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'Misleading' COD2 Ads Pulled From UK 132

Posted by Zonk from the how-is-that-weird-again dept.
GamesIndustry.biz reports that Activision has been ordered not to air Call of Duty 2 ads in the U.K. that use pre-rendered imagery to sell the game. Three Television viewers apparently complained to that country's Advertising Standards Authority that the imagery constituted misleading advertising. From the article: "The adjudication is likely to send shockwaves through the industry as it focuses on the question of whether pre-rendered footage is an acceptable representation of a computer game - in its defence, Activision didn't argue that it was, but rather that using pre-rendered footage was "common practice"."
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'Misleading' COD2 Ads Pulled From UK More

'Misleading' COD2 Ads Pulled From UK

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  • Give me a break (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Agent00Wang ( 146185 )
    Who hasn't played a game that features photos or footage that is not representative of actual gameplay? I feel like only the most inexperienced of people could be so easily fooled by such "deceptive" advertising. There are playable demos for just about every game, as well as images and/or disclaimers on the box.
    • But isn't in "common practice" to include shots of regular gameplay in as well, for comparison? Most obvious example I can think of is the Resident Evil series.
    • Give me a break. Who hasn't played a game that features photos or footage that is not representative of actual gameplay

      Try using that kind of reasoning as a valid defense in court. The point is not that it's happened so often before; the point is that it's wrong and shouldstop.

      • Try using that kind of reasoning as a valid defense in court. The point is not that it's happened so often before; the point is that it's wrong and shouldstop.

        Try using that kind of reasoning as a valid defense with your mom.
      • ...of capitalism? Read a good book a few years ago: Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. In it he argued that advertisements in the modern age (utililizing deceptive or emotional appeals) have killed the fundamental assumption of a capitalist system, namely that consumers are engaging in a rational process when judging a potential purpose. These types of ads short-circuit the rational side of the transaction to appeal to pretties or to emotional thrills.

        At the very least, its FFT.

      • Try using that kind of reasoning as a valid defense in court.

        Looks like that's actually what Activision did...

        Activision didn't argue that it was, but rather that using pre-rendered footage was "common practice"

    • We're fast reaching a point in gaming where real-time rendering can feasably match the quality of pre-rendered graphics. It's not like the days of the Playstation, where characters in FFVII have a few polygons in-game, but are smooth and (somewhat) realistic in the FMV's.

      I'm sure most people here have seen trailers for Killzone 2 [ign.com] on the PS3. Even knowledgable people could be led to believe that this can be replicated on a PC game, and it's quite possible on the current-gen XBox 360.

      • Re:On the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @04:57PM (#14779421)
        I think this makes the offence so much worse. Since it's plausable that what you see on the screen is what you'll get, then you're far more likely to believe what you see is what you'll get. They can give incrimental improvements in smoothness and texture then when you plunk your money down, you'll find out it isn't what you had thought it would be.

        Put another way, If I told you I saw batman today, you'd know it was some kind of joke. But if I told you I saw the president, it's plausible, especially if you live in the DC area like I do. Saying I saw the president wouldn't be a joke. It would be a lie.

        TW
        • i totally agree, it makes it much worse. It's believable, so many will assume it's in-game footage.
        • Not only that, but the COD2 movies are in first-person perspective. Since the game is an FPS, it seems even more feasible that the movies being shown are in-game footage.

          I wonder how one would expand Tycho Brahe's term "bullshot" to refer to a movie?

    • Re:Give me a break (Score:3, Informative)

      by 91degrees ( 207121 )
      Disclaimers hardly make up for deliberately misleading. And it's quite obvious that some people will beleive the game looks that good, simply because otherwise, why would the advertisers not show some of the actual playable game footage?

      The Advertising Standards Authority has fairly strict guidelines that ensure that the public are not misinformed. Is this in any way a bad thing?

    • The Dreamcast version of Namco's Soul Calibur was 100% in-engine end to end. It's possible, developers (and their ad agencies) are really lazy.

      It infuriates me to no end that PS2 and X-Box games pre-render content, especially since that's eating up space that can be better used for more textures. I think the Nintendo folks got it right: make a disc small enough that pre-renders eat into the game.

    • Re:Give me a break (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TheSpoom ( 715771 ) * <slashdot&uberm00,net> on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @04:47PM (#14779323) Homepage Journal
      Is it deceptive? (Yes, by your own admission.)

