*
programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
*
Games that run in your web browser are all the rage, and understandably so. Why not build your game for the largest audience in the world, using freely available technology, and pay zero licensing fees? One such game is Evony, formerly known as Civony -- a browser-based clone of the game Civilization with a buy-in mechanism.
There are also plentiful opportunities to 'pay money' now. In the end, Civony is still a business. And to be honest, it's probably better to give the option for some elite folks to finance the game for the masses than to make everyone pay a subscription or watch in-game ads. In addition to the old $0.30 per line world chat, you can spend money to speed up resource gathering, boost stats, and buy in-game artifacts. I'm sure there are other ways to pay money that I haven't discovered yet. But whenever you see a green plus-sign (+), you know the option exists to pay money for a perk.
The game is ostensibly free, but supported by a tiny fraction of players making cash payments for optional items (sometimes referred to as "freemium"). Thus, the player base needs to be quite large for the business of running the game to be sustainible, and the game's creators regularly purchase internet ad space to promote their game. The most interesting thing about Evony isn't the game, per se, but the game's advertising. Here's one of the early ads.
Totally reasonable advertisement. Gets the idea across that this is some sort of game set in medieval times, and emphasizes the free angle.
Apparently that ad didn't perform up to expectations at Evony world HQ, because the ads got progressively ... well, take a look for yourself. These are presented in chronological order of appearance on the internet.
(if this lady looks familiar, there's a reason.)
To be clear, these are real ads that were served on the internet. This is not a parody. Just to prove it, here's a screenshot of the last ad in context at The Elder Scrolls Nexus.
I've talked about advertising responsibly in the past. This is about as far in the opposite direction as I could possibly imagine. It's yet another way, sadly, the brilliant satire Idiocracy turned out to be right on the nose.
The dystopian future of Idiocracy predicted the reduction of advertising to the inevitable lowest common denominator of all, with Starbucks Exotic Coffee for Men, H.R. Block "Adult" Tax Return (home of the gentleman's rebate), and Pollo Loco chicken advertising a Bucket of Wings with "full release".
Evony, 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. I've always wondered what that would be like. I guess now I know.
| [advertisement] Interested in agile? See how a world-leading software vendor is practicing agile. |
I hate that they are on sites that have legitimate games. For example, I like tower defence games but despise the civony ads next to it so I gladly find that same tower defense game on another site that does not have the slutty women.
john on July 10, 2009 2:13 AMI disagree, Jeff - this course of advertising is perfectly reasonable - assuming the game has changed from a medieval adventure to a soft core porn soap opera. Has it? That's certainly the impression it left with me.
Regis on July 10, 2009 2:29 AMLike another person in this thread, I'm getting ridiculous amounts of comment spam about this game. Not playing it.
Ken on July 10, 2009 2:51 AMAs someone who works on ads everyday, I can say that this is not some wacky idea that they're sinking their company with. Ad display frequency is based on their performance, and quite simply, naked girls perform well (on ads, I mean, though probably otherwise as well). It's unfortunate that such a large segment of the population is certifiably retarded and unable to restrain basic impulses, but such is the world we live (and prosper) in.
Tom on July 10, 2009 2:52 AMI'm with Jen on this. As a woman who enjoys gaming, I was initially a little intrigued when I saw the first ad. By the time the second ad I saw (the third ad on the list here) came around, though, I figured they no longer wanted my business.
Canaduck on July 10, 2009 3:12 AMSee also:
http://setonstun.com/2009/07/video-game-marketing-bait-switch-clickthroughs-boobies/
Dinah on July 10, 2009 3:29 AM> It would be utterly shameful if it weren't so effective.
No. The most utterly shameful aspect is THAT it is so effective - which I'm pretty sure it must be, since they've been progressing so extremely into that direction.
brazzy on July 10, 2009 3:32 AMHilarious progression! For the record, I loved Idiocracy.
I agree with the person who said this post is really about how to advertise on the internet successfully.
Tits are appealing. Tits are great. Big ones, small ones, I vote more tits. I vote ending the cultural taboo on bare breasts. I vote open public wanton breastfeeding of babies. Tits everywhere, tits on every screen, tits out in real life!
