Sex-sellant….not me!

I am no prude, not by a long way but it really, really annoys me the ammount of smutty phone line adverts that there are at the back of 360 mags these days.  Offers of ” a 30 second quickie” or “mature lady waiting for your call, now” do nothing to excite me, in fact quite the opposite.  Yes I know that these ads probably meant the difference between the mags going bust or continuing but they are entirely innappropriate to the subject matter.

Two situations where these ads really get to me are:-

1. Sitting at home lesiurely reading with either girlfriend or young daughter beside me, turn a page to be assaulted with nude, nearly nude, bikini clad women offering their unique services. “honest, it’s a game mag!”, “well you must all be really sad then!”, hard to argue against faced with eight pages of it.

2. Sitting in the car park at Tesco at lunchtime flicking through a mag just as someone walks past at the “classified” adverts, that must be a sight to see.

They say that sex sells, and I have no doubt that in some cases it may be very true.  Anyone remember the Barbarian game on the Spectrum, in which a page three model was used in the advertising?  But these ads are not selling the product, they are being used to suck in guillable teenagers and milk them of their mobile phone money. (sorry that last sentence seemed innuendo laden-didn’t mean it, honest).  However pick up a mag for the Wii and there are no such adverts, they are just filled with what I want to read about, games!

I only have council telly, no Sky for me but I have recently seen that XLeague are starting to show bikini babes and the like.  This really does nothing to help the games industry as a whole, merely make it easier to take shots at.  This is not the porn world , this is video games, we don’t need all this.  So to all offending mags please take note, if I wanted a 30 second quickie I would pick up Mario and Sonic at the Olympics and if I wanted to speak to a mature lady I would phone my mum!


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7 responses to “Sex-sellant….not me!”

  1. Simes avatar

    I agree. Don’t buy the mags. Write letters to the editors, too, if you think it’ll make any difference, but mainly, don’t give them your business. It’s not like the information is hard to find on the web, after all. And the best way to change the industry’s stance on something is if they find out that it loses them money.

  2. Tony avatar
    Tony

    Don’t take it too personally. They’re not saying that all gamers are w*nkers, just that all men are w*nkers, and it is a fact that most gamers are men.

    Except for people who play on the Wii, hence the different advertising profile in those mags.

  3. Shaz avatar

    Sure is embarrassing when I turn over the page and other people walk past me seeing all the porn adverts. Especially as everybody is taller than me! The magazine aisles in WHSmith are too close! AAAARAGH QUICK TURN THE PAGE AGAIN! NOOO! NOT MORE! NO! NO! NO! CLOSE THE MAGAZINE! THROW IT BACK ON THE SHELF!

  4. Dan avatar

    I’ve always wondered if anyone really calls those numbers, I guess they must. But with most gamers being pretty tech savvy you’d think they would turn to the great big collection of filth that is the internet.

  5. Tony avatar
    Tony

    There’s filth? On the Internet?

    Oh my god, why wasn’t I told!

    Maybe now I can cancel my subscriptions to Escort, Mayfair, Fiesta, Vectra and Gardener’s World magazines.

  6. Anto Nick avatar
    Anto Nick

    It certainly brings down the sophistication level of said magazines. Especially when one such magazine is meant to be aimed at the bracket of early teens (both male and female!). I guess in the world of advertisements, business is business, and a letter of complaint/disappointment as Simes suggested is probably the best course of action anyone annoyed could take.

  7. Karl avatar
    Karl

    My misssus is convinced that i’m a perv because of these ads! I have very small children and have had to resort to cutting out the offending pages so that they do not see them! This is a pain because the older children are mad into gaming and love to read the mags!

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