Sexist Ad Lands EB Games Australia In Trouble

[Alar]

I still think it was pretty funny, if sad. "Heh, women are so easy to buy off! Just treat them to a fancy meal and they'll go home and do all the house work while you play video games!"

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

That is a truly brilliant advert. I now want to trade my old games and take the missus out for dinner.

...Sarcasm?

Ot: Piece of shit ad but I don't see how it's sexist.

 

[godofallu]

Australian response to everything: Quick censor it!

 

[Richfeet]

Ok...I just saw it twice. Was it the dusting? The "peanuts" adult talk? If it's the dusting that's "sexist", then have the wife playing the second player in the game. Problem solved.

 

[targren]

Seems like whining for the sake of whining to me.

Why so surprised? That is pretty much the core function of modern feminism, after all.

 

[DarkRyter]

If the genders were reversed, would it still be sexist?

 

[Something Amyss]

How can a dinner at McDonald's smooth things over?

Well, it's using retro fifties music. Perhaps they're from a dystopian future where all the restaurants have been taken over by Taco Bell McDonalds.

More like "If you're a guy and your wife complains about you using cash for games, TRADE OLD ONES IN INSTEAD!"

'Course, that's not all she was complaining about.

Is it sexist? It's a bit of a reach. The ad's kinda dumb, but whatever. If we're slamming ads for being dumb or in poor taste, we've got about 6 and a half BILLION ads to knock down.

And several far worse than this one.

 

[blalien]

"47 percent of Australian gamers are female, she said, yet the perception that core games are for men while women are only interested in casual games persists."

I would just like to point out, without comment, that these two statements are not mutually exclusive.

 

[SteewpidZombie]

If you burst out laughing after reading that people were offended...raise you hand *Raises hand*. That was just a HILARIOUSLY bad advertisement, and I'm sure that women would be WAAAAAAAAAY more offended by something like a Axe body spray commercial or the numerous other things out there that ARE being sexist. (Note: My examples aren't for sexism purposes, just proof that THIS commercial of all things is nothing to really scoff at)

Example A:

Spoiler

Example B:

Spoiler

Example C:

Spoiler

Example D:

Spoiler

 

[moh21]

I see absolutely nothing wrong with this ad. I find it accurate and informative.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Maybe I've been on the internet for too long, but I actually thought it would end up with the man trading in his wife for a newer one. It just seemed to be heading that way.

See, that would have been funnier. I'd chuckle.

 

[ElPatron]

female gamer

Again, we fall down to what is the definition of "gamer". About 100% of people watch films and listen to music but they are nor audio/cinephiles.
Honestly, my girlfriend has some Tomb Raider game, CoD4, CoD:MW2 and BlOps. I think she might have an Uncharted or Little Big Planet that came with the console. I bought her Valkyria Chronicles. I don't think she falls into "my" definition of gaming.


Right now, I think about 1/3 of the girls I knew played at least a Tomb Raider game. I don't know about your definition of "core game" but I do guess Tomb Raider is one.



Me and my brother share a xbox 360. I have HAWX 2, a FIFA a PES game, and some other snowboarding and skating games. However, we don't put too many hours on those games.



Would you base your marketing campaign on me or my girlfriend? Or what about basing it on the 20-30 year old males who don't have that much income/have a good income but get nagged by their girls?

Because like I said, I could see the ad backwards and it would still make sense. Money is money. I wouldn't nag a girl for playing games, but if it took a toll on the income I would.




Well, the cleaning part is 99.9% accurate, no matter how "sexist" people find it. I almost have to beg to help cleaning.

 

[kwydjebo]

What ad were you watching? This was incredibly sexist and very VERY offensive. I found the sterotype one of the worst kinds and am genuinely insulted by it for my gender!

The man is an uncaring dolt who ignores his wife (At the beginning), then when shopping hasn't the brains to figure out he could have traded his game in, and at the end is unable to even lift a finger to help his wife. What kind of stereotype for a man is that? As guys, we try so hard to be attentive, and helpful to our wonderful ladies, and garbage like this just pushes those efforts back 20 years. The only thing missing was him Belching....for SHAME!!!!
(Sarcasm mode off)

Seriously, the woman starts by complaining about him wasting blah blah blah hours on end blah blah...which I understand for the comedic affect (Okay it wasn't particularly funny but like an SNL skit, you see where they were going with it), but they never really established if she was anti-gaming, particularly since the clerk picked up on it seemed more a money issue.