We are a mammalian species. Mammaries should be no big deal. And maybe if that were the case, advertisers would be forced to get more creative and fun and zany with their stuff.
Plus there'd be world peace. I'm almost sure of it.
Joanna on July 10, 2009 3:57 AMI actually thought my PC was infected with some sort of undetectable MMPORG adware because this was virtually the only crappy ad I would see on the net. Thanks for putting my mind at ease.
J P on July 10, 2009 4:02 AM@Canaduck,
"I'm with Jen on this. As a woman who enjoys gaming, I was initially a little intrigued when I saw the first ad. By the time the second ad I saw (the third ad on the list here) came around, though, I figured they no longer wanted my business"
Sorry to inform you, they don't. Granted, this is just a WAG, but I imagine males must make up about 90%+ of the North American market for browser based games. I'm aware that more and more women are getting into console games, but PC games still is the domain of men. So while their ads might offend females, they realize that they are such a small percentage of the PC gaming market, they just don't care.
I make no judgement about whether it's right or wrong, but is this any different than cereal companies target marketing children with cartoon characters? You aim to please and attract your target market, sorry that's Marketing 101.
"but I imagine males must make up about 90%+ of the North American market for browser based games."
"Casual gaming" is a category with lots of women; it might even be more than half.
Plus, women tend to do more shopping.
There really are markets for games that appeal to women.
Dan Weber on July 10, 2009 5:09 AMI hate it when people excuse stuff like this by saying "sex sells". 99% of the time, they don't mean 'sex', they mean women's bodies. Women's bodies are not "sex". My body is not "sex". If you really think this is okay, there should be no reason to euphemise it.
Meg on July 10, 2009 5:13 AM@Andrew
You must be joking. This is 2009, not 1980. Demographically speaking, as of 2005 female Internet-usage trailed behind male usage by 2% - 66% vs. 68%; because there are more women than men in the US, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts, more women actually use the Internet than men do! In fact, according to the same surveys by Pew, young women dramatically outpace their male peers in Internet usage.
"Men use the web for more kinds of entertainment and recreation than women do, with just a few exceptions. Women play games as much as men, they listen to audio clips and watch video clips, and they share files. But men pursue a host of other activities with greater enthusiasm." - Pew Internet and American Life Project, iv (http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Society_and_the_Internet/PIP_Women_Men_122805.pdf)
See page 11 for a full chart of activities - the percentage in 2005 for "play online games" was 36% of online men and 37% of online women.
Ariadne on July 10, 2009 5:25 AMThose ads got what the consumers crave: they got electrolytes!
Andy on July 10, 2009 5:46 AM@Ariadne,
Come on now, Internet usage statistics? Pew Internet and American Life Project? This is a Civ clone set in a medival times, that practically screams "young, white males". Granted, it's not the same game, but look at WoW, the North American audiance for that game is about 90% male, that's just the way it is.
Since I can't see the page 11 chart in that link, I'd be interested to see what they define as "online games", because any chart that says women play more online games than men is a complete fabrication.
Let's put it in completely unsceintific terms, I'm 35 and I know literally dozens, if not 100s of men who play video games, but only five women who play. Of the five, two played quite a bit of Tetris in University, the other three played WoW (two of which have quit). That's it. I've also lived in three US cities, Canada, Australia, England and France since I graduated University, so it's not like I've been isolated.
Which brings me back to my point, this company doesn't care if it turns off women because it represents such a small portion of their potential audience. So if offending women means it gets more men, then they'll do it. Please note, I'm not saying this is right (morally, or otherwise), but since this company does it and I can only assume their goal is to maximize profits. To me that indicates that this strategy is working, which in a round-a-bout way either 1) confirms that I am correct and women don't play this sort of game anyways, or 2) enough women don't get offended by these ads enough to stop them from playing. Either way, the company looks to be doing the "right" thing (from a profits standpoint anyways).
