What Do You Fight For?

There are many of us out here on the interwebs who take games seriously and urge others to consider the important lessons we can learn through interactive media. Unfortunately the very industry we are trying to protect and expand frequently fights against us with their belief that the best kind of marketing is still that which targets the testosterone-fueled adolescent male demographic. Think back to EA's "Sin to Win" debacle, the backlash to which some have argued was anticipated and even desired by the folks in EA's marketing wing in effort to ramp up publicity on the game.

Not all games aspire to take the industry to a deeper level of course, but even the lowest-common-denominator titles regularly churned out for the masses need not stoop to the level of juvenile humor to draw attention to themselves. Yet it's interesting what advertisements say about the games we play, even the ones that we find relatively innocuous.

The following two advertisements for Tekken 6 contain deeper messages that are completely at odds with one another. Part of a larger ad campaign centered on the theme "What Do You Fight For?" - an interesting question given the near Kojima-like obtuseness of the Tekken storyline - these two ads are radically different in their view of life's priorities. The first is a decent attempt at investing fighting with meaning and purpose as real-world fighters talk about their motivations: personal growth, justice, equality, even Christ (thanks Evander!).



While it may be a bit macho-saccharine in its execution and is ultimately in the service of a fairly standard gaming genre, at least it attempts to speak at something deeper expressed through the human desire to compete in physical combat. Seeing this isolated video might garner applause for the marketing folks at Namco for at least giving their potential audience food for thought.

Unfortunately those thoughts are far more interesting than they may have intended when you pair that video with the following:



Justice, equality, heels, and hair straighteners. Makes me want to ask the ad firm what market they're fighting for.