Reskin Toggle?

Kurush

Hi.  To start with, I'm not a virgin or a prude.  I'm used to the idea of scantily-clad women being used to advertise MMO's.  Heck, even EQ's box art did that.

But I think there are a few things you really need to consider.

To start with, games like Scarlet Blade take it to such a ridiculous extent that the site reskins used to advertise it can cause actual social problems for people.  Some of us do a lot of mobile gaming because our lifestyle forces us too.  So people can see what we're looking at, often people who have social importance in our lives.  Some of the people who end up looking over our shoulder aren't particularly impressed by the ironically-labeled "mature" advertising of games like this, mature in this context apparently meaning cheesecake shots targeted almost exclusively at oversexed teenage boys.  The smaller ads are, at least, avoidable.  For this stuff, though, it's not like we can avoid it being on our screen when you skin the entire site around it.

And beyond that, there are people (both men and women) who are frankly tired of this nonsense.  Like I said, MMO advertising is full of sexy ladies and ridiculously muscled supermen.  Yeah, I get that and accept it.  And y'know, sex sells too.  I also get that.  I don't consider myself any kind of feminist or crusader.  But Scarlet Blade is so  ridiculously cartoonish and so utterly transparent in the purility of its depiction of women that I feel like a chump for even being on this site.  I feel like I'm on a site aimed at thirteen year-olds.  I feel like I shouldn't be here.

Oh, and there are such things as "women" in this world.  I don't think most women are deeply bothered by sex in advertising, as it's so everpresent in our culture at this point.  Desirable or not, it's something you have to live with on some level.  But again, this crosses a line.  I would very rarely resort to the phrase "objectifies women," but Scarlet Blade so shamelessly and openly does it that I think it's appropriate to use those words here.  I'm sure there's some percentage of female MMO gamers who have developed a grudging tolerance of the casual sexism of the sausage fest that is "MMO culture."  But as a professional organization, don't you feel some degree of restraint should be exercised on your part, in terms of throwing it in their face?

Y'know, to close, I really do get it.  We are not your customers.  Your advertisers are.  We are simply the product, and if it means throwing this kind of nonsense in our face to please the people who actually pay you, you will.

But at least gives us some option to simply disable the reskin, if you're not going to have any standards in what you put up.