Andrew on July 10, 2009 6:11 AMA bit of info on the Chinese company that runs Evony
Queen Obsessed: a rather depressing "submit pictures of yourself to become the queen of Evony" thread run by the Evony owners
http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=11313
Who knows? Maybe it's what their niche wants. Never know with the internet these days. In any case, it's Hilarious &%169; and gets attention.
Steve on July 10, 2009 6:30 AMNo entities? In any case, I just want to say
[advertisement] Interested in agile?
Maybe you are but I'm not. I would prefer a bust to that...
Steve on July 10, 2009 6:32 AMcan't wait to see the next ad!
Josh on July 10, 2009 6:49 AMI recently saw a new one on the pirate bay.
hawt.
@Andrew, thats just anecdotal evidence, not a great way to combat you know, statistics. Meanwhile my guild in WoW of 100 or so is mostly female and run by females. And they make up a big chunk of WoW's demographic:
http://www.wow.com/tag/demographics/
Mox on July 10, 2009 7:36 AMmox.. i am sorry to inform you.. there are no women on the interwebs.
easterly 939,000 .. i was more confused by the 939,000. what an odd number, i think i will name my child that.
john paul the 3st on July 10, 2009 8:48 AMJeff, I have seen this advertisement progress & think it's just plain hilarious. BTW...I wouldn't play this game.
Bob on July 10, 2009 8:54 AMWe've become so oriented on achieving financial success without regard for the actual costs, that I'm sure this seemed acceptable, if not down-right brilliant, to someone out there. Sadly, although sex usually sells, "tacky" is a major turn-off for most consumers, so this direction is about the worst one they could possibly peruse. Greed can drive people to do the craziest things.
Paul W. Homer on July 10, 2009 8:59 AMI hate these ads. They aren't even remotely informative as to what sort of game this is. I thought it was an RPG before reading that it is a civ clone, just based on seeing these ads.
That last ad looks like one of the trUe ads with the animations of cam-[slatter]s.
captcha: "purse Admiral" Good juxtaposition.
Eli Sarver on July 10, 2009 9:00 AMIf it's any consolation, the game's makers probably secretly loathe themselves for going this route.
Paul on July 10, 2009 9:02 AMThe subtle, or much often, not-so-subtle use of sex in advertising is doing a big disservice in long-term to everyone.
Not only degrades the product, but also affects family life and life style in general.
Andrei Rinea on July 10, 2009 9:05 AMI don't see an issue here, sex sells, always has ... they were putting hot models next cars before you were born. It’s just a new medium.
BTW, the ads seem effective, they received your attention. The only issue I would suggest is that AD networks have better filters, so if you don't want to display breasts on your website, you can filter out those ads.
Idiocracy - most overrated movie on the internet?
Anyway, I really thought you were going to say that last one was a joke. Also, can one really discreetly build an empire and rule the world?
wickethewok on July 10, 2009 9:08 AM@Hank Yes, sex sells, however you normally make an effort to put your product in the limelight along with whatever sex appeal you're drawing from... Apparently that nuance got lost in the last ad iteration when they went OHLOOKBOOBIESCLICKCLICKCLICK
Camille on July 10, 2009 9:15 AMTheir advertising in general is a pain. I'm purging 5-10 comments a day on VizWorld that are all "I just found this awesome new game called Evony, click here to play" garbage.
Between the commentspam and the ridiculous ads, they've convinced me to never try it.
Randall on July 10, 2009 9:16 AMThese are in the footer of every other io9 RSS entry; I'm amused that someone else was as annoyed as I was about them. I hadn't seen the last one, though, that's amazing. What it's actually an ad for is in teeny-tiny type.
Anthony on July 10, 2009 9:19 AMI think your overall point is good. But you can't really sit on your high horse and complain about the state of business with any legitimacy when you have thousands of followers that will eat up everything you do. If you were really struggling, we'd see what tactics you resort to.
Mike Judge on July 10, 2009 9:21 AMIdiocracy was terrible. Not terrible compared to his other stuff, jut terrible. Never brilliant, it was a jumble of things that probably irritate Mike Judge, not any sort of coherent dystopian future, humorous or not.
Morgan on July 10, 2009 9:33 AMMy favorite bit is "play discreetely now!" -- What does that even mean? As far as I can tell, the sentence makes no sense.