Yeah the comercial was just kinda dumb, I can see how someone might misinterpret it as sexist, but saying that was the design is probably giving the writers far more credit for planning than is deserved.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

To be offended by this, you have to be an excruciatingly histrionic woman. The spot never insulted women, it just played with the positive gender roles everyone has accepted for as long as we all can recall. It's a light-hearted joke, I don't think any woman who has time and a sense of humour with them would find this insulting.

this.

honestly if you go about looking to being offended by stupid game commercials, then you really need to get out into the real world and experience REAL sexism.

there are hundreds of thousands of commercials branding men as the fat guy on the lazy boy who does nothing around the house but drink beer and watch nascar, do i suddenly roar to my feet in anger?

no, i find it slightly amusing and move on with whatever i was doing.

This isn't sexist...it's a pretty common occurrence. As a man, I sit on my ass and play videogames, while my girlfriend cleans the house and yells at me for wasting my money on videogames and not helping her clean up.

While this obviously doesn't occur in 100% of households, my mother cleaning the house and yelling at my father for sitting on his ass watching TV happened a lot, and it seems to happen to my friends too. So it's clearly a common occurrence, so I don't see the sexism. All it says to me is that women take pride in their home and want money cleverly spent, and appreciate a night out every now and then, while men think of nothing more than Batman and sitting on their ass.

Wait. Who is the ad sexist towards again?

this was also my point, you could take this ad and flip it many ways to be sexist to whoever/whatever,

OH I BET THAT PLANT SURE IS PISSED OFF, NO ONE HAS WATERED THAT SUCKER IN DAYS! PLANTISM!!!!!! RAGEE!!!

 

[Proverbial Jon]

What do we think this is: genuine sexism or just failed irony?

The only thing this ad is, is a terrible travesty of animation. I mean seriously guys, I've seen some seriously good amateur flash animations that look better than this rubbish. What the hell?

I'm a guy and the woman dusting around the house at the end did make me cringe a little, but generally I thought it wasn't all that bad. I've seen a lot worse.

 

[Erana]

So the next time a woman keens at me about playing video games, I can tell her she's being sexist?

Can't have their cake and eat it too in this case I'm afraid.

Um... wha?

Really? You can replace the girl with the man and the ad still makes sense.





And who the hell made that "47%" statistic? First, you have to define "gamer". If you consider "gamer" everyone who touched a videogame in his life, you probably mean everyone who was born in the 60's or later.

"women don't like 'core' games" idea seriously needs to die in a fire

Any of your girlfriends (implying you are male) bought games every so frequently, they started to buy used games and trading old ones?

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

This isn't sexist...it's a pretty common occurrence. As a man, I sit on my ass and play videogames, while my girlfriend cleans the house and yells at me for wasting my money on videogames and not helping her clean up.

While this obviously doesn't occur in 100% of households, my mother cleaning the house and yelling at my father for sitting on his ass watching TV happened a lot, and it seems to happen to my friends too. So it's clearly a common occurrence, so I don't see the sexism. All it says to me is that women take pride in their home and want money cleverly spent, and appreciate a night out every now and then, while men think of nothing more than Batman and sitting on their ass.

Wait. Who is the ad sexist towards again?

"Sexism" doesn't just apply to issues relating to the female gender.
This is an incredibly ham-handed representation of both sexes, as the quote in the article says.

I'm not really all up in arms about it, but Jesus Christ, how could anyone possibly think this was in any aspect of the ad whatsoever a good idea? And more to the point, when you have bad parodies like this, then we have to deal with the morons who manage to not see the parody in this and start getting all vocal about their terribly sexist gender role ideas (Women shouldn't game, guys can't play Nintendo games, etc) and this bland and unfunny ad is absolutely not worth encouraging them.

 

[ccggenius12]

THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! THE CONTENTS PRESENT IN THIS COMMERCIAL CANNOT STAND! Seriously, it's trying to convince customers that you'll get enough money for a new game by trading in a copy of Need for Speed Underground, Skate 3, and Grand Slam Tennis. I doubt you could buy a sandwich for the trade-in value those games possess.

 

[Slayer_2]

Girls can't play games anyhow. Excluding iPhone and Facebook apps.