mox… i am sorry to inform you… there are no women on the interwebs.
easterly 939,000 … i was more confused by the 939,000. what an odd number, i think i will name my child that.
Jeff, I have seen this advertisement progress & think it’s just plain hilarious. BTW…I wouldn’t play this game.
We’ve become so oriented on achieving financial success without regard for the actual costs, that I’m sure this seemed acceptable, if not down-right brilliant, to someone out there. Sadly, although sex usually sells, “tacky” is a major turn-off for most consumers, so this direction is about the worst one they could possibly peruse. Greed can drive people to do the craziest things.
I hate these ads. They aren’t even remotely informative as to what sort of game this is. I thought it was an RPG before reading that it is a civ clone, just based on seeing these ads.
That last ad looks like one of the trUe ads with the animations of cam-[slatter]s.
captcha: “purse Admiral” Good juxtaposition.
If it’s any consolation, the game’s makers probably secretly loathe themselves for going this route.
The subtle, or much often, not-so-subtle use of sex in advertising is doing a big disservice in long-term to everyone.
Not only degrades the product, but also affects family life and life style in general.
I don’t see an issue here, sex sells, always has … they were putting hot models next cars before you were born. It’s just a new medium.
BTW, the ads seem effective, they received your attention. The only issue I would suggest is that AD networks have better filters, so if you don’t want to display breasts on your website, you can filter out those ads.
Idiocracy - most overrated movie on the internet?
Anyway, I really thought you were going to say that last one was a joke. Also, can one really discreetly build an empire and rule the world?
@Hank Yes, sex sells, however you normally make an effort to put your product in the limelight along with whatever sex appeal you’re drawing from… Apparently that nuance got lost in the last ad iteration when they went OHLOOKBOOBIESCLICKCLICKCLICK
Their advertising in general is a pain. I’m purging 5-10 comments a day on VizWorld that are all “I just found this awesome new game called Evony, click here to play” garbage.
Between the commentspam and the ridiculous ads, they’ve convinced me to never try it.
These are in the footer of every other io9 RSS entry; I’m amused that someone else was as annoyed as I was about them. I hadn’t seen the last one, though, that’s amazing. What it’s actually an ad for is in teeny-tiny type.
I think your overall point is good. But you can’t really sit on your high horse and complain about the state of business with any legitimacy when you have thousands of followers that will eat up everything you do. If you were really struggling, we’d see what tactics you resort to.
Idiocracy was terrible. Not terrible compared to his other stuff, jut terrible. Never brilliant, it was a jumble of things that probably irritate Mike Judge, not any sort of coherent dystopian future, humorous or not.
My favorite bit is “play discreetely now!” – What does that even mean? As far as I can tell, the sentence makes no sense.
Per Merriam-Webster:
dis·creet \di-ˈskrēt\ (adj)
Middle English, from Anglo-French discret, from Medieval Latin discretus, from Latin, past participle of discernere to separate, distinguish between — more at discern
dis·crete \dis-ˈkrēt\ (adj)
constituting a separate entity : individually distinct 2 a: consisting of distinct or unconnected elements : noncontinuous b: taking on or having a finite or countably infinite number of values
I wouldn’t mind some more ‘boob’ ads on my sites - I might actually get some click-throughs 
If they had said it was a multi-player CIV game, I may have signed up ages ago. I figured it was just a thinly veiled chat server for teenagers from the ads.
tim, discrete and discreet are different words, but the ad uses the right one.
the right one for their lies, anyway.
This form of advertising is absolute trash. The Evony advertisement looked fine.
By looking at the progression of the Civony ads, it makes me wonder if the 2nd ad worked better so they continued the route, or it didn’t do well enough so they chased it harder?
captcha: “jungle surface” - just thought it amusing.
Wait.
That’s a -real- ad for a -real- game?
I’m heading to my bomb shelter now. See y’all after the apocalypse.
I love the ad on right below the article, featuring “agile” development. I would like to meet some agile developers myself. Flexibility a must!