      Is deceptive advertising illegal? (Usually yes.)

      Therefore, the ads should have been pulled, as they were being illegally deceptive. That it's "common practice" does not excuse the fact. If it were common practice to murder your enemies, should that then be legal?
      • "Is deceptive advertising illegal? (Usually yes.)"

        This cannot be correct, either that or it is not enforced. I would guess that 80% to close to 100% of advertising is deceptive. Some are more subtle than others i.e. McDonald's commercials with no fat people.
        • It is correct and it is enforced. Your example is random. Deceptive advertising is advertising which makes the product being advertised look or behave differently than it really does. So if McDs had an advert where the burger patty was 2" thick but in reality it's just 0.5", that's deceptive (and illegal). Who they choose to be in the commercial has nothing to do with the product being sold.
          • Deceptive advertising is advertising which makes the product being advertised look or behave differently than it really does. So if McDs had an advert where the burger patty was 2" thick but in reality it's just 0.5", that's deceptive (and illegal).

            Here in europe, they do exactly that. Have you ever eaten a Big Mac ? Does it in any way at all resemble the picture from the advertisements ?
      • Deceptive advertising isn't illegal in the UK; this was a decision by the Advertising Standards Authority, which is a body established by the advertising industry to regulate itself. This kind of self-regulation is very British.
      • Is it deceptive?

        Whether or not it counts as deceptive depends on how they presented the pre-rendered content...

        IFF they showed people supposedly playing the game, and that gameplay apparently used more advanced rendering than the real game does, then I would call it deceptive.

        If, however, the commercial just showed nicely rendered scenes thematically consistant with the game, then I would have to say they have not deceived anyone.


        Taken to the logical limit, this ban would suggest that a game also

    • Re:Give me a break (Score:3, Insightful)

      by UberMench ( 906076 )
      It is true that experienced gamers can, and usually do, see through these pre-rendered ads as a bunch of BS, but then again, the experienced gamers already learned about that game online or through their magazine subscriptions to EGM or PSM or other gaming M's. These television ads are targeted at Joe-Couch-Potato, or more obviously, Joe-Couch-Potato Jr. And since the majority of people who would need TV ads to learn about games are usually the ones who are gullible and don't even understand what pre-render
    • Remember "Wizards and Warriors II"?
      Fabio was on the cover art of that game.

      On the other hand, gotta give Nintendo props for putting actual graphics on most of their box covers back in the NES days.

    • Hmmmm...seeing this a lot recently. First post plays devil's advocate and makes a stupid statement, immediately gets smacked down by a dozen other posters.

      Is this a subversive way to get rebuttals out there right at the top of the comments so we don't waste our time with 20 similar morons all the way down the page?

  • BS (Score:5, Informative)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @04:12PM (#14779013)
    Those ads ran in the states with the words "Actual Game Footage" on the screen.

    Well, it was an "actual" cut-scene from the game. :/

    It would be nice to see the end of this practice.... not only because it will make the ads more honest, but it will mean game devs might finally stop filling up disks with little video clips in lieu of playable content.

    Personally, I thought the little cut-scenes in Ms. Pac-Man were too long. If I ever gotta sit through the opening scenes of GTA:SA again, I'm going to pop a gasket.
    • Ok, now that is misleading. I retract my previous comment if in fact they did the same in the UK.
    • Well, it was an "actual" cut-scene from the game. :/

      Well, that explains a lot. I was suitably impressed by the graphics on screen, but couldn't figure out for the life of me how they ever got all that action going on with such pretty graphics. Actual Game Footage, indeed. :-/
    • While I agree that many games (GTA in particular) have intros that are way too long, you really need to give credit to the devs for doing all the cutscenes in-engine. It really adds to the immersion of the game, and although the pre-rendered cutscenes in starcraft were really cool, for any FPS game I'd much rather have the development time spent on developing good scripting for the engine.

      • Re:BS (Score:2)

        by Pxtl ( 151020 )
        The problem with in-engine cutscenes is that I fidn that they are very often unskippable. Of course, recording video is so much easier. The funniest example is serious Sam 2, where the cutscenes are just video-recorded in-game footage - I guess a scripted replay system would've been too much trouble for a budget title.
        • It's done the same way in C&C: Renegade (and quite a few others, but that's the only one I can remember right now.)...

