Cherry-Picking Easy Targets

The guys over at The Slowdown have taken a closer look at two of BioWare’s recent trailers – Dragon Age: Origins’ “Sex & Violence” video and Mass Effect 2’s “Subject Zero” video – in an attempt to determine why they’ve been the subjects of controversy and fan backlash. I’ll let you pore over this one:

I found the juvenile delights of the (Subject Zero) trailer honestly quite amusing far more amusing than anything else that I’d seen from the game so far. The potential for a fan backlash was there, of course, but never did I expect such full-blown critical assault on just one foul-mouthed character; in any case, at this juncture, BioWare/EA extending the register of their marketing discourse be it successfully or unsuccessfully is not at all surprising to me. In cinematic terms, then, the (Sex & Violence) trailer is the best out of the Dragon Age crop so far. The awkward, plodding dialogue, MMO-quality animation and the shining plasticity of the modelwork worries me far more than one ultra-popular, functionalist trailer song selection (Surely its abundance, its presence in countless trailers has to speak something of its merits?).

What about those that still enjoy this very rhetoric? After twenty years of marketing pushed entirely towards the adolescent white male, some gamers have surely grown to expect their gaming packaged this way. Beyond these expectations, they might even enjoy it. Is this wrong? Are we allowed to so freely rain on their parade their tastes and interests simply because the message of these particular trailers was not aimed towards you or me?