lolwut
AFD: April Fool's Day entertainment.
this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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I should have done some search before... Thanks.
I legitimately though this was some dig at right win nut jobs and their objectification of women.
AFD...Alternative for Deutschland
That makes sense. Even ignoring aesthetics, having a plastic head on your controller would make it heavy as fuck, and that plastic braid would interfere with using the D-pad.
While we still have problems with female representation in games and in the industry, ohhh boy the 90s were…problematic.
The ironic part is that the sexist marketing was formulated by non-gamers who had nothing but mocking contempt for players.
The classic ads where dudes would choose to play games rather than touch a beautiful woman was meant to be ironic. Video game players back then were stereotyped as people too young or too pathetic to have access to a woman.
And the ads worked. The audience for those ads became emblematic of the type and grew up objectifying women because they had 40 years of game art and ads telling them it was okay.
"Women don't mind being a piece of equipment because they just have 2 uses, and one is nagging! Amirite?"
This is what most likely has set so many misogynistic ideas as 'gamer culture'. That toxic base is what found their identity as hard core gamers and became the game community that we recognize today. It's getting much better now that the stereotype of videogames has faded but the incel comments about female protags shows it isn't fully healed.
Damn, I never considered how much the marketing of the earlier eras must have contributed to toxic gamer culture, particularly misogyny and eventually inceldom.
I'm a little uncertain how much credit to give it, I feel like that kinda stuff was commonplace in advertising in general. But that was a long time ago and it'd be easy for me to just think that since I saw it in gaming and beer marketing that it was "everywhere". Maybe it was way more uneven than I'm thinking, or something. Sure feels relevant.
Found the source: Official US Playstation Magazine Issue 31 (April 2000) page 112 by Chris Baker (Reviews editor) https://archive.org/details/official-us-playstation-magazine-issue-31-april-2000/page/n111/mode/2up
(April Fool's)
The perfect pairing
Lol they made the boobs rounder. Also in the pic of Lara Croft (not the memory card) her left boob was mostly behind her arm so they made it wider to peek out from behind it
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No Tifa? This is an outrage!
Embarrassing.
Imagine owning this and then someone visits your house and becomes aware that you own it
Imagine it being the "guest" controller. Power move.
Not sharp enough
Unironically, I'd have bought the Shiva one as a display piece. Then again, I would probably buy merch of any FF8 GF, even Boko. I like FF8.
Not enough polygons.