          I think it's because they want to use the engine, but they also want some details in the cutscenes which are only visible on the highest quality levels. That way, they get (possible on high-end hardware) in-game graphics, but also the details they need for the cutscenes.
    • > Well, it was an "actual" cut-scene from the game. :/

      I don't think it was actually. The cut-scenes in the game were all done "in-engine".

      The footage from the advert was pre-rendered at much higher quality.
    • Years ago my girlfriend got terribly excited and bought Final Fantasy 8 because of the imagery in the commercial. [geocities.com]

      I believe she actually cried. [gamingbliss.com]

  • I remember when I first saw the ads here in the States that they were terribly misleading. It was obviously pre-rendered material, but I don't remember them ever stating clearly that it was pre-rendered and didn't represent actual gameplay. Of course Sony set the bar for pre-rendered material with all the PS3 "games" (none of which were running on real PS3 hardware) they showed at E3, so I guess it's an industry trend. Lie, and hope nobody notices.
  • The only time I get suspicious of a game if the content on the box is drawn art with no screenshots. I bought a few Atari 2600 games back in the day that had cool illustrations on the outside but the games were terrible looking when played. No wonder video game market crashed in the early 1980s.
    • Yea I was really disapointed when the swarthy knight on the cover of "Adventure" was reduced to a small yellow block. I mean.. he's not even asian in the picture on the front.. terrible graphics..

  • Keep on moaning =) (Score:4, Informative)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @04:16PM (#14779059) Journal

    I was one of the people responsible for the UK's PCWorld having to remove their advert for a Centrino laptop that promised "the internet wherever you are"

    http://www.proweb.co.uk/~matt/asa_pcworld_haha.tif [proweb.co.uk]

    It is in our hands as knowledgable people to notice such rip-offs and report them :

    http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/ [asa.org.uk]

    • Good man. Those Centrino adverts were the worst... ever. A lot of clueless people seem to think that "Centrino" (a Pentium M processor with a badge and some form of WiFi implementation) has some magic connection to the internet becuase of those ads.
      • My mother included. I still have to explain to her that the laptop doesn't have the entire damn internet on it.... She's convinced, though - if they told her so at PC World, it *must* be true.

        Couldn't convince her not to buy a computer there, either.
    • Good job! Nice to see there are some people willing to spend their personal time to help ensure that advertisers can't operate totally unchecked!
    • Well done that man!

      They should have pointed out that in addition to a Centrino laptop, one also needs GNU/Linux, Kismet and Aircrack utils to get "the internet anywhere". Oh and 733t h4x0r skills not usually found at PCWorld.
    • Good for you.

      Not totally sure I agree with the first complaint but since they're erring on the side of the consumer I can't complain.

  • Finally... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @04:16PM (#14779061) Homepage
    Bloody right an' all. For ages I've been cursing ad's for not showing what the game actually looks like. Even the use of in-game cutscenes is misleading to the uninitiated as they might believe that all the game was that pretty. What's to stop me producing a game that's text-only and then including a 20-minute MPEG cutscene halfway through it which was made by some major CGI studio? The cutscenes are NOT representative of the game as a whole and therefore should not be allowed to be used in a 30-second advert.

    I actually noticed the initial adverts for Call of Duty 2 and had this exact concern. I don't buy games any more (nothing worth buying, nothing decent enough to play them on, no way I'm paying that amount just for a game) but it was obvious to me that there was no way the game could be anything like the adverts showed, even though they looked like they *could* be to the average parent/new gamer.

    I'm glad this has been upheld and hopefully this will make companies spend more time making the entire game look and play better rather than just spending the money on pre-rendered cutscenes.
    • (nothing worth buying, nothing decent enough to play them on, no way I'm paying that amount just for a game)

      Sounds like the rocking chair you sit on every day left a splinter in your rear, gramps.

      • Back in my day...

        Seriously - I used to spend a fortune on games but the last game I paid full-price for was Half-life 2 and that was only to get Counter-Strike:Source really, which I was massively disappointed with and haven't played since.

        I've got a load of machines but I ain't got anything above a 1GHz or a Playstation One so there's no point even LOOKING at games any more. Plus, the average price for a full-price game is fast approaching £50 which, I'm sorry, is an awful lot of money for someone w
        • I think your memory is faulty. Nothing was ever the way you remember it.

