OMG MOM! TATTIES!

By Plagiarize

No this isn’t anything to do with Jack Thompson (for a change). See, just recently I’ve started receiving review copies of games, for the Horror Channel work I’m doing, and the first game that showed up was a copy of Bloodrayne 2.

Believe it or not, I passed up on both Bloodrayne games. Heck, I turned my nose up at the damn things. Turns out that Bloodrayne 2 is actually kind of fun, if a little shallow, but what I want to talk about is what gave me an unfair impression of the game: Titties. Knockers. Milk jugs. Ya-yas. Ho-hos. Mother hubbard’s hen sacks.

Okay, so I made that last one up.

Why the heck would well-formed breasticles stop anyone from looking twice at a game? The marketing angle of having a main character with the mother of all mammaries is quite well understood. Heck, entire franchises have been built on the things. Tomb Raider and Dead or Alive may have started the trends, but at least those were solid games.

Big glandulous globes is one thing, but if your swag is swinging, or your jugs are jiggling, then you’ve got even more going for you it would seem.

Tomb Raider has a lot to answer for. What was once a ground breaking title, ended up a laughing stock, after a few too many sub par slap dash sequels. But the fact is, the average person doesn’t know who Lara Croft is because the first Tomb Raider was a great game. No, it’s because Lara was endowed with notable udders (I’m going to run out of terms soon, hang in there). She was gaming’s first cover girl (and centerfold), and with it the gaming industry got a little more mature and a little more immature at the same time.

More and more games focussed on ‘cyberbabes’ as their central characters, and rarely was there any reason for it beyond eye candy. For an industry that was hoping to move past teenage boys as its demographic, it was a rather stupid move, but a rather lucrative one. Money men, statisticians and marketing people were taking note.

No genre seemed safe to the idea either. Even MMORPG’s started to advertise themselves based on the sexyness of the characters you could play as. Who can forget the sci fi MMORPG Anarchy Online and it’s ‘She’s got implants’ advertising campaign? I know I can’t.

Bloodrayne had a similar marketing campaign. The branding was all about Rayne’s assets (yes, not just about her multipurpose airbags). The official website was cheeky to say the least. ‘Experience Her’, ‘Get Her’, ‘Study Her’ being some of the menu options. Even the logo had the two Os in Bloodrayne sandwiched together and in a deep red, as if to subliminally get the message across. You know, if you hadn’t already got it from the open and obvious marketing.

The marketing campaign for Bloodrayne 2 was no different, focussing more on her ass or her gazunkas than on the game’s features.

Heck she’s done the nude thing in Playboy.

No you don’t get a link to that one.

And it doesn’t make a jot of sense to me to advertise a game that way.

Now, hear me out, everyone likes looking at attractive members of the opposite sex, and a good percentage of those like looking at pictures, animation or computer rendered versions of the same. Most game developers, yes, are males who don’t have the looks or money to win the heart and hand of a girl like Rayne, so let’s forgive them for making her the way they did.

If they’re going to have to look at a character every day for months and months and months why not make it an attractive one right?

That’s all fine, but the thing is, that isn’t going to keep me entertained for 10 hours or more. I mean, if I wanted to look at attractive women for 10 hours straight, there’s TV. In a video game your attention is usually on the environment and enemies and not the main character. If the biggest selling point of your game is that the main character is attractive, what reason do I have to actually play the game and complete the missions?

None. I’ll just stand still at the start of the level, or walk around so that those breasts (damn! ran out!) start bouncing around. All those months of work? Wasted… because I’m never going to see level two.

But the developers did make a decent game. They did put a lot of effort into creating something that was fun for 10 hours. The marketers seem to be blind to that fact, and even though that kind of marketing sells a certain amount of product, I think there are plenty of games on in the bargain bin that say that it isn’t enough.

Rayne, as shallow as her creation may have been, really deserves better than just ‘look she’s a sexy vampire lady who has BOOBIES and a BUTT! doesn’t that make you want to play the game?’

Frankly no. And if I hadn’t been sent a review copy, I’d have *never* looked at the game… because the way my brain interpreted those adverts was like this…

‘If that’s all they have to say about this game, then it can’t be worth my time.’

It has been worth my time. Yes Rayne is a well rendered recreation of a sexy vampire lady with boobies and a butt, but really, they could have replaced her with a guy, or a vampire lady who wears sensible clothing, and the game would have been just as worthwhile.

Sure, that mightn’t have got them a Uwe Boll directed movie adaptation, but then on the positive side… it might have got them a movie adaptation from a talented filmaker instead.