IRONY

At the time this ad was made, the conversation of whether or not games cause violence was still a major issue. Gamers getting heated and breaking things wOs everywhere on the internet in the early 2010s. This image is kind of nostalgic to me. The Dreamcast controller dates this ad back to the late 90s. At the time, the culture was trying to hide that part of itself lest Bill Clinton blame war in the Middle East on Animal Crossing for the GameCube. The tone is rather subdued and vulnerable despite its subject matter. If we’re talking about lines of focus, well, the eyes first go to the face because they always go to the face, and then down to what he’s looking at, and then in the direction of the fist. Fists are a really good attention grabber as well. The composition leads you around quite smoothly.

https://youtu.be/g6LoC9KUVtI

EMOTION

For a long time in America that a lot of people have valued the lives of their dogs over other humans. I love my dog like a weird brother of mine, and I kinda get that, but it’s like a wider systemic issue. Getting back on track, this is a small comic that tells us if we smoke weed, our dog will be disappointed in us. It’s very simple with blank ink on a beige background. The words are written in red. Red is a color that humans are naturally drawn to first because it’s the color of blood.

FACTS

The image is comic, but the fact is not. “THE REAL COST” People have been around for a long time, and while they use facts, most of their ads are so bloated they distract from the original message. It’s rather interesting. Stop telling me about metal in my lungs and then having a big CGI noise pile show up.

INSTRUCTION

“GRAB THE CLUTCH – AND FEEL THE POWER” Ads from the early to mid 90’s were more direct and less aggressive in most places, if we ignore the weird British sonic sex ones. I like the very 90s pop look of the yellow, blue, and red going on here.

CODING

I mean, the fetus is on the computer; it could be coding. So this is completely incoherent without context. I swear to god, I used Tineye and everything. I have no idea what the surrounding pages looked like. This image I think, was made by mom’s nightmares, and that’s why she didn’t want me addicted to Tetris.

SHOCK

“JOHN ROMERO’S ABOUT TO MAKE YOU HIS BITCH – SUCK IT DOWN.” This ad caused drama even back in the day when they could say so many weird things about women. he was famous in the gaming scene for his work on DOOM and QUAKE, but not enough to get away with this ad. Maybe if Daikatana was good. That’s the game this advertises.

I have no Idea what happens in Little Nicky. I just think it’s funny, Adam Sandler is on fire, and on the Game Boy Color, no less!

“KILLER OUTFIT, TOO BAD THE NIGHT LIFE SUCKS.” is such a good line. vampire pun, 90s crust, and some sweaty guy.

42nd President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton, went up to a podium with this ad printed out and talked about nonsense.

Step Two: Project Spark

“I WANT SHORTER GAMES WITH WORSE GRAPHICS MADE BY PEOPLE WHO ARE PAID MORE TO WORK LESS AND I’M NOT KIDDING” is a graphic made out of an edit of a panel of the old Archie Sonic comics that is well known in the circles I run in. I challenged myself to work with game ads because I had a lot of them and it seemed fun, but in my combing of my collections, I have remembered the myriad of problems plaguing the video game industry and the sloppy forge we live in today.

I’m trying to think of the last non-indie game I bought. I think it was Monster Hunter Stories 2, and that came out in 2021. I mean, I have been playing a lot of old games, I’m playing SMT…IF right now, and I’m having a good time, but that game’s 30 years old. My meaning is that I prefer old games to new games in terms of the big stuff. love the indie stuff where people can get unions and make games that look interesting. We need fewer Call of Duty games and more Infest the Rats Nest on Itch.io. Also, the Call of Duty games are military propaganda.

They’re making Nintendo Switch 2 games for 100 bucks. No way I’m buying that thing, I got SNES games to play. I need a PSP or Vita, I promise I’ll only do legal things with it. Stop trying to make movies. We should have stopped David Cage after Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Why is he still walking amongst the living? Anyway, I would love to make video games, but the industry is a cesspit of many evils. They’re fighting culture wars out there founded on the base evils of humanity. The pay is terrible, the system is the peak of a capitalist hellscape, minorites are treated like shit, Activision-Blizzard is still here, Twitter has only gotten worse, the only hope is in indie gaming. I don’t even know what problem to focus on, there are so many.