          When I was growing up, games and the consoles cost the same as they do now (~$40-$60). Some cost MUCH less (great new games released for ~$20 on Xbox). Computers cost MUCH more back then. And I'm not even controling for inflation.

          Yeah, if your idea of a game was dominos on a foldout table, I suppose comparing that to the cost of KotOR on a High def screen and an Xbox, I suppose it is more expensive.

          And if you pick 5 games and are only

        • Budget spectrum games were more than 99p, full price games were more like 10 quid.

          Don't know what sort of budget you are working with but shop around a bit and don't ignore things that arn't the newest and most expensive. You could buy an XBox and a few really good games right now and get change from 150 quid, which is less in than a 48k spectrum cost back in the day.

        • By the time I bought a decent PC or modern console, say I bought five decent new games, you're into easily £700 for, what, a few weeks of decent gaming? That's a serious amount of money for some on-screen entertainment.

          I don't think your numbers are quite right, though I'm not in the UK so I'm not completely sure about how prices stack up. Anyway, let's take an example. Assuming you can find an Xbox 360, that should cost you between £209 and £299 (Amazon.co.uk lists the Core for

          • Re:Finally... (Score:3, Insightful)

            by megan_of_wutai ( 649071 )
            Picking the Xbox 360 as an example was not wise.

            The RRP for most xbox games is £50... FIFTY POUNDS.

            Sure, you can get them cheaper if you shop around, but let's look at Game, the nation's dominant game retailer:

            PGR 3: 44.99
            RR6: 49.99
            CoD2: 49.99

            And coming out soon:
            GRAW: 49.99
            BF2-MC: 49.99
            Oblivion: 49.99

            • Picking the Xbox 360 as an example was not wise. The RRP for most xbox games is £50... FIFTY POUNDS.

              Well, I pulled my prices from Amazon.co.uk, which I guess is lower than other retailers. Then again, buying from Game is like buying from EBGames or Gamestop in the US -- you're going to pay more, when you could've gone down to Fry's and got that same $60 game for $45. Maybe there aren't any stores that run sales or discounts like that in the UK.

              Anyway, it doesn't change all that much. Add

            • WOW thats pretty heavy for a game.

              j/k
    • Wait just a minute,

      I believed that the UK License Tax was payed because there where no commercials on T.V... another reason to avoid paying it. Well, although thinking that I did not know that there were actually adverts means I do not see TV =op. I own one, but I only watch DVD's and downloaded movies Aiirrree!

      • EEEEHHHH-EEEHHHH

        Obviously trolling but WRONG. TV licenses are paid in order to be able to legally operate a TV in your household (which has always included owning any piece of TV equipment, including PC TV Cards, and is now starting to include things such as watching TV through your mobile phone). They make no secret of that fact.

        However, a portion of the UK TV Licensing fee goes direct to the BBC who offer their own channels (or at least those that the UK government *requires* them to offer) without adve

  • Is it ALL fake? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MudButt ( 853616 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @04:16PM (#14779065)
    So wait... When McDonalds shoots photos of their giant delicious burgers, they don't just grab the next big mac off the line and snap a shot? They grill a prime patty to perfection with delicately sliced tomatos and onions and put it together like it was "staged" or something!? BOO!
    • Any non-solid in food advertising (hamburger ketchup, cereal milk) is actually glue.
      • And a lot of the solid food is actually plastic.

      • Creative advertising is everywhere (Score:5, Informative)

        by WebCowboy ( 196209 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @05:31PM (#14779687)
        Any non-solid in food advertising (hamburger ketchup, cereal milk) is actually glue.

        Advertisers are much more creative than that actually. Cereal milk is often glue but there are far more diverse and creative techniques out there for food ads. Ice cream is usually a concoction derived from potato flakes (though not quite made into the same mashed potatoes tha the manufacturer intended). Bread is rarely if ever real fresh bread--it is usually shellacked with a "tasty" varnish and has the consistency of croutons (except more durable--artsy-crafty folks are probably familiar with that sort of modelling dough used to make those ornaments that look like real pastries...). Actual use of real food is pretty commonplace however it is generally room temperature and sometimes horribly altered. As a rule, anything that LOOKS good and can stand up to studio lighting and sit for extended periods is what goes. That is why most "fragile" food is totally fake.