Per Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry:
dis·creet
Pronunciation:
\di-ˈskrēt\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French discret, from Medieval Latin discretus, from Latin, past participle of discernere to separate, distinguish between — more at discern
Date:
14th century
Main Entry:
dis·crete
Pronunciation:
\dis-ˈkrēt, ˈdis-ˌ\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Middle English, from Latin discretus
Date:
14th century
1: constituting a separate entity : individually distinct 2 a: consisting of distinct or unconnected elements : noncontinuous b: taking on or having a finite or countably infinite number of values
synonyms see distinct
— dis·crete·ly adverb
— dis·crete·ness noun
I wouldn't mind some more 'boob' ads on my sites - I might actually get some click-throughs :)
webdev_hb on July 10, 2009 9:37 AMIf they had said it was a multi-player CIV game, I may have signed up ages ago. I figured it was just a thinly veiled chat server for teenagers from the ads.
Bill P. Godfrey on July 10, 2009 9:40 AMtim, discrete and discreet are different words, but the ad uses the right one.
the right one for their lies, anyway.
Patrick on July 10, 2009 9:42 AMThis form of advertising is absolute trash. The Evony advertisement looked fine.
By looking at the progression of the Civony ads, it makes me wonder if the 2nd ad worked better so they continued the route, or it didn't do well enough so they chased it harder?
captcha: "jungle surface" - just thought it amusing.
Joe Mo on July 10, 2009 9:43 AMWait.
That's a -real- ad for a -real- game?
I'm heading to my bomb shelter now. See y'all after the apocalypse.
James on July 10, 2009 9:45 AMI love the ad on right below the article, featuring "agile" development. I would like to meet some agile developers myself. Flexibility a must!
Graham on July 10, 2009 9:49 AM"I want to click the boob add, don't know why - whats it for? More boobs by clicking the add, right?"
Admidt it, thats whats goes though your mind, when you see it.
The problem in this is not the boobs, I really don't mind, the problem is the false adverticement for boobs by clicking. I can find tons of boob adds on the internet, that gives me more boobs. So why click on your boob add, when it redirects me to a non-boob site? (okay there is one pair on their site)
So I feel cheated, not at all what I was after, so I close the window, and look for other boob adds - or goes to one of the boobs sites in my bookmarks.
But I surely don't hope they begin to target girl players, then just think of what they will do...
I wanted more, than ever before, to check there game out because Jeff told me it was a Civ clone. So that should tell them what they should focus on: Telling me what I get for clicking the add.
But now i'm not gonna, because I'm going to hunt boob sites now, they just told me to.
And P.S. I really like to write 'boobs' :)
Deldy on July 10, 2009 9:52 AMHeh, this one reminded me of this fabulous XKCD comic: http://www.xkcd.com/603/
Rick on July 10, 2009 9:53 AMCouldn't figure out what ad you were talking about. Then I remembered: AdBlock Plus! I'm not seeing the embedded ads in your blog post because AdBlock successfully filters them out. Temporarily turned off ad protection, and now I see what I've been missing these past few years. Do I regret it? Nope -- AdBlock is enabled yet again on my browser.
Stéphane on July 10, 2009 10:05 AMWhat does it say about me that I looked at the last ad and the second thing I thought was "Why don't the words 'Best' and 'Free' have the same baseline?"
This kind of advertising has a fine tradition. This image should be familiar to all UK computer users of a certain age. It's the ad for a ZX Spectrum game called Barbarian:
http://www.konamito.com/images/articles/caratulasepicomedievales/Barbarian.jpg
Not quite as crude as the evony one, but at the time it was fairly contentious.
Jim Lynn on July 10, 2009 10:11 AM"We need to sell more products."
"Let's show boobs with our products."
"Great!"
"Yeah! Let's show boobs and not even show our products!"
"...Wait, what?"
"Yeah! People will think they're coming to a porn site, then they'll be disappointed and leave!"
"uUm..."
This is one of the best posts I've ever read on Coding Horror. I've seen all these ads everywhere except the last one as of yet. It's rare that I actually do laugh out loud reading something on the internet, but this is quality.
