I’ll give this to WarTune, I rarely notice ads, but I certainly noticed theirs. The fact that @FairyGodfeather remembered the name of their game, and many of us knew exactly what he was talking about, speaks volumes to the effectiveness of their advertising. We can make fun of it all we want, but it works.
Regarding the Witch King of Angmar being sealed away by the men of Arnor? No. No. No. That is not what happened in the books. He was never a barrow wight. He was the Lord of the Nine Ringwraiths, the leader of the Nazgul. He -annihilated- Arnor, piece by piece, and then relocated to Mordar to prepare it for Sauron’s return, sallying forth only five years after the loss of his own kingdom to conquer Minas Ithil, Gondor’s beautiful City of the Moon, to finally obtain the palantir (seeing stone) that Sauron desired. Afterward he killed Gondor’s King in a duel, ending Gondor’s line of Kings.
It was because of the Witch King that Gondor was ruled by Stewards and not Kings in the time of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was because of him that the hobbits had to sneak past Minas Morgul, the City of Black Sorcery, instead of a friendly Minas Ithil. It was because of him that Sauron had the palantir needed to warp the minds of Denethor II and even Saruman the White when they looked into their own palantir. The Witch King couldn’t have done any of this if he was sealed away in some tomb while he was still in the North.
@Samuel_H_Young Your first illustration (Venefira?), the one before the cover, appears to be missing. Has the link gone bad? Love the artwork btw, I look forward to seeing the rest.
I only knew it was Wartune because I looked it up. Same for Evony, I sat there trying to remember what the adverts were for and any keywords I could google to find out. I also know that Evony was taking pictures from deviantart, and other sites, and using them without consent for their advertisement campaigns. Wartune used the ESRB logo to claim their game was Adults Only when it wasn’t and got made to stop.
There are no nearly naked women in the games.
But you’re right, the adverts are at least eye-catching and they do clearly work, even if people who click them are going, where are all the boobs once they get to the game site.
I actually think I’d use a similar style marketing campaign for my own game, in so much as a banner add with an eye-catching picture, male or female depending on where the picture goes, and text saying you can date them. But that would at least be true, as opposed to a complete lie about the game content. And I definitely wouldn’t be ridiculous enough to prevent half of the population from playing my game with such blatant sexism. But I do recognise that it’s a valid, and highly effective, advertising technique. Or as likely I’d just parody it.
And Galador, it’s bad form to call the women in the adverts a whore.
@Samuel_H_Young Yeah the picture’s down for me too. I’ve already seen it and I did like it. I think your artist does do good illustrations, especially for the type of game you’re making.
@FairyGodfeather
It’s weird because it seems like all my image posts end up going down. But I’m glad that you like them. I think you’ll appreciate that the 1st 3-4 villains in my book are female.
@FairyGodfeather False advertising is a sure-fire way to generate bad reviews and ruin a game’s on-line reputation. Nevertheless if it’s a fly-by-night company they won’t care. In a few months they’ll just shut down and start a new company under a different name with a new game that is just as fake. While I have no interest in signing up for such a game, I did snarf two of their advert images which I thought were quite well done for my artwork collection.
@Galador I’m with FairyGodfeather. Let’s avoid insulting women, even make-believe ones, for their attire. This discussion brings to mind the recent Miley Cyrus vs. Sinead O’Connor feud, but that discussion is for the feminism thread, not this one.
@Samuel_H_Young I’ll check out the demo. And speaking of which, the last two illustrations on the demo page also seem to be down, but I see the troll image right before them just fine.
Advertising is a tricky business. I remember buying pay-per-click ads years ago and posting very descriptive, not flashy ads that received few clicks but yielded the right customers we wanted. The site posting the banner hated the image because so few people clicked it, and they didn’t make money. They told us to change the banner or lose the space. So I think tricky ads, aimed at seducing a market, is unfair on many levels.
@FairyGodfeather@P_Tigras I’m sorry if I offended either of you with that comment. I didn’t mean to do so. To me, it was just obvious that the advertisers intended for the woman in the advertisement to look like someone their character could have sex with and would be willing to have raunchy sex with them in a heartbeat, something I am sure doesn’t actually exist in the game without even looking it up to be exact. Using context clues, such as the “Male Gamers Only” line made it even more likely that the woman in the ad was meant to be a… sexually immoral woman with desires? If it were a real woman in the picture, I wouldn’t have used the word “whore,” but since it was a cartoon meant to be sexual, I didn’t see the harm. Once again, I am sorry to have been inappropriate.
As for the Witch-King, everything you said was entirely true! In the movie, did they say that the necromancer in Dul Guldur was the Witch-King? I must have missed when they said that or simply forgot about it. If they are claiming that the Witch-King was locked up, much of the events in The Lord of the Rings couldn’t have happened! I’ll even venture to say that Arnor would still have been a dominant kingdom and the Dunedain would still have been a prominent race rather than just a few stragglers left who haven’t decided to die yet! LOL! Without the Witch-King, yes, Minas Morgul is still Minas Ithil, Saruman is not corrupted by Sauron (although he originally was planning on defeating Sauron and becoming the ultimate ruler himself), on the whole, there is much less trouble for all the West, and the North, for that matter.
It is actually regrettable that most people never will have know how little sense locking up the Witch-King makes seeing as so many people just watch the movies instead of reading the books.
@Galador You didn’t offend me personally. And I don’t disagree with your assertion regarding the marketing goal of the advertisers. The issue I have is purely with the characterization of any woman who dresses in a way others disapprove of as a whore. And yes, it would have been worse if it were a real woman who was so tarred. Nevertheless I’d like to see us move entirely away from such pejorative labels for women that are in fact little more than snap judgments based on appearance.
I’m not sure what’s going with the movie, but in the books the Necromancer in Dul Guldor was not the Witch King. The Necromancer was a newly awakened Sauron who was greatly weakened and needed time to recuperate back to his full power. That’s why he was lying low, and pretending to be some lesser evil, to prevent the forces of Good (ie. the White Council) from dropping everything to immediately crush him while he was still weak.
@P_Tigras Ah! I thought you meant that in The Hobbit movie, they said that the Necromancer was actually the Witch-King and not Sauron who was in Dul Guldor! I believe it is at the Council of Elrond in the book when Gandalf says that the Necromancer was, indeed, Sauron, correct? That is how I am remembering it right now, but I could be wrong.
And I’m glad to know I didn’t personally offend you with my words earlier! I’ll try to be a bit more considerate in the future nevertheless!
@Galador Yes, Gandalf discovered that the Necromancer was indeed Sauron, and this was discussed in the Council of Elrond. Regarding the “Witch King of Angmar” being “sealed away” by the “men of Arnor”, I was replying to @Beezlebub’s post in this thread dated Oct 10th. I believe he was speaking of the new film.
@P_Tigras Oh!! I must have missed that comment! I’ll go back and look for it!
EDIT: Ah! You are right! I do believe he was speaking of the movie. That is definitely a detail that should have been left out of the movie, considering it is flat-out wrong. Maybe they’ve planned to have Gandalf go in and do some investigating at Dol Guldor and find out that it is not actually the Witch-King there, but Sauron. Hopefully. That still doesn’t explain how the Witch-King took over Minas Ithil if he was locked away, though…