        Other industries are "extra flattering" as well...show me an automobile ad that showcases the base model during normal use--it is always the one equipped with the handsome upgraded appearance package and driven by a "professional driver on a closed course". Clothing companies use fashion models that are far from the average physique, and you are kidding yourselves if you think that every one of them is wearing a regular size right off the rack in a store--in a lot of cases the clothes are tailored to fit the specific model. I'd say that the more expensive the clothing label, the more likely clothes have been specially altered to fit the model for the ads.

        The video game industry has operated this way since the beginning and I remember in the early 80s that there was a fracas about the use of "artist's renditions" in print ads. Some companies relented and pit in very fine print somewhere in the ad "artist's rendition - actual appearance may vary". One company (Parker Brothers? The publisher of the Popeye and Frogger games for home systems) took out a series of full page ads that showed the same screenshot for ALL the systems (so you'd see variances bewteen the Atari 2600, 5200, Colecovision, Commodore, Apple, etc)--implicitly boasting that they weren't ashamed of their graphics and suggesting that they made an honest effort in developing for ALL platforms while some other game makers did not.

        I think the practice was somewhat dishonest but understandable back in the day, since the hardware wasn't capable of making very exciting visuals on its own, and the market was fragmented amongst more platforms with a greater range of capabilities (bigger titles that were published for many platforms would have to resort to full page ads as described above to be completely truthful in their marketing). Today, however, such practice is inexcusable--it is plain dishonesty. Video displays do not melt like ice cream under studio lights, consoles are powerful enough to render great graphics, and the differences in contemporary platforms are pretty much NEVER evident in screenshots or quick flashes of action in ads. By relying on pre-rendered footage and artist renditions modern game publishers are just playing a crooked game of bait and switch. Old habits die hard though--much harder than the justifications for those habits.
        • Well, at least the car is actually a car available for sale - I don't care who's driving it or where, any more than I care if a McDonalds commercial includes a supermodel eating it. The sketchy part is that the price listed is for a car is the price for a different product than what is being shown - but at least they do sell that product.

          The case of games and McDonalds is that they simply don't even sell what is being shown - you can't buy a hamburger that looks as good, large, and tasty as what they show
      • Incorrect. When selling a product on TV, the FCC insists that the product being sold is the real McCoy. Everything else is fake.

        That nice fresh bowl of cereal you are looking at? Yeah, it's Special K, but it's in a bowl filled with Crisco. And the strawberry is a painted piece of plastic.

        But the FCC insists that what you are selling is the real item being sold.
    • I wish that's all it was. I don't think you can eat anything that appears in a food commercial.

    • Re:Is it ALL fake? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bloater ( 12932 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @04:57PM (#14779422) Homepage Journal
      Photo's of food on food packaging in the UK is required to actually be acheivable by following the cooking instructions with no additional ingredients. If they say "*serving suggestion" near the picture, they can put other food alongside it or minimal sprinkling/condiments (such as cheese or worcestershire sauce) as long as it is clear from the written label what is contained in the package (or if it is mostly transparent, obviously).

      AFAIK, it is illegal to cover the food in inedible chemicals or to use artifical food substitutes in order to make it look better. I am unsure if takeaway ketchup counts as an inedible chemical, but macdonalds actually puts it on the food you buy anyway, so I suppose that's okay.
    • Indeed, and sometimes fast food companies get busted there [thisismoney.co.uk] *, as well.

      * link grabbed from an excellent post by thesubtlesnake [shacknews.com] on Shacknews about this topic.
    • Here's a short article that tells you how food photographers (and food stylists) make food look so good [education-medias.ca] in advertisements.

      • Re:Is it ALL fake? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by JLennox ( 942693 )
        A fast Google did not turn up any results, but I do not believe that any of that is legal for food marketing in the US. They do specifically mention advertising in that article, but I do not believe that is the case. More so some thing used for cookbooks.

