Sexist Ad Lands EB Games Australia In Trouble

[Zen Toombs]

But EB defended it as a "light-hearted joke" that was actually written by a woman and said that a "female-oriented companion ad" is on the way.

This one strikes me as a steriotypical "it's not racist, my best friend is black!" excuse.

-snip- a "female-oriented companion ad" is on the way.

And this sounds to me like the company covering itself, and the "female oriented ad" is in the process of being hastily created after this criticism.

There's a big difference between stereotyping and playing with stereotypes, but sometimes it gets awfully hard to tell the two apart. What do we think this is: genuine sexism or just failed irony? I lean heavily toward the latter, but as a worthless layabout man myself, I'm not in the best position to judge.

If this is failed irony, it is quite the fail. While I do think this is sexist, at the same time I don't think that the ad was created with the thought of "Hur hur, women r dum and should b in kitchn barefoot n preggers". It seems to me to be more of the subtle and insidious kind of sexism that attempts to reinforce gender stereotypes.

TL;DR
EB Games, you're bad at this game. [http://www.hasbro.com/games/en_US/game-of-life/]

 

[The-Epicly-Named-Man]

It's just failed irony. The terrible animations are probably what stops this from seeming obvious, but regardless it's still a pretty horrible advert. Whether it was gender stereotyping or attempted irony, it didn't really convey the message particularly well.

 

[gyroscopeboy]

Any ad with a woman cooking while her lazy husband sits on the couch watching TV is also sexist...towards men

 

[Monstrion]

Cry me a river Rebecca.

"47 percent of Australian gamers are female" ... yeah because playing Angry Birds and Farmville makes you a legitimate gamer... One would think that a dev would know the difference

Saying 20% of gamers are female would be a stretch, but 47% is just utterly laughable.

 

[Frostbite3789]

Next time I see an ad with a clueless man I'm throwing a shitfit.

 

[Electric Alpaca]

Amazing.

Whilst knee jerk reactions still exist equality will never prevail - for pity's sake, EB games is getting excellent free advertising now.

Sure, their female market may feel put out for a week at most - but the reason for annoyance will vanish and the name EB games will stick.

It confuses me that such backward logic remains, doesn't the history that stretches behind us mean nothing? Although, that just helps to illustrate my point. Please wait for the notice that EB games profits are up this quarter compared to 2010 same period.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

And I'm sick and tired of every single show and every single commercial portraying men as drooling retards who make messes of everything that the smug wife has to come along and fix. But we can't all be happy, deal with it. Besides, that was just a shitty commercial.

 

[ElPatron]

You're practically a child.
20-year-old personal experiences do not accurately represent the way the rest of the world works.

>uses age as an argument to take down my logic = Ad Hominem;

>implies his/her age and experience actually mean anything outside his/her group of friends/acquaintances;

>implies that playing video-games and knowing other people like me since the 90's does not count as "real world" experience;

>implies that his/her views are "right" because THEY HAVE TO BE and disregards any possibility of her point of view being wrong in ANY part of the whole world;

Cool story, bro/sis.

My experience with video games is practically of my age and I explained my point of view in another post.

I don't consider myself a "gamer", although I have an impressive collection of Game Boy, PSX, PS2 and PC games (this one takes the prize with almost 70 of them). I rarely touch the xbox 360 and I haven't played much on the PC either.

My most recent play-troughs were Brink and Crysis + Crysis Wahrhead (all of the three known for their short campaigns) - only those in a month isn't much. I often play a few War§ow and True Combat: Elite rounds once in a while. Heck, kids used to play more CS 1.6 than that, and they weren't gamers - just trying to feel outlaws by playing violent games in a school library in crappy PCs.





Now, if I don't consider myself a "gamer" I think the bar is pretty raised. Perhaps I fall into the definition of gamer by someone's standards.

But if you take into account every male that plays "core games", you'll find that nearly 100% have played Modern Warfare, Gears of War or that hipster blue-ray movie known as Heavy Rain.

Now, of course that it also means that 70 to 90% of girls have played DS games, Wii games, Call of Duty, Tomb Raider, World of Warcraft, Hitman, Final Fantasy, Assassin's Creed... Heck, I am not saying these games because I relate them to the female genre - it's because almost everyone plays them.


