Matthew Wiest
Ad analysis paper
3/12/15
Leaving us wanting more
Most
days, we find that our lives are just passing by in seeing ads, not caring as
to what is there on the screen or in the paper. Some companies, like the ones
who publish and advertise video games, know how to grab our attention via
empathy by making us feel and want more out of what we see on screen or in a
poster. Various commercials nowadays focus on showing as much of their product
as they can within so little time easily, so the contrast is startling in where
commercials move and change their own points to giving us more to go off of in
not showing us some, giving us just a taste so that we as consumers want more.
The base desire to know something is what gives us more drive towards wanting
these games, and is exploited by the video game industry around just about
every corner. What kind of immersion do video games give us in just the small
amount of time in their commercials? I hope to explore this in the
advertisements for Dying Light, Dead
Island 2, and Resident
Evil: Revelations 2.
Starting
from the Dying Light commercial, titled “Run Boy Run”, they show us the start
of a city with construction zones all around. The shot takes us to a view of a group
of people of varying ages, genders, and ethnicities, with tight clothing and
backpacks on along with irregular and makeshift weapons. They climb and jump
and run across rooftops to the song “Run Boy Run” by Woodkid. The group stops
and looks over to see a plane dropping down some form of crate with a parachute
guiding its descent, the plane flying off into the distance above the city. The
man in the front of the group looks briefly to them and runs off towards the
drop crate, the group following quickly as they continued on from rooftop to
rooftop, scaling scaffolding in the process. While still in the construction
zones, the leader flamboyantly jumped and grabbed a wrench to kill a zombie
which had come around the corner, getting excitement flowing and keeping a
constant flow of action. While they still ran, the leader jumped off of the
building only to fall through a makeshift roof made of cardboard and plywood,
only for the action to change into an underground area with damaged walls with
the same man in yellow to be holding a door shut, the fact that he’s still
holding the wrench signing that it is still the same day. The door burst open
with zombies piling in, the group starting to run as the infected overwhelmed
one of their friends and briefly seen biting into him, some viewers feeling
sorry for the death. The group still ran as one stayed behind to fight back at
least one of the zombies, only to be tackled down and eaten. The leader gave a
passing glance back while zombies still ran, where another angle changing like
before was met with more zombies running towards them. The leader, like before,
turned the other way to see one of their friends being attacked by a single
infected, lighting up the wrench with some form of electrical modification and
striking the zombie, which convulsed after being struck. The run continued
through the sewers with various kinds of deadly infected roaring at them,
leading to a jump which the last two of the group attempted, the leading man
from before being the only one to make it as his last friend was hit and
knocked down into the darkness of the sewers. After climbing a final ladder, he
found the crate, only to be caught off guard when a man struck him in the head
with a bat, knocking him unconscious to see the man walking up to the crate,
the advertisement ending with a flash of the quote “Good night, Good Luck” in
large letters overcoming the screen and showing the title of the game, “Dying
Light”
Fig 1. Dying Light poster
The
advertisement itself is a full two minutes long and has a lot of exciting
action within it, getting the viewer’s blood pumping as they watch and await
what could happen next, always changing it up to see what could happen and who
would go next. They change from place to place to give a feel for the open
world of the game and excite the viewer with the freshness of parkour, a form
of free climbing across rooftops. The death of the leader’s comrades is a
narrative point that the world is dangerous, and that the player can help
overcome this and wants them to help. The commercial’s main demographic seems
to be people who enjoy action and want to do something for others, and attracts
people from all ages and genders. The Gaming Industry as a whole uses this
tactic well in describing what you could expect from the story and gameplay in
even just a CGI commercial such as Dying Light’s. The same company uses the
constant change in the action to keep the reader’s attention, which brings in
the next commercial by the same game developer.
Dead Island
2 is a sequel to Techland’s zombie action game, and the commercial they provide
for the game is very illusionary. We start out by seeing a man getting ready
for running: Getting his shoes on, making sure his music’s playing, pumping up
and going on a jog. We briefly see a bite on his wrist before he covered it
with a sweatband. This continues on with him jogging and people in the
background being attacked by zombies all around, running while people are being
bitten and attacked and killed all around him, a limousine skidding along
before crashing, as we then see his body change with skin being ripped and
bleed to show that he was really a zombie, only to end with him and most of the
horde being killed by a large beefed up van, adding shock value to it while
showing there are people surviving.
Fig 2. Dead Island Game poster.
The
Dead Island 2 commercial is in stark contrast
to the Dying Light one, because it is more quirky and humorous than a dark
reality. They give it the setting of a tropical place or Miami to set the feel
of a faster pace and fun to be had, while simply throwing in zombies here and
there to crush the paradise that there is. The advertisement also presents a
good feel to making the most out of a situation in that the people in the van
seem to be having a good time fighting the zombies to survive, appealing to the
viewer’s sense of humor. It tells us that not all action or zombies need to be
horror or dark and brooding, and make people want to know what it’s like to
kill zombies and have fun doing so to see them flying and flopping around.
Fig 3. Resident Evil Revelations 2
poster
To contrast the action form of
zombies and killing, another company named Capcom made the Resident Evil
series, and the most recent game this company made was Resident Evil:
Revelations 2. The commercial drags the viewer in with a view of a dark room,
indiscernible voices calling out and speaking with flashes of gory images while
blood drips from a wall as the main footage. The shot then cuts back to a
dinner party where people are having fun at the nice establishment before
cutting back to a bloodshot eye seeing the main character through cameras, the
power going out where she is kidnapped by men in combat gear presumably,
returning to the dark cellar or dungeon where she wakes up with an odd device
on her wrist, only to be forced to explore the area, making the viewer feel
sorry for her. This continues on with views of locations in the underground,
only passing by for a few frames each to keep the viewer active and engaged to
see and wonder what it was that they saw, ending with the statement “Evil is
watching” with the title of the game being spoken out loud in the end.
The
Resident Evil commercial draws veteran horror gamers back into the nostalgia of
feeling lost and alone, and having to work to overcome those trials and
possible failures, allowing people to feel excited and scared without the
actual danger that the game shows. The commercial ultimately gives the goal of
finding out what happened, and discovering how to survive and feeling afraid in
the cold depths of the underground. All of this is shown very quickly in brief
images of pain and fright that the commercial breaks with views of actual
gameplay and locations.
The
commercials together all follow zombie themes, something that when shown,
people typically seem to have no sympathy for; and, from a gaming point of
view, the games all have their tastes for different levels, but all follow the
same movement of a constant flow of action for the consumer to be immersed in,
encouraging them to buy the game and find out more themselves and to feel
compelled to help and do better than those before them. It’s all about little
heroic achievements and various tasks that help the consumer feel accomplished
versus actually get a real reward out of the product. Ultimately, video game
publishers in the modern day continue to draw the viewers in with a constant and
upbeat change with a sense of mystery that encourages us to buy the game in
order to answer the questions posed to us.