        I recall viewing a show on the Food Network which said that images of food for advertising have to be the real deal. They may dig through 10 shipping crates of hamburger buns for a single McDonalds advertisement, but it's a bun you _could_ get. That show sp

  • Not just games (Score:3, Informative)

    by pcgamez ( 40751 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @04:17PM (#14779073)
    Pre-rending/simulated screens are everywhere in ads shown in the US. Take a look at the text at the bottom of the next TV/game/cell phone ad (which you will probably need a 32" tv to read). It is very rare anymore to see actual screen images.
    • Most cell phone commercials, the phone isn't even real. Yay for realistic CGI beecoming accessible to the masses :(

    • Re:Not just games (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fishybell ( 516991 )
      <offtopic> Well, part of the problem with TV/cell phone screens is that they will actually look better in real life than they would viewed in a commercial. Have you ever noticed the weird rainbow effect on newscasters' ties? (if not, Watch CNN for 5 minutes and they will interview someone who's secretary didn't warn him about the problem) The problem stems from the fact that telivision doesn't display things perfectly, it displays them merely okay. Odd artifacts that aren't apparent to the human eye (
      • Yes! The dreaded moire effect, or if it's happening simply because you're looking at an incredibly busy illustration with your own eyes, visual rotation. With CRTS on film you can actually see the scanline running down the face of the monitor, because the refresh rate of the CRT is out-of-sync with the framerate of the film or digital CMOS sensor (starting near 60mHz for the screen and hitting 24fps--or Hz, if you want--with film). Just wanted to throw that out there.
  • I talked a bit about this kind of thing in the blog the /. edition of Carnival of Games linked to:

    http://www.muproductionsonline.com/2006/01/machini mas-future-and-games.html [muproductionsonline.com]

    I think the use of pre-rendered CG is unnecessary, and costly.

  • CPC or C64 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bWareiWare.co.uk ( 660144 )
    Surly this was dealt with eons ago (in computer terms). All the old CPC tape covers had a very tiny disclaimer on the bottom saying that the screen shots were taken form a C64 or some other computer with better graphics.

  • Good. If you're going to advertise your product (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    be honest and represent it 'as is'. I'm sick and tired of hearing hype (e.g. "NextGame consoles will deliver cinematic gaming") that I as a technology user know industry cannot deliver on.

  • Origin did this with Wing Command back in 1990 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tap ( 18562 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @04:30PM (#14779178) Homepage
    The box cover was a picture that claimed to be an actual screen shot from the game. They made a big deal about it, as few games had graphics worth sticking on a box at the time. Buit it wasn't actual game graphics. There were weapons and ships on the HUD that didn't exist in the game. There were also asteroids featured prominently in the shot, and they were much more detailed than the asteroids in the game. It's about time the ad monkeys got called on their BS.
    • I agree completely, and I found the ads to be misleading as well. Not only was the footage from the CoD2 commercials prerendered, but it not exist at all in the game (that I noticed), even as a cutscene. Personally, I thought it was actual gameplay footage before I saw and played the game firsthand, and I agree that the commercials are misleading. That may sound naive, but games such as HL2 and Q4 have pushed the limits so far that the sequence shown in the commercial didn't seem like much of a stretch.
      • Yeah, I noticed that too. I'd already plyed through the game and then one day caught a commercial for it. I figured it'd be either pre-rendered or tweaked in some way, but I didn't expect it to be COMPLETELY outside the game experience. The events depicted in the ad didn't occur in game in any way. I litterally had a "WTF?! Did I miss a mission?" moment.
    • There were several platforms that Wing Commander was available on: DOS/PC, Amiga, Sega, etc.

      Are you sure it wasn't that the Amiga version was depicted on the DOS/PC cover or something like that?

  • Look at the "solutions" to deceptive advertisement regulators have come up with, though. Now every time I connect my DS to a hotspot to play MarioKart, I get a little flash message saying "Warning: Game experience may change during online play"... I'd certainly $*%&ing hope so! Why else would I bother going online?

    • Look at the "solutions" to deceptive advertisement regulators have come up with, though. Now every time I connect my DS to a hotspot to play MarioKart, I get a little flash message saying "Warning: Game experience may change during online play"... I'd certainly $*%&ing hope so! Why else would I bother going online?

      That warning is not there to prevent cases of deceptive advertising. It's a CYA move by the ESRB that lets you know while a game may be rated as T, there's no way the developer can stop p

    • I don't know about other companies or games, but Nintendo went warning label-happy because someone tried to sue them. Thats why almost every first-party Nintendo game now has those 'warning video games can cause seizures' notices. Given that and Nintendo's caution towards jackassery online, online warning notices are expected. (See : Pictochat complains, the dick/wang emblems in Mario Kart DS and now eventual abuse of the voice chat features.)
  • This is good. Since the beginnings of Atari the industry has been showing us boxes and elusive screenshots that are nothing like the game play. It was less important in the Atari age because everyone knew that there was no way the gameplay could look like that. As the technology gets better and its starting to become more plausable for the gameplay to look photo realistic, or even direct artist translations(no digitizing and loss of details), that line gets blurred to the consumer.