I feel like I need to think about the misogyny, but I know that really is only the tip of the iceberg. Gamergate was a thing because of this culture. You hate The Last of Us because there are women who kill people and are gay. I hate The Last of Us because it’s trying too hard to be a movie, and the creator supports genocide. We are not the same. This was supposed to be 300-500 words, but I do not care. I need to get my thoughts out. I’ve been looking at people arguing on the internet for too long, it’s bad for my health. All eras, too. I got translation TXT files from 2002 arguing about gay people.

I feel like just getting angry on this archetypal idea of “Gamers” would just fall on deaf ears. Attacking strawmen gets you nowhere. If you do directly attack the kind of people who claim a game series is dead because one NPC has a pride pin, you’ll alienate the people with subconscious prejudices whom you can move with your words and images. Those are the kind of people to target, not the kind of people who call putting black people in games communism. They already know they suck and have dug themselves in. It’s about trying to move the Overwatch 2 player who claims they care about the abuse of women in the workplace. It’s about the Warhammer player who makes way too many jokes about killing heretics, but still feels empathy towards his fellow man. It’s about the person playing Persona 4 and going to walk out after 100 hours with some insane opinions from many angles. It’s about moving the people who could still care and pushing the people who do already care to care more and act. It’s about hitting the pinball at the right angle and time.

Shock, irony, and emotion are the threads I should pull on. I should use some coding of my more extreme side of my message. We want to get fence-sitters on our side, but let the people with some decent sense know we aren’t scared to back up our true message. I still need to narrow in on an area.

It got stuck on the riso wheel. I had to yank it off. They turned him into meat, and honestly, he deserves it after Fallout 76 #neverforget. I love seeing gamers argue so much. Earlier today, I was checking up on my forums, and I saw someone get boned by a bitcoin miner pretending to be Big Rigs Over the Road Racing. Really great game, check it out, it’s worth the risk. like if you’ve never done it you got to go out of your way to see a high schooler and a Christian fujoshi argue about Shin Megami Tensei, it’s the fun shit. Terminally online weirdos arguing on the internet is my shit. Reddit’s a good place to start, but true weirdos go out of their way to look at 15-year-old forums. There’s a line in there you end up hating most of the people you end up looking at for being obsessed with Char Asnable or some shit. Shut up and argue about something new, come on. Constants in life: Fallout New Vegas, Dragonball, My Little Pony, Like A Dragon, and that one guy from Spider-Man everyone hates with a passion. Also, the Angry Video Game Nerd. The sun will burn out before people forget about Minecraft with Gadget.

Buy a new iPhone every year. Sell your soul to the capitalist machine. I’m being forward. I don’t care, I’m saying it. I’m tired literally and metaphorically. I’m not dealing with people right now. You either hear me or you don’t, and I’m making sure you fall into the former. No subtlety. There’s still coding in it, as the average Joe doesn’t know who Todd Howard is. To a hardened hobbyist, it’s clearly an homage to the old Daikatana ad. I’m using shock, I don’t care. You’re hearing my nonsense. I’m writing this in one tab, watching Brazilians argue about wanting to get a man from a 20-year-old game pregnant, while in the corner watching a guy talk about old movie monsters. Guy who sees a kraken and goes oh shit this reminds me of Return of the Obra Din. GO OUTSIDE. TO MYSELF. It’s a really good game, though, gorgeous too. My friends are talking about horses and ants, I need to lock in. Friends come first; stick with the real ones. I want to lick Riso ink, but I know that’s bad for me. I am a rat, a cat, and a dragon in a trenchcoat made of human flesh. I really need a walk. I need to paint something that looks good. Making a triptych of robots and flesh would fix me. 600 year old butt song from hell.

I wrote that last night, and I’m not removing it. It’s an important window into my psyche. If I were to move forward with this project in the future, I would make the black stronger. When it’s over the red, it’s less dark. Maybe the red ink not being dry did that. Maybe blue would stick out more. It might be fun to switch out the background image with others that reflect different struggles. This one conveys my frustration with planned obsolescence and constant remakes, but there are so many other problems. They say video games are now respected as an art form, but it’s much more evident that they’re seen as a moneymaking industry to be milked. We have entered a new era. It will probably be known as post-COVID. Just as the movie industry has become obsessed with Intellectual property and flashy franchises, high-end gaming has fallen to the same devils. With the power of the people and the artists, we will eventually pull ourselves out. It’s not over till the sun burns out.