Friday, November 12, 2010

Black Ops Marketing

An interesting item appeared at Jezebel yesterday: Call of Duty Acknowledges Existence of Female Gamers.  The piece basically boils down to its closing sentence:
Even if women are still second-class citizens in the world of video games, hopefully this commercial is a sign that marketers are starting to realize female gamers make up a large and diverse group. And sometimes we enjoy a good explosion, even if it isn't pink.
Personally, I'm mixed on the ad itself -- I'm really not a fan of that genre of game and on a personal level I'm inclined to side with the whines and rants about the level of violence and plausibility in that commercial.  But just because I really don't care to play a Call of Duty game doesn't mean I can't be impressed by the first ever non-Nintendo game-related ad I've seen to feature that much diversity in race, age, gender, and body type.

I hear actual CoD players are more or less fans of the ad.  I wonder if that translates into them not being total jackasses to female players on headsets in online multiplayer?  Someone with an XBox, report! ;)

1 comment:

  1. i'm on the psn and not xbox live, but let's just say that the jackasses are still out there. i have not, however, actually encountered a female player who had a headset of her own, so my evidence is less germane than it could be.

    having said that, i do find the commercial problematic, for the violence reasons. (even though i willingly go on and unload entire clips of bullets into virtual strangers on a regular basis. i never claimed not to be a hypocrite.)

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