrobe department and say “make me a Superman costume” there’s some head scratching.
Lara Croft wears a tank top, shorts, a pistol belt, white socks and boots. Extremely easy cosplay to source, but so many folks interpret Lara’s shirt as some stiff glossy plastic, I guess because that pre-rendered cover art of the first game looked shinier than cloth?
Superman wore a carnival strongman’s outfit. That’s why he’s got the trunks. They just added a full sleeve shirt and leggings to it.
But yeah all you need for Lara Croft is a tank top, short shorts, and some belts.
I recommend this Mastodon account for more retro ads l: https://botsin.space/@gamemagprintads
This is great! Followed.
and above all - sexy new outfits
The most important part of a game.
Dreamcast ads got real weird. I vividly remember this one ad for Seaman: It showed a pair of feet and a fish tail sticking out from under a blanket. The accompanying text was "I will not mate outside my own species " repeated several times.
Wt absolute f.
Was this like mermaid fetishization?
Seaman was bonkers. Look up a video of it, or better yet just emulate it. It’s one of a kind.
They knew what they were doing when they named it.
I thought they were cringy even then.
I was hitting puberty, this was prime material
It was a super gross and embarassing era.
Why does she looks like Aphex Twin?
Come to daddy
Come to Daddy
The Rayman one was great, “small man, huge features” iirc :d
and he was at a urinal right?
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”.
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.
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
After a woman says she doesn’t like being sexualized, your response is to not worry because the sexualization of women will continue, but you’ll start to sexualize men, too?
Fair
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.
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
🤤
I’m ok with that
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.
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.
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…
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
Are you really out here in public view still trying to use the “not all men” to tell a woman her feelings are invalid?
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.
How does that comment invalidate the previous one? If anything it actually reinforces it. Are you just looking for an excuse to shame someone?
Yeah, but that is just another facet of marketing for men. Sexy dress-up vs tighty whities. Definitely not intended to get women interested.
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).
This kind of marketing ruined gaming culture.
There is a throughline between gendered marketing; the idea that young hetero men owned gaming; and chud gaming culture like gamergate.
The idea of the young horny gamer dude is sexist toward men too. Never mind the accompanying stereotypes of gamers as loosers and nerds.
Unfortunately, gendered game marketing was an issue long before the horny period of games advertising. The problem started right after the video game crash in 1983 that nearly ended the industry, and horny marketing at teenage boys was just a consequence of a much larger “video games are for boys” marketing that has been prevalent ever since.
cough big bang theory
Nerd blackface.
I can’t even process what’s going on with the reflection in the mirror being from an angle at about head height over the bed. I like that they didn’t even trust teen gamers to understand the allusion of a woman standing in a bedroom doorway without comping in this extra element.
In order to make the reflection work the bed would have to be angled against the wall.
It’s funny how the brain instantly notices that the perspective is nonsensical but can’t really pinpoint the issue ^^
It’d also need to be pressed against the mirror I think…?
Yup it sure looks like it.
Not if you’re a literalist exec that saw the creative and didn’t think it was clear enough - “where’s the target audience? How are they going to see themselves in this ad?, she’s clearly out of our average user’s league”
My cock is lost in the jungle and it’s up to you to find it~~~ Oh Laura, no panties… You know I like it like that…
I can’t believe you came on my mom
