The Advertising Standards Authority has once again reared its ugly head to bar yet another videogame ad campaign. Both Burnout and Stranglehold advertising has previously been suppressed in Britain following complaints from easily offended busybodies, and now it's the turn of Kane & Lynch to bite the dust.
The ASA used its old standby reasoning, accusing Eidos' press and TV ads as "likely to be seen as condoning and glorifying real violence" and that they were "likely to cause serious or widespread offence." It followed this up by stating that the commercials were "graphic and too shocking to be seen in any medium." Funny how the game itself is still quite legal then ... and has been out for months without upsetting anybody (from a content, not a gameplay standpoint).
Of course, with a game like Kane & Lynch, it could be argued that any attempt to suppress knowledge of its existence could only be an act of mercy and graciousness, but even so, the tendency of the British public to go whining and complaining about posters and commercials is ridiculous. It's not just games, either. You'd be amazed (or not) at the amount of stupid, ridiculous garbage that my fellow countrymen like to complain about. Watching an old episode of Points of View shows a fine example of people who have so much time on their hands, they will write in to a TV station to complain about a rude word or a comedy show that makes light of dog death (true example).
I really wish those bubble-wrapped pussies weren't catered to. Channel 4 and Channel 5, two stations that aired the adverts, even went to so far as to apologize for causing any potential distress.
Stop apologizing, stop bending over backwards to please these twits, and tell them to grow the f*ck up.
Contest:
8:01 PM on 04.09.2008
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Or at least, I can only hope.
Zing.
And I thought the Midwest was bad.
From what I remember of the trailer, it was no different than what you'd see for an action film. This is just more bleeding heart double standards to play up to politicians and whingers.
I know the game wasn't the best, but I would like to see Eidos man up and say something about this. I'm sure the ad followed all those rules, by the same nuts that passed it around launch, even being broadcast at a decent later hour.
A u-turn after six or seven months like this is dumb, and make the ASA look even worse.
So come on Eidos, come out and defend your game.
I once read a letter to a local magazine that complained because the teenagers in a relationship on a soap opera were not having sex, and that was unrealistic. What they wanted the magazine to do about it I have no idea. Especially since the soap wasn't even made in this country.
And yes, I like to read letters in magazines and newspapers, its a sick fascination I have, kind of like listening to talk(back) radio, but far slower, and with (slightly) more radicalism and idiocy.
This is what the ASA does. It doesn't screen ads before they go out, its job seems to be to take them down after the fact, when about ten people have moaned loudly enough.
English for starters. It seems you could do with a refresher course if the beginning of that sentence is anything to go by!
Who cares if they banned an ad for a crud game? Not every instance of a game and/or game related item/ad calls for us all to shout "N0 WAI WTF?"
To many times people on this site act like they've had some great piece of art denied them becuase "splatter guts gore 7" has been denied them, or has had been cut.
Maybe i'm preaching to the perverted here but at the end of the day these are games, and the best ones always make it through, so who cares if they ban the odd ad for being overly violent? Good job i say, as most people old enough to play the game probably dont rely on tv ads to sell it to them anyway, and it avoids flak from people who dont play games and whose only interaction with them is seeing ads like said banned one and getting a blinkered view of them.
sure, censorship and suppression of information is pretty fucked, but frankly, would you want to look at a terrible kane & lynch ad every time you go outside?
Write to a paper, contact the BBC, do something, but if it pisses you off STOP WHINING AND GET SOME DIRECT ACTION!
What I do find funny, from some of you guys is this, 'why should one game get persecuted, while another doesn't attitude'. Is Burnout more or less justified than Kane and Lynch for this crap (not on the basis of being good or bad games, but by just being games)? You should be either for games as a whole and an industry, or against them and games, with the pitch forked witch hunters. You can't really be on both sides of it.
I can only speak for myself, so each to their own and whatever.