Chris on July 10, 2009 10:23 AMI like the one with the sword pointing at her cleavage. You know, because otherwise I'd never have noticed that she has breasts.
And, like many others here -- I find the multiplayer online Civilization concept far more clickable than the breasts.
Trevel on July 10, 2009 10:30 AMGoddamn. I've seen all of the first few ads and thought they were getting progressively more ridiculous, but seriously? An ad with JUST BOOBS? Wtf? It's laughably ridiculous, yet so objectifying it shouldn't be funny.
Effigy on July 10, 2009 10:57 AMSo it wasn't just me who found this outrageously annoying and stupid :)
I have yet to encounter the final form of this ad, I've only seen the second to last one so far.
This are hilarious. It's a role playing game and they are advertising it with a picture of breasts? Good stuff.
Marvin on July 10, 2009 11:13 AM@Trevel Perhaps the sword symbolizes something else, nudge nudge wink wink.
Without the text the last ad on the list looks like a generic bra advertisement. Hell even with the text I see no reason why anyone would click on this.
I'm always amazed that folks with access to the net click on these ads. If it's adult content they want there is plenty of free crap around. And they aren't even getting it here, I'd be pissed.
Jeremy on July 10, 2009 11:19 AMGod damn, what is it with people calling Idiocracy brilliant?
It's plainly one of the most brain dead 'satires' ever made.
It doesn't take a genius to make a movie about people being idiots, it has about as much ingenuity and wit as a daytime sitcom with humor that seems aimed to please an audience not to different from the ever day people of the world it portrays.
None of the concepts (LOL porn to advertise everything) were new or anything other than obvious repackaged 'dumb' jokes that have been passed around for a long time already.
Seeing the 'brilliant societal satire' mantle slip from even the lighter stuff like Brave New World to Idiocracy in the eye of the general public is surely just as much of an indicator that standards are slipping as the advertising mentioned above.
I hate that movie.
erm...
Who is it who decides false advertising is a good idea ?
Then decides it isn't working - so makes it even more false ?
Seriously - do these people even know they are lying ? Or do they actually believe their ads to be a legitimate representation of the game ?
I've had no idea what Evony was since I first started seeing the "Play discreetly" ad until this post. Thought it might have been a text game (like those mob games on facebook) where you run a brothel.
Sean on July 10, 2009 11:35 AMI've noticed this, too. At least they ads aren't animated, like those stupid financing ads with the girls dancing. That was about the only thing more annoying!
It totally sucks that ads drive most internet content. Why do you think many articles on legit sites are broken into 10 pages so you have to keep clicking Next Page and then wait for the next page to slowly load, even on boradband, since 99% of what is loading are ads? Advertising, this way they can hit you 10 times instead of once.
Oh God, I hate those ads smack in the middle of article text and now ther eare more and more sites where you try to click in some white space to then scroll the page and now that launches ads.
I really loath advertising now, more than ever!
Dennis on July 10, 2009 11:47 AMI get a serious amount of blog comment spam from this place. It's really starting to make me angry, especially when it's up to 100 comments per day.
Benjamin M. Strozykowski on July 10, 2009 11:56 AMI've replaced a large percentage of my stock expletives with "Ow, my balls!" I find that it makes many upsetting misfortunes at least a little funny.
KJB on July 10, 2009 12:11 PMI still think that last iteration has to be some kind of put-on (or take off, as the case may be). I doubt it's hard at all to get a "rogue" advertisement for some relatively obscure product onto some of the more dodgy ad servers.
At least now I know what that guy in the cube across the way has been doing most of the time. The guy that just got a promotion last month...
KJP on July 10, 2009 12:15 PMI'm not sure how is this wrong.
They did this progressively, so they probably started noticing the ad was working better each time and decided to keep changing it in the sex direction. Until they finally threw the whole "medieval" theme and kept the breasts.
You don't know what's happening inside their servers. Maybe this misleading ads don't lower their conversion rates too much and they still get some horny males who also like playing online games and are gullible enough to pay for game cheats. Sounds like a business model to me :D
Not everyone is in your position, where you can basically create a site and have your followers start spreading the word. Your position is great, you earned it. But some people want to make a living out of a website and they must use this "cheap" tactics and turn to the "lowest common denominator" of online users.