There are stands with Kinetic games, DS and Wii consoles for trial purposes on stores. Even I played those.









And how is doubting a study childish? Studies proven that violent videogames are bad. Should I trust their methods too?

 

[mkg]

For anyone that has or ever has had a significant other that disliked their hobbies you'd get why it's funny/sad. That you have to go out of your way to justify the time you spend with the things you like. That's the joke, not that women are annoying party poopers, but that sometimes you have to bend over backwards to enjoy your shit when you are married/committed. That's it. Why are people so narrow minded that everything has to be an attack on your precious fucking world?

 

[Blind Sight]

Couldn't care less about the portrayals of men and women in this ad. If I'm going to get worked up over something it's definitely not going to be some poorly animated EB Games ad. I've got more important things to waste my time on.

 

[SovietX]

This ad is so rediculous!

Who doesnt already know about trading in? Jeez



Oh and I guess it could be seen as sexist. I just see it as a really really shit joke. Not funny, not clever, just a big steamy turd.

 

[MassiveGeek]

Oh my fucking god.

People are so butthurt over fucking everything these days. It's a joke. A joke. And it's not even a harmful joke - no one is going to take this to heart, except for whiny motherfuckers that no one should care about anyway.

Calm the fuck down, for crying out loud.

 

[Arrogancy]

It's somewhat sexist, but not really enough for me to care.

 

[Sean Renaud]

First if this is sexist it's sexist against men. The idea that we don't listen and care about what our significant others say or think is insulting. The woman doesn't seem to be doing anything wrong and nothing negative is said about her. If anything it shows a stupid male who didn't know he could trade in his games and was wasting money and then manipulated his wife/girlfriend.

It's not a particularly good ad, but it's not terrible and it's nothing that anybody shoudl complain about.

Also 47% of gamers are women and yet the perception remains that they play casual games. Call me when 47% of Batman Arkham City, Mortal Kombat, Need for Speed or Madden sales go to women and then we'll talk about changing the perception.

 

[TheGuyWithThatHair]

I wouldn't say sexist, more of an old hack, never very funny joke. I also think they where kinda trying to get controversy with this, and I guess it's worked.

But the Ad is shit regardless of the jokes.

 

[Susan Arendt]

I was actually fine with the ad up until the dusting bit. Because there are plenty of women who genuinely do ***** out their men for spending money on games, and trading them in, rather than spending more cash, is actually a good way to stave off certain arguments. But telling him that he's done enough already simply because he spent money on her is just plain lame. I'm offended by its stupidity, not its sexism. It's just a poorly done ad that could've been better with just a bit more effort.

 

[AugustFall]

Anyway. Yeah, really not seeing the issue here. If it was the other way around, with a woman buying the game and the bloke moaning, would anyone care? Seems like whining for the sake of whining to me.

Of course it wouldn't because it wouldn't play to established stereotypes. This does, it is sexist, demeaning to women (all he had to do was buy her dinner and she was a domestic housewife waiting on him) and male gamers (layabout with no job).

The fact that you can't see this is disturbing. It's obvious.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Oh my fucking god.

People are so butthurt over fucking everything these days. It's a joke. A joke. And it's not even a harmful joke - no one is going to take this to heart, except for whiny motherfuckers that no one should care about anyway.

Calm the fuck down, for crying out loud.

I know. Most of the things that people complain about, I don't even notice UNTIL people start complaining about them. My first thought after watching that ad was 'Have to remember to trade in BF3 to get Skyrim half off.' There was no second thought.

Anyway. Yeah, really not seeing the issue here. If it was the other way around, with a woman buying the game and the bloke moaning, would anyone care? Seems like whining for the sake of whining to me.

Of course it wouldn't because it wouldn't play to established stereotypes. This does, it is sexist, demeaning to women (all he had to do was buy her dinner and she was a domestic housewife waiting on him) and male gamers (layabout with no job).

The fact that you can't see this is disturbing. It's obvious.

The only thing shown was that she was happy that he bought her dinner.

Is being a housewife such a horrible thing? It's a stereotype, sure, but there ARE ACTUALLY HOUSEWIVES STILL! Some women are perfectly content with being a housewife. Amazing, I know.