Vintage gaming community.
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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”.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
cough big bang theory
Nerd blackface.
I'll fight anyone who says 1998 is retro. I'm getting old, but give me a few more years damn.
Bro, 2010 is retro now
We're gonna have to rethink definitions at some point. Yes, video games are still a comparatively new medium, but nobody would call a 2010 film a retro film, nevermind books or paintings.
Bro, we lost that fight. I was watching a Youtube video of a guy clearing games from his Steam backlog and introduced one with, "So, many of you watching probably weren't alive when this game came out. Everyone talks about what a classic this is, but I don't think I've met anyone who has actually played this game."
I died a little inside when it turned out he was talking about the first Half-Life.
If in 1998 you would have argued that 1972 is retro, then I'm sorry to tell you that 1998 is retro
No, you're retro! runs away sobbing
I am retro. You have no power here.
Embrace it! Gonna happen anyhow whether you want it to or not
You mean the late 1900's
The early 00s was pretty mysoginistic.
I originally came from a conservative country, and yet there were plenty of ads for softcore porns in TVs and billboards in those days. Even as a child, I questioned why do they show such images in front of full view to everyone.
The thing is, such mysoginy was the norm without us even realising it. I remember reading an article of a woman reminiscing her college days in early 00s. There were pictures of college girls on pin up boards and they get graded on how beautiful they are. The author said no one thought bad about it but looking back, it was very degrading and also invading privacy. There was also the matter of the infamous wardrobe malfunction of Janet Jackson. She got all the public spotlight afterwards because she is a woman, but Justin Timberlake pretty much got away with it for free. JT also shamed Britney Spears about losing her virginity to him, instead of keeping his mouth shut, while Britney was branded as slut.
The Man Show was on air for 6 consecutive seasons starting in 1999. Their premier episode featured Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel sitting outside trying to get people to sign a petition to end women's suffrage (as a joke, bro. Obviously it's a joke!)
Was that not just to take advantage of the fact that "suffrage" sounds like a bad thing (like "suffering")?
Exactly, playing on people's ignorance like current talk show on-the-street segments do. The joke was not that they thought women shouldn't be able to vote... It is just humorous to hear people say they are anti-sufferage not understanding what theyre saying.
It's like asking people if they are afraid of dihydrogen monoxide in their water...
I thought they were cringy even then.
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.
They knew what they were doing when they named it.
Am I the only one cringing at the perspective in the mirror more than literally anything else in the ad?
They were going with a "sex sells" approach to marketing, but what they got was just an unrelatable and cringe piece of 90s trash.
and above all - sexy new outfits
The most important part of a game.
It took me a couple seconds to understand that it wasn't a before/ after set of pictures. It was a little confusing.
Man, 90s video game ads were wild lmao
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.