You could have said instead "look, the internet is like Idiocracy, this guys are going down this path and it seems to be working for them since they keep doing it".
Ezequiel on July 10, 2009 12:19 PMMy son plays that game and raves about it. I've seen many of these ads myself, but I seriously thought you were pulling our collective leg with that last one. It would be utterly shameful if it weren't so effective. They know exactly who their target audience is, teenage/male, who won't be offended in the least by the tactic.
Bill the Lizard on July 10, 2009 12:21 PMTHis is the bestest game ever! Thanks for introducing me to it.
And your audio captchas are terrible. You cant figure out anything!!!
Anonymous on July 10, 2009 12:25 PM"I'd seen most of the ads up til the last one. As a female player I'd decided by about ad #3 I would never, ever play their game. Browser-based casual games and the female demographic? Pfft, who needs them!"
I'm a female player, too. Someone else got me to play Evony first, back when it had just launched and I'd never seen or registered the ads before. If I'd seen the ads then I doubt I would've. :)
"there are no women on the interwebs"
While we're linking xkcd: http://www.xkcd.com/322/
And thanks for the interesting article, that's great. :)
ylla on July 10, 2009 12:34 PMI for one wouldn't mind seeing a scantly clad StackOverflow advertisement every now and theen (ala Irish Girl from DailyWTF and the like).
Craig on July 10, 2009 12:40 PMI know where they got this idea: http://www.thenoobcomic.com/index.php?pos=186
LXj on July 10, 2009 12:51 PMSeriously, I played the game for a few weeks and realized that
a) it sucked
b) it wasn't getting better
c) there were no naked chicks on it
Love the Idiocracy reference, one of the great cult classics.
I salute you Jeff, this is one of your classic posts.
A fan,
Mark on July 10, 2009 1:06 PMJust to play devil's advocate ... perhaps they're doing sophisticated A/B testing and following where ever the data leads. In general, we'd consider that a virtue. Only when we see where it leads do we complain.
Adrian on July 10, 2009 1:15 PM@James,
"Wait.
That's a -real- ad for a -real- game?
I'm heading to my bomb shelter now. See y'all after the apocalypse."
Wait, so you think "sex sells" on the internet is a sign of the apocalypse? Where the heck have you been for the last 15 years?
I'd seen most of the ads up til the last one. As a female player I'd decided by about ad #3 I would never, ever play their game. Browser-based casual games and the female demographic? Pfft, who needs them!
Jen on July 10, 2009 1:34 PMLooks like, how to advertise on the internet successfully. All this talk and posting about the ads just generates interest in the product.
Just like the One Rule to Lose Belly Fat (Obey) ads that are out there. Obviously these people wouldn't be doing this if it didn't work great.
Jake on July 10, 2009 1:34 PMNot that I doubt it's actually appeared, but I can't believe that's not some weird prank. Everything about it screams prank, right down to the "actual-game-name de-emphasized and in tiny font."
Also, a bit of your chronology doesn't add up. You make it sound as if all of those other ads came after the first one, but the first one is advertising Evony and the second is advertising Civony, which was the game's previous name.
Asmor on July 10, 2009 1:41 PMI am sick and tired of this advertisement especially in my google reader. People around me may think I am watching adult site or something because of these advertisement. Thank you for this article.
Abhishek on July 11, 2009 2:33 AMBoobvertising!!
namegamer on July 11, 2009 3:10 AMBig up for the Idiocracy reference, that sort of DEVOLUTION is what came to mind. I didn't watch the ads that closely over time, but was wondering why the most recently one I saw looked so... busty... and that was, well, before the non-fantasy breasts one came to my attention, thanks to Coding Horror. Looks like so many other "support" ads, with the cognitive dissonance of... WHAT'S THIS? A GAME?
Indubitably, while the lesson here is "how not to advertise", if it IS infact working for them — the piled-on attention is succeeding to their advantage. Especially if they're well-aware of the psychological reactions it's causing.
