Can we talk about the in game advertising for a sec?

+
this is what happens when ads have to compete with each other. they have to be louder, brighter, more zany to be noticed. not to mention the fact that they have to be short. i dont think tv adverts in 2077 would be cheap.

this is is less immature and more of a nod to our short attention spans .

also ive noticed that often times japanese, or at least asian, influence is wrapped up with the cyber future. have you seen japanese commercials?
 
I was more than okay with the ads, I think the world team did a great job. In this world the human body is an object, sex sells and people are extremely desentisized because they can relive every fetish and fantasy they can come up with via BDs...and all the ads reflect this. Some in a more classy way (the fashion ads), some others in a really crass and "immature way" (the MILF ad or the Abydos beer ot whatever). Same is in real life, some ads make you cringe and shake your head, some make you feel they are actually clever or sexy - just dialed up to eleven in the game.
 
Someone said something about feeling immature a while back. I agree. It does feel like the hypersexualised world of someone who has never had sex explored sexuality/sexualisation as a subject.
“Look how sexualised NC is - look here’s a bunch of Dildos”

insert Beavis and Butthead laughter here.
 
There is an interview with the lead ad designer. They wanted it to be part satire, and part edgy for marketing.

An example of sex being used for ratings is game of thrones WARNING SPOILER

....
.....

....





where Sansa gets raped. In the book she was ABOUT TO get raped, and then it didn't happen but in the show, they hypersexualized it to cause drama and have ratings based off controversy. I stopped watching the show, cause even though the books have many horrible references to sexually deviant things, there was no reason at all whatsoever to have Sansa get raped, other than they wanted to boost ratings.

SO yeah that is the world we live in, take a good look around, they are telling us what will be the norm in 50 years, and honestly I believe them, look at how many posts are about "the sex isn't explicit enough" "why can't I romance and fuck whoever i want" just look at it, LOOK AT IT ! lol

I personally think they are hilarious Milfguard had me dying from laughter the first time, but I accept it as satire and a part of the cyberpunk world
 
Last edited:
Well Night City is meant to be a sleazy shit hole.

Plenty of players don't want to game in a sleazy shithole, though.
 
I have a feeling some people don't accept the basic premises of a Cyberpunk world (and I don't mean "its supposed to be grimdark"), namely that it's sleazy, human lifes aren't worth much, the human body can be modified (with all it's influences on the psyche) and everything is marketable. I think the ads make prefect sense in the game world and if you feel disturbed by a few stray dildos and some moaning in the background then maybe it's not your genre?
 
I think a few people are missing the point of the thread.

there’s no offence being taken by the overly sexualised world. Indeed you’re right that is the point of CP77

the criticism is that the “satire” or humour is poor and feels immature. It doesn’t feel real.

more than happy to play an adult game set in a violent and overly sexed world. But like so much else in the game - it’s lacking any sort of depth.
 
I think the advertising hits the nail on the head. It reflects where the dumbed-down, over-sexualized themes that advertising is at IRL. It's kinda like how the movie Idiocracy portrays the downfall of society and how some of the shit in that movie is actually happening.
 
I think a few people are missing the point of the thread.

there’s no offence being taken by the overly sexualised world. Indeed you’re right that is the point of CP77

the criticism is that the “satire” or humour is poor and feels immature. It doesn’t feel real.

more than happy to play an adult game set in a violent and overly sexed world. But like so much else in the game - it’s lacking any sort of depth.

In all honesty, I have to agree.

I have no issues at all with sexual advertising, and some hot eye candy being flaunted on billboards. However, I think it would have worked better in terms of being convincing 'professionally' produced product marketing in a big city if the ads displayed were a bit more sophisticated in their presentation. As it is, they have all the thoughtful slickness of scribbles on toilet walls.

It all comes over as more for simple shock value than actually encouraging people to buy a product, so it's not terribly believable, from a personal perspective.

In the end though, it's purely a subjective thing...
 
