November 2003
Blue Zombies fail to impress the ASA.
Publisher Atari has been castigated by the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), following a complaint from a magazine reader who objected to an "offensive and unsuitable" advert for one of their video games.
The advertisement, believed to be for the recent Xbox version of the game "House of the Dead" featured an image of a shotgun wielding man standing over a bound and bullet riddled dead body accompanied by the tag line "the only good zombie is a dead zombie" in childlike handwriting.
The complaint has been upheld by the ASA as being "likely to cause serious or widespread offence". Following the ruling Atari now must not use the advert again, and must consult with the committee of advertising practice before running similar ads again in future.
Atari, however, have allegedly claimed that the intention was simply to amuse, and doubted that the public would be offended by the blue body make-up and fake blood on a zombie.
BRIFFA Comment:
This case shows how the increasing popularity of games and the greater media spend required to keep up promotions bring new risks to games companies. Games advertisers have often sailed close to the wind but now that games are a much bigger part of the mainstream they have to be much more careful as the audience is more mainstream too. This run in by a games company with the advertising authorities is the latest in a line of controversial adverts.
Atari's advertisement might seem tame by comparison with some other advertising used by the games industry (Capcom's original Resident Evil campaign being a good case in point). Penalties for breaching ASA guidelines can still be severe however many advertisers underestimate the risk that they are facing simply because the rules governing adverts for the most part are not laid out in statute. Adverts must meet certain well defined requirements. Consistent failure to adhere to such requirements means that the advertiser could be put on a blacklist and ASA members will not publish their adverts.