Bioshock commercial spot on, pushes Jack Thompson’s buttons
East coast ad house EyeballNYC raised the hackles of Jack Thompson this month (August 2007) with its eerily accurate commercial for Bioshock, Irrational Games’ autumn darling and the subject of much pre-release tittering. The game comes out today (August 21, 2007) and is expected to sell more copies than you can shake a genetically enhanced stick at.
Thompson detailed his grievances in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, a portion of which was posted on GamePolitics:
Take-Two… is aggressively marketing its newest Mature-rated video game to kids under 17 years of age… On this Friday’s night’s 8 p.m. Eastern time airing of WWE’s wrestling program “Smackdown,” there were repeated ads for Take-Two/Rockstar Game’s Mature-rated, incredibly violent BioShock…
A check of the demographics of the audience of that program reveals that teens under 17 years of age watch that program in huge numbers…
Remarkably, the video game industry is running ads for games like BioShock on teen-intensive television programs while at the same time its industry-captured “watchdog,” the ESRB, is running a self-congratulatory ad campaign to assure parents that the video game ratings system is working and that the industry can be trusted not to target their kids with these Mature-rated games. It is all a lie, as the BioShock ads prove.
This rampant fraudulent trade practice is precisely what “Big Tobacco” did with its “Joe Camel” and other teen-targeting ads, while at the same time lying to Congress that it was not marketing its adult product to kids.
For those of you who haven’t seen the commercial have a look:
Beautifully done, don’t you think? Eyeball manages to capture the artistic detail of the game while also getting through the message that Bioshock is smart and action-packed. This game is going to be a monolith this season, no matter how many Miami attorneys shout their displeasure.
Besides getting the name of the developer and publisher wrong, Thompson embarrasses himself by proving once again how deep and dark the chasm-like generation gap now is between “us” and “them.” You’d think there were better things for an attorney to do than molest the entertainment industry and try to ruin our good time, but apparently their aren’t. Bad lawyer! Naughty Lawyer!
Read [Gamedaily Biz] Also Read [Gamepolitics]
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Actually, Irrational Games name is 2K Boston/2K Australia as of this month; they were purchased by Take Two last year. So, Thompson got the name wrong, but he isn’t wrong to say that Take Two is the one marketing the game.
on August 22, 2007 at 09:37 AM - LINKOops, my bad. Thanks for the correction though! Looks like I need to do a bit more research before I write these things(arrg!)
on August 22, 2007 at 07:00 PM - LINK