WOTC ad - insulting to gamers?

[The Traveler]

Plug and Play roleplaying doesn't sound especially bad to me; in fact, I could almost see it being used as a name for a D20-like system.

BESM d20 almost fits the bill.

 

[Ranger REG]

However ... I have seen MUCH worse.

You mean that GE commercial? Man, I wanted to boycott GE. To me it's defamation to every male gamers to invade our private fantasies of marrying supermodels who love Dungeons & Dragons made public.

 

[Kanegrundar]

In this month's Dungeon magazine I spied a full page WOTC ad promoting D&D that I beleive is insulting to it's target audience, and probably gamers in general. I am referring to the ad on page 11, which shows a scruffy, half asleep looking guy staring at his computer monitor in a darkened room with the caption "If you're going to sit in your basement pretending to be an elf, you should at least have some friends over to help."

Obviously, this ad is aimed at online/computer RPG players, and is presumably appearing in mags devoted to online gaming. I commend them for trying to attract online gamers to what I think is a more rewarding and enjoyable type of gaming, but I'm afraid that their ad just smacks their audience in the face with one of the most obnoxious stereotypes of gamers around - that of the loser/slacker who lives in their parent's basement and spends all hours of the day and night pretending to be Mr. fantasy alterego in their game addiction of choice. The only thing they didn't do was show a fat guy with coke bottle glasses. Hardly the way to attract new recruits.

And IMHO its indirectly insulting to us tabletop gamers too. Are losers who live in their parent's basements the types we play with, or want to show up at our games?

It's pretty funny, IMO. Is it insulting? Maybe to the diehard MMORPGer's, but to gamers as a whole, well, not to me at least.

Kane

 

[Ranger REG]

Is it insulting? Maybe to the diehard MMORPGer's,

You say that as if it's a bad thing ... toward them.

 

[Kanegrundar]

You say that as if it's a bad thing ... toward them.

That's not my intent. Some people take their hobbies very seriously, MMORPG players are no different than any other community.

Kane

 

[Megatron]

I lol'd.

 

[Ranger REG]

That's not my intent.

Darn. I would have supported you, being anti-MMORPG.

 

[Alhazred]

I haven't seen the ad, but it sounds funny.

 

[devilbat]

I thought the ad was great, and it generated conversation at my weekly game. That's pretty much the goal of advertising, right? To get people talking about the product? Looks like it worked.

I showed the ad to my wife, who laughs at me regularly for being a gamer. She laughed out loud about it, but I think it had more to do with the "Pretending to be an elf" line, rather then the point of the ad.

 

[Kanegrundar]

You say that as if it's a bad thing ... toward them.

Sorry to disappoint. I've been known to play a few myself. I just never got to the slavish lose my job state that so many other MMORPG players have.

Kane