I agree that in Bladerunner prostitution is a core component of the story... Jig Jig street makes complete sense to me in CP77. It's the toilet humor ads that I'm speaking to specifically. A 'watson's whore' sitcom ad in bladerunner would feel out of place.
Post automatically merged:



I think this is the fine line that is walked between objectification of humans as a result of a culture with the power to customize every single part of the body. As mentioned in my above reply this can be seen in Bladerunner with the red light district. The other component though is the grit and I don't see tongue in cheek advertisement fitting into that equation so much.
Robocop had simliar type of ads in its film. It happens because everyone would make over the top, dark, brooding direct ads. Others would end up doing stupid sex ads. Just different ways to get your attention. I think the issue is that theres only so many ads in the game. In the real world. You'd be bombarded by new/updated ads all the time. I'm surprised they didn't have ads for all the gangs.
Post automatically merged:

SO yeah that is the world we live in, take a good look around, they are telling us what will be the norm in 50 years, and honestly I believe them, look at how many posts are about "the sex isn't explicit enough" "why can't I romance and fuck whoever i want" just look at it, LOOK AT IT ! lol
Sex will always sell. And if other acts of fetishism or sexual views become norm. They as well. If someone invented a dick that you could install at any time. That company would be billionaires.
 
Last edited:
Just beat the game, loved it except the ending (like most people here). There's one thing though that really bothered me.

I don't understand why all of the fake advertising had to be so childish and hypersexual? "Watson's Whore", "Mix it Up", "Butts Up". These are ads that were plastered all over the city.

[SPOILER WARNING]

At the end when Mysty took me to the roof and gave me the heart to heart about Jackie I looked over the edge and as she was speaking there was an ad on a massive billboard with a girl spreading her legs apart... "Isn't it beautiful up here?" hahaha what?

This game seemed to take a lot of cues from GTAV and the worst one copied was the childish humor. I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy it in GTA, that series completely leans into the absurdity. I just don't understand what it does to propel Cyberpunk forward? It was really immersion breaking and felt out of context. On one hand you have this gorgeous city which from a distance is full of possibility and wonder... but then when you get down to the street level next to the brilliant neon are these dumb ads with no message aside from "look how zany the future is!"

Picture these advertisements in other films/stories in this genre like Bladerunner now picture these ads in idiocracy (no doubt a brilliant film though)...

Anyone else feel this way or am I just flat wrong?

Since I watched Blade Runner 2049, Altered Carbon, Dredd and The Expanse (I know the last one is more Sci-Fi, not Cyberpunk) I can assure that this oversexualized advertisements fits the narrative and are part of the dystopian world people live in. Since those fleshy-desires are part of human nature in combination with the objectification of humankind itself through Megacorporations is perfectly fine. I'd even go that far and say that CDPR managed to catch this vision in the advertisement whereas there's a great lack of this vision in the rest of the game.
 
I agree that I find the ads to be rather immature to the level of absurdity, but I think it is on a real annoyance to me because the same ads are EVERYWHERE. Wish there were a dozen possibilities for each product instead of one. The Bottoms Up ad in particular annoys me because of that stupid grin. I know I'm in the minority for thinking the game could use less sex than more, but it really is one of the least appealing aspects of the genre to me. That said I've got 300 hours put into the game so I'm still getting plenty of enjoyment, it would just be nice if some of the ads weren't such an eyesore.

And its not like I find every sexual ad in the game to be obnoxious, but there are certainly a few that I find guilty of being stupid. Bottoms Up, Watson Whore, Milfguard, and most of the food ads are just stupid to me, but others like the cola ads feel like they appropriately fit the setting. I mean one of them is a girl gesturing oral sex to "Taste the Desire" yet the art style makes it work well in the setting.
 
The ads bothered me, and I don't care about the sexualisation of them at all because that's an easy shortcut in the lizard brain to desire and to create positive associations. It makes sense.
But some of them are just terrible ads that illicit disgust, which leads to avoidance behaviour because the brain associates it with illness and disease, It's just how we've evolved. This makes them look like they belong in saints row where's the entire setting is parody.
Seeing a 40m high broseph billboard with a dude shitting himself while chugging a beer in the middle of the financial district.
I think the game has great art, but that's the sort of thing that should be on the back page of a tabloid or a poster in a bar.
 
Top Bottom