    When I see what looks like
  • I remember seeing those ads here in Canada. What pissed me off the most was that they showed a review snippet that said something along the lines of, "visually breathtaking." I kept wondering, if the graphics are so great, why don't they just show them in the commercial?
    Still, ask any Playstation owner about graphics and they'll swear on their life that Final Fantasy 7 had much better graphics than, say, Mario 64, as they gesture wildly at screenshots of FF7's (admittedly amazing) prerendered cutscenes. Dif

  • Reminds me of.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by DeDmeTe ( 678464 )
    Reminds me of when I was a kid buying C64 games, they ALL had screen shots from the Amiga version. I fell for it once with some car game.. I remember my buddy and I taking turns playing it to the end thinking we were going to be rewarded with the "better graphics". I was sorely dissapointed. At least back then you could return opened software to EB.
  • It appears as though the journalist is not exactly clear on the meaning of "pre-rendered footage" and, as such, it is difficult to discern the actual implications of the article. Is the issue here the pre-rendered footage or the fact that it was pre-rendered footage not present in the game?

    From the article:

    "The ASA noted that the ads did not include any indication that the images shown did not reflect the quality of graphics of the games. While the scenes used communicated the themes of the game, they were
  • The main problem with these cutscenes is that they were created with the intention of being used for ads. It's bad design to put in cutscenes that look more fun than the game actually is, because the player is disappointed by the game they're playing. That's why you rarely get gameplay-styled CG cutscenes (in-engine cutscenes yes, because that's actual gameplay). But contrary to that rule of thumb, these cutscenes look like they're gameplay straight out of a next-gen army game that the PS2 can't hope to li
  • I've seen those commercials here in the US. They do bother me, but not because it's false, but because in my opinion that pre-rendered crap sells the game short. I prefer the natural graphics.
  • I'm gonna so sue Atari. Their pacman game of 2600 showed pacman jumping out as 3D.

    I suppose game designers will now include one 'breathtaking' scene in each game just to qualify putting it on the cover. So expect the framerate of one special stage in each game to be real choppy.
  • ....If we don't bullshit people, how will we get them to give us money for crap!?
  • On the back of the Mario 3 box there was a shot from a level prominently showing Para Beetles in the clouds. This level was not in the game. It made me so angry. fast forward ten years and I get a rom of the "lost levels of mario 3". and there it was. ...And the level sucked.
  • I'm absolutely sick and tired of seeing super high quality video in TV ad after TV ad for 3G phones, knowing full well what they are capable of. The audio is almost certainly fake as well, but at least that's within the realm of possibility.
  • I was recently browsing through the various games, and found that many of them had "screenshots" that were 90% pre-rendered cutscenes. Graphics don't always count for much in my book, but it would be nice if I could at least see what the actual game was supposed to look like.

    The practice of advertising with pre-rendered cutscenes and/or graphics is worse. The cutscenes are semi-understandable as the are part of the game, but using a rendered to make the game graphics far beyond what you'll see during game

  • I tend to agree (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've seen that COD2 commercial thats constantly on the air in North America and I keep asking myself if its actual gameplay or not. They kind of make it ambiguous. And really, how should I know? I don't own a 360. It just came out and it's supposedly got amazing graphics right? So who would know if the commercial is showing actual gameplay or not? Looks like it.

  • Should make the rules apply to trade shows (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xswl0931 ( 562013 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @07:02PM (#14780527)
    If companies were required to show actual in-game footage, we wouldn't have to ask if the PS3 footage was real or not. Remember the next-gen Madden footage versus what actually came out? THAT was misleading.
  • That game was nothing but pre-rendered scenes with a cursor over them.
  • I dont know about you guys, but Im tired of "bullshots", slice it any way you want, but if a sale is based on photos of a product and then you can prove those photos were faked or they didnt showed the product at all, it is misleading Advertising and the sale could be considered fraud in a court of law. How many fans are still waiting for PS3 games to look like the Killzone 2, Motorstorm trailers? probably already saving the rumored $700-$800 to get the system? no game system is even NEAR to render that ki

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