Sony’s target demographic: witless misogynistic man-children, apparently
Yes. The bottom right corner of this PS2 advertisement does actually say Because your girlfriend bores you shitless. How you managed to actually GET a girlfriend remains a mystery.
This is just another manifestation of how the general gaming culture, even as it is propagated by the people who ostensibly want to sell it to anyone who will buy, is extremely hostile to women. You hear these marketing people flapping their jaws about how they think women just don’t like SHOOTING ALIENS or something, and THAT’S why they don’t game (putting aside, for a moment, the many women who do–they’re still vastly outnumbered by men outside of casual gaming), and then they turn around and produce this shit. Gee, I wonder why women think they wouldn’t have a good time gaming. Could it be because half the market goes out of its way to suggest that all the OTHER gamers are witless misogynistic man-children?
You may recall NCSoft’s addition of female NPCs to City of Heroes–specifically, non-combatant air-headed gangster girlfriends. Do you notice a common theme here? Oh, those women! They’re boring! Because they’re stupid! Because all they talk about is clothes and stuff! Silly women! Can you believe they got the vote?
Well, to be fair, there’s a second PS2 ad suggesting that sometimes women are boring because they talk about other people’s interpersonal relationships. And in case you didn’t click through, here’s that CoH screenshot:
Pretty much the only women with whom you interact, apparently, are “girlfriends.” (Note the NPC’s designation in that screenshot.) Women exist in this world solely in relation to men (and not even in any other relationship other than “annoying pet”; what, gamers don’t have MOTHERS?), who apparently tolerate them for sex, since they’re so damn boring otherwise. All these women think about is their appearances, probably so that they can keep the poor bored guys enthralled for some more of that sex, which I’m sure is really awesome and satisfying. Naturally such boring and stupid creatures wouldn’t have any interest in the manly pursuit of GAMING.
Hey, Sony? Maybe what with getting your ass handed to you by Nintendo and all, you might want to consider some new tactics that don’t specifically alienate one of the major groups Nintendo is wooing. Or, you know, I guess witless misogynistic man-children ARE a niche.
Thanks to belleweather for the link.
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ETA: This is not to suggest that I think that clothes are stupid and/or boring. No one who has ever met me would credit it. This is, of course, the flip side of “women only talk about things that are frivolous and boring”; that is, “if women talk about something, it must therefore be frivolous and boring.” I find clothes vastly more interesting than cars or football, and you know, pretty much everyone HAS them. We won’t go into how extremely cute my outfit is today, even though this is my blog and anyone who doesn’t like it can take their PS2 and go jump in the lake.
July 10th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Like, wow. That is pretty awful.
When I first started reading it, I was thinking, “I wonder if she sees the parallel to the Skulls girlfriends in CoH.” And sure enough, you did.
July 10th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Wow. Maybe this is just me, but I find the City of Heroes thing more offensive than the PS2 ad. The ad is clearly aimed at teenage boys (and/or man-children), but I was under the assumption that quite a few women play CoH. Am I mistaken about that? Also, how old is that ad, and where was it published originally?
July 10th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
The ad was posted on Ads of the World here: http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/ps2_girlfriend_1
It was submitted on June 19, but unfortunately the site only indicates that it was a print ad, not where it was printed.
I understand the argument you’re making about context, but I don’t think it makes the ad any less offensive–just possibly less suicidal from a business viewpoint. Things like these ads and those NPCs communicate to women who see them that they are not welcome in the gaming world, but they also communicate to the men who see them that women don’t belong in that world, which contributes to the overall hostility of the environment, although I DO think that seeing it in advertising or in the game interface itself is more disheartening than getting shit from other players, since it demonstrates that the world itself is structured against you. But then again, the world couldn’t be structured that way without the support of a majority of its population.
As for the number of women in CoH, my impression certainly is that more women play it than most other MMOs, proportionately speaking (remember, it has a market share that’s about 2% that of WoW’s). I don’t have any hard data to back that up, though; just my and other people’s anecdotes.
Travis: Yes, even though I am a woman, I can make conceptual links. :p
July 10th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
D’oh! I didn’t word that well. I was thinking more a “rage link” than a “conceptual link.”
July 10th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
It was submitted on June 19, but unfortunately the site only indicates that it was a print ad, not where it was printed.
It seems to say that the ad’s from India, not that that makes it better.
July 10th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Yeah, from the other references I was able to find to it, that does seem to be the case. This reminds me of the many times a guy in my race & genetics class last semester told us about “Fair & Lovely,” the skin-bleaching cream for the marriage-minded Indian woman.
July 10th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
It is hard to understand either a) how or b) why these guys got girlfriends. Even harder to imagine this ad actually appealing to anyone, including the target audience. Of course, I’ve often been accused of knowing the names of way too colors for a straight guy, so what do I know?
July 10th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
I didn’t mean to imply the ad wasn’t offensive - sorry if it came out that way - I just meant to point out the contextual element. My experience with teen and pre-teen gamerz (specifically thinking of my 15-year-old brother here) is that there’s a virtually equal amount of loneliness-induced misygnony as there is a desire to seem savvy with the sadly nonexistent ladies. In other words, “I don’t need a girlfriend” on one hand, “but chicks dig me anyway” on the other.
I guess I have more sympathy for the kids like my brother who, like most of these guys, will eventually grow out of this phase. Unfortunately of course, some of them don’t, and will end up as man-child shitheads. And later be hired to work at Sony and NCSoft, apparently.
July 10th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Although to add to what I said above, I was reading the ad as an American (and former teenage guy). Obviously I can’t say anything either way about Indian teen/gamer culture, which I would not be surprised to learn is far more explicitly misygonistic. So you know. Just my two cents.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Since when did gamers start having girlfriends? :p
July 11th, 2007 at 10:31 am
At first, I thought the ad looked like a highly designed parody. This page reports a Sony denial that it’s an official ad, but raises the possibility that it’s part of a viral marketing campaign intended to give Sony plausible deniability, which strikes me as worse than just a crude joke (where the authors might at least plead irony). That story did offer a pretty good comeback: “Girlfriends: Because PS3 bores you shitless.”
July 11th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Erg, this link (not the previous one) might actually work. Sorry.
July 11th, 2007 at 10:40 am
I just love how the gaming and advertising blogs want us boring, silly women to “get a sense of humor.” And they’ve even got a comment from a woman to back them up! Because sexism is okay if some women go along with it–even women don’t want to be associated with the traditionally feminine and frivolous, after all. Ergh.
Thanks for the link, though. I had seen a couple of other pieces saying that Sony denied it was their ad, but actually nothing questioning that it appeared in print, which struck me as supremely weird. People are going around printing ads for Sony on their own dime for fun? I think it’s more likely that it is an online marketing campaign, but I wish I could definitively confirm or deny the existence of a print source.
July 11th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Ok, there we go…context. After reading that article I’m way more offended now.
This is all really making me want to go buy a Nintendo Wii.