And I'm curious what impact culture is having here? Something lost in translation from the Chinese?
Torley on July 11, 2009 3:21 AM
1ST BANNER:
*production artist* Awesome! and it don't get much conciser!
*old v.p. of marketing* We've decided to change the name. Put a girl in there and I'll email you the text.
2ND BANNER:
*production artist* (Thinking; ~this looks like shit~ ) How's this?
*old v.p. of marketing* Love it! Don't you?
---One Week Later---
*old v.p. of marketing* We've decided to revert back to the old name. Put two girls on there and I'll email you the text.
3RD BANNER:
*production artist* (Thinking; ~this looks like shit~ ) How's this?
*old v.p. of marketing* Love it! Don't you?
*production artist* Uh...not really, but I like the chicks (smile, chuckle).
---One Day Later---
4TH BANNER:
*old v.p. of marketing* Uh, Simon, Randall and Chen said we need you to change the girls to an animated version.
*production artist* What? like make them kissing or something?
*old v.p. of marketing* No no no like a drawn character. They said it was racy. I'll email you the new text.
---Two Weeks Later---
*old v.p. of marketing* Conversion rates are waaaaay down. They said I could do whatever I want. Put a real girl back on there and I'll email you the new text.
5TH BANNER:
*production artist* (Thinking; ~this looks like a porn ad~ ) This looks like, ...uh, what do you think?
*old v.p. of marketing* Looks almost like an adult ad, let's try it.
---One Week Later---
*old v.p. of marketing* Conversion rates are up, let's try something new. I'm going to go ahead and do this next ad myself.
6TH BANNER
ijostl on July 11, 2009 3:26 AM"Since I can't see the page 11 chart in that link, I'd be interested to see what they define as "online games", because any chart that says women play more online games than men is a complete fabrication."
Remember, Yahoo Spades and Diner Dash are "online games" too...
Doug S. on July 11, 2009 3:45 AMHere are some boobs. Give me your money! All hail freemarketism. Damn communists. What's more to understand?
not_a_frenchie on July 11, 2009 3:54 AMThis I feel reflects the "Dark Side" of the advertising industry. Contrary to popular belief the entire industry is not full of shady practices and narcissism, though for some it may certainly feel that way. Sex appeal is what some companies try to use as a means to attracting new buyers to their product. And it makes perfect psychological sense, if you subscribe to Sigmund Freud. These however are examples of it being done in a tactless fashion, which is harmful to the industry image as a whole.
Roberto Blake on July 11, 2009 4:21 AMThis series of increasingly offensive, misleading ads is one more reason to have Adblock Plus : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
Hey, now the Evony "team" is spamming comments, too!
http://brokentoys.org/2009/07/10/save-the-cheerleader-spam-the-world/
http://westkarana.com/index.php/2009/07/10/evony-and-irony-why-i-will-never-play-this-game/
Jeff Atwood on July 11, 2009 6:09 AMAh, so that game is made by some guys associated with WoW gold selling. It all makes sense now.
Lone Wolf on July 11, 2009 6:31 AMLol my husband plays that, ever since I saw the third ad we've all been teasing him about how he's off to "save his lover!" :P
Chocolatesa on July 11, 2009 8:27 AMMaybe it was just my education, but if I were to judge the advertising/marketing community based on the people who were educated as such... none of this would surprise me and indeed it doesn't.
Smart and non-horndog business students were few and far between.
Steve-O on July 11, 2009 8:46 AMGENIUS!
I need new banners for my online "quit your job and work from home making millions" scam blog! (If you buy it, for $50USD, I just send you the source code to my website with very basic instructions on how to set up a LAMP. One line instructions, in fact - "Google it.")
I'm thinking "Become a pimp from the safety and comfort of your own home. Make millions and get all the women you could ever want!"
FTC will probably shut me down for that one, but it's bound to happen eventually anyways.
The PFY on July 11, 2009 9:00 AMI suppose those ads help their click-through, but don't they find that a lot of potential players are irritated when they discover is not the porno game implied by the advertisement?
