So, I was watching House the other night on Hulu, and this ad popped up. It was for a videogame, Uncharted 2.
The ad was supposed to be touting the very high quality of the graphics and rendering in the game. What it was actually touting was sexism, and it was so infuriating that I actually had to go take a time out and stare angrily into the fridge for a few minutes after watching it. Fridge-staring indicates that I am seriously perturbed, people.
I couldn’t find an embeddable (or captioned) version of the ad, but here’s a link.
And here’s a description/transcription, for those who don’t feel like watching, are visually impaired, or are hearing impaired.
The ad opens with a scene panning across a living room with a giant television on the wall, paused in-game. A kitchen can be seen just beyond. Your average hapless-looking white guy is standing in the foreground, and he says:
“Dear PlayStation, I’ve been playing Uncharted 2 for days, but my girlfriend won’t stop watching because she thinks it’s a movie.”
The ad cuts to an office with a white guy in a suit, leaning back in a chair, another big television on the wall, showing graphics from the game. As the man talks, we are shown clips of in-game footage.
“This is pretty common, Jason, I mean, just look at this game, you know, you got napalm strikes, epic gunfights, impossible escape scenes and a plotline filled with betrayal, give her an hour or so, she’ll know it’s a videogame.”
The ad cuts back to the living room, where Jason, looking haggard, says:
“It’s been two days.”
The girlfriend, a conventionally attractive white woman, comes out of the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn, and says:
“Ready honey?”
Jason, his voice slightly strangled, replies:
“Yeah.”
Cut back to White Man In the Office, saying:
“Yeah, I’m gonna file this under ‘not an issue.’”
The ad closes with a title card with the logo and rating.
So, what this ad is basically telling us is that:
A. Women are so gullible/lacking in intelligence that they cannot tell the difference between a videogame and a movie.
B. Women do not play videogames. Neither do people who are not misogynists.
C. Specifically, PlayStation does not want women to buy this game.
I think that pretty much covers it.
Videogaming culture is pretty much rife with the -isms, but this seems to be a particularly flagrant example. I personally don’t play video games because I lack the coordination and processing skills to play them well, and I do not like to do things that I am bad at. But I probably would, and I would probably enjoy it. I certainly enjoy watching people play videogames, and yes, I said “watching,” as in I am fully aware that it is a videogame and it is still interesting to me.
But I do know ladies who play videogames, including some ladies who are very good at them, and some ladies who are pretty darn famous for it. I can’t imagine what it’s like for prominent women actually in the industry; presumably women do in fact work at Sony and at the advertising agency which made the Uncharted 2 ad, and I wonder how they must feel about this ad and the messages that it sends. Not just about the game, but about their companies, and about the industry as a whole.
I wrote recently about the strangely gendered nature of advertising and how it seems like it would do more harm than good. But, clearly, I’m missing something here, because if sexist advertising was not successful, it wouldn’t be used. Advertisers and companies which sell things are smart.
This leads me to an inevitable conclusion: Is Sony actually specifically marketing to the misogynistic demographic? Establishing an all-male space with this game with the goal of selling it to men who think that women should be excluded from gaming? Whether these viewers really think that women are so gullible that they will mistake a video game for a movie or they think that the ad is funny because it plays on some old tropes about women and gaming, there’s obviously something about this ad which is appealing to them and making them buy the game.
So, Sony thinks that it will make more by being sexist than it will lose because a few people opt not to buy this game. That’s pretty cold.