Does nudity sell PC games?

By Curt Feldman
Posted on ZDNet News: Feb 26, 1998 12:00:00 AM

What she saw was an up close and personal profile of a woman's derriere (pardon our French) - naked, save for a Forsaken logo tattooed on the aforementioned body part.

Forsaken is not a skin conditioner. Nor does it have an SPF rating. It is the title of a first-person shooter due this summer from Acclaim Entertainment. The logic of such a move may be all too obvious: To reach a largely young, male audience, show them a curvaceous bod and it'll generate brand awareness.

Could the marketing strategists at Acclaim have thought something up that's a bit more sophisticated than the P.T. Barnum/beer-and-booze-proven theory that a nice piece of ass goes a long way toward selling just about anything? We await their response.

The folks at Interplay have already heard from retailers regarding the upcoming box art for Of Light and Darkness. Interplay sales reps making the rounds of retailers last week heard from more than a few retailers that they would not carry the game. Those retailers, which included Costco stores, were reacting to the admittedly androgynous art - again a nude profile - by well-known "visionary artist" Gil Bruvel.

Interplay has decided to stick to its guns and has publicly stated it has no plans to alter the box art (although this is the same company that did react to retail and consumer response to its first Carmageddon box by printing a second, "bloodless" box).

"The stores are worried about their reputations," an Interplay spokesperson told GameSpot News. "But this is art, not a play to sell the game."

No stranger to controversy, Vince Desi of Postal renown had this to say about retail reaction to either a game's content or the art that graces a game's packaging: "Once again, some idiot is deciding people can't express themselves."

Desi says that his company, Running With Scissors, took "a big hit" when retailers, responding to either their own indignation at Postal's content or customer complaints, pulled the title from shelves. In Postal's case, the title was in full distribution for only four weeks. By Thanksgiving '97 - just a month after the title's release - Best Buy, CompUSA, The Wiz, and a number of independently owned Software, etc. stores had pulled the title from their shelves.

For the time being, neither Interplay nor Acclaim seem to be deviating from their respective tasks of developing, publishing, and selling products they feel are retail-worthy, regardless of what retailers - or for that matter, journalists - may think.