AndyL on July 11, 2009 9:10 AMI don't know who said it, but:
"The internet, where men are men, women are men, and children are the FBI."
David A. Lessnau on July 11, 2009 10:05 AMSomething that people, and WoW players in particular, don't seem to notice: yes, there are a lot of male players with female toons. There are also a lot (not as many, but still a substantial number) of female players with male toons. It saves on a lot of in-game hassles, and besides, the gear looks a lot more badass.
Something else I've noticed over the years: It used to be that women played primarily healers of some type, with a few dps casters. While there are still a lot of them (and, for some reason, a lot of guys make female healers), I'm seeing a lot more IRL females playing melee characters. I used to be the notable oddball because I liked tanks, melee dps, or hybrid classes; now they may not be as common as the alternatives, but they're nothing really remarkable. The two other women in my guild's 10-man Ulduar group are a tankadin and a druid who either heals or tanks as the situation demands (ah, the joy of dual-spec), when five years ago they'd have been priests, and ten years ago they wouldn't have been there at all.
Personally, despite being a 4X game addict since Civ1, I'm not going to play Civony/Evony, ever. Not because of the boobies, but because of the blog comment spam. I don't buy anything, ever, from spammers. They're filthy, stinking scum that ruin everything they touch, and I go out of my way to not give them any money. That, and the fact that they're WoW gold-sellers, some of the people who have done so much to spoil WoW and, well, pretty much every other game. It may matter to no one except me, and I may be able to do absolutely nothing about them, but I can avoid giving them my money.
I'm Borat and this is "very nice!"
Borat! Very nice. on July 11, 2009 10:57 AMGood thing this is a text ad:
[advertisement] Interested in agile? See how a world-leading software vendor is practicing agile.
After all the promises of boobs and "full body" lattes, my fantasy goes dirty imagining a banner ad for that one. Although I really wonder now, what crosses the minds of mgmt types when they hear about 'agile' practices for the first time and know yet, it's about software development.
Rob on July 11, 2009 12:31 PMThat's what I get for relying on previews and editable comments.
Of course, the last sentence should end in 'and _don't_ know yet, it's about software development.'
Rob on July 11, 2009 12:34 PMInteresting stuff about women coming out here. "there are no women on the interwebs" is definitely not true. However, there are vast swaths of webs where a person claiming to be a woman is actually more likely to be male than to be truthful. This problem, or at least its perception, contributes to people/media/etc. ignoring the participation of women in social or gaming web. This feeds back into creating a female-unfriendly atmosphere (like the busty ads) and impedes what could be more healthy intersexual behavior.
Steve on July 11, 2009 1:20 PMThanks for the link to my site. Hmm, I definitely haven't seen that last ad you posted. But nice find!
Kev on July 11, 2009 1:38 PMWow, boobies in advertising? no shit... if you had _any_ form of adblocking think of all the time you could have saved 1) writing the article 2) all the drones that read this article... me included... thank you for wasting my time... get some sort of adblocker...
up next, spammers declare my penis will get bigger! how dare they!
Disenchanted on July 12, 2009 2:03 AMI wonder what the logical conclusion to this sequence of ads is. A pair of ovaries? I hope their game is a spectacular commercial failure.
Andy Brice on July 12, 2009 2:57 AMBahaha... I've seen most of these ads except for that last one, which made me choke on my laughter. It's so hilariously blatant and devoid of even the faintest context.
Mentalepsy on July 12, 2009 6:56 AMBill Hick's saw where this was going decades ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QiMw1Q65d4
I've never seen that last one in the wild either. I was quite shocked to see the second to last on a site that I visit.. slashdot I think it was.
Tim B on July 12, 2009 11:05 AMHey, a new one!
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/4620/civonybewbs.png
This is a particularly (and absurdly) tacky example, but I'm having a hard time thinking of the last time I saw an advert for one of these 'free' browser games that didn't have boobs somewhere on it. Though maybe I just don't notice the others...
Paul Jeffries on July 12, 2009 11:41 AMThis is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.
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| Content (c) 2009 Jeff Atwood. Logo image used with permission of the author. (c) 1993 Steven C. McConnell. All Rights Reserved. |
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