Ad critic: Hitman ad titillates, but is it a murder/sex sim?

ALthough the add does present material that should be reserved for a mature audience, I don't find it over the edge. The bullet wound is small and it's not like there's blood all over the place. This perfect clean shot to the head is part of the "beauty" of the execution. Although it can be disturbing, it's an ad for a game that should be rated M. Also, how is this worse than the excessive violence found in movies and on tv these days?

This is only one ad in the marketing scheme for the new Hitman game. There is also one that has a cello player in a chair with his throat slit with the line "Classically Executed" So, yes this is a play on words. To say that Eidos is trying to use sex to sell the game is absurd, there's nothing sexy about a dead person!! Rumble Roses might be a better candidate for an argument like this...lol. But seriously though, if parents are worried about that their kids are viewing, playing or listening to...they need to do one thing: PARENT!!!!

It's a beautifully shot ad in the film noir style. The concept of rape is ridiculous; she's far from deshevelled enough, she's still wearing shoes which would have been kicked off in a struggle, no trauma marks, etc. It's definitely a reference to the similar shot of Goldie in Sin City, which was itself inspired by numerous covers from pulp novels, as other posters have noted. Politically coreect, knee-jerk reactionism to this is shameful. If you don't like it, move on, but hush your bleating; it makes you sound exactly like those who'd like to censor every game down to something acceptable for a four-year old.

Attention all chivalrous manginas! Women are our equals! They need men like a fish needs a bicycle! Stop kowtowing to them! You will not get laid! You will get a condescending pat on the head and passed over for the monosyllabic street gorilla! Your chivalry will get you nowhere fast! Now, shut up, play your games and get over your silly polygon-sex fantasies!

It looks like this comes too late in the comments part to be viewed by the masses but I feel the need to make a defense.

PC Gamer (At least in the UK) can not be bought by anyone under the age of 15, LAW. The magazine carries a 15 rated BBFC mark, first brought in because of the content supplied on the demo disc and has since allowed for the magazine to be more adult.

There are haters who instantly jump to the claim that Kids shouldn't be able to see this, they could easily read this and see it elsewhere. Well i'm not sorry at all for the next comment but thats bad parenting and irresponsibility at its finest.

The game will no doubt carry a BBFC certifcate when it comes out, restricitng sales to a minor but as a member of Video Game retail I know full well it won't stop the kids from getting hold of copies of the game, simply because parents IGNORE any warning we give regarding the games content.

Should parents be more responsible of what they let there kids read, watch and play I would hazard a guess that more companies would be willing to place advertisements similar to this one for their own titles. As an adult gamer, the adverts telling me I should look forward to the next Hitman title, I was anyway. I can't wait untill someone from the Daily Mail or The Sun gets hold of it either just to re-iterate what a previous poster said

Wow, I didn't realize the gaming community was full of so many whining little girls.

Love it. (though i do see why people don't like it) It conveys the idea of the game well... not just an execution, but a skillful one... she doesn't look like she even saw it coming....

First of all, #24 and #28 thank you. Those were the only coherent comments I read.

Now to the topic at hand. I can't believe I'm reading this much whining from a generation of gamers who won't buy a GameCube because "Nintendo only makes kiddie games" but probably play nothing but Halo and DOA Volleyball. Make up your minds. If you want mature, controversial games, be prepared for mature, controversial advertising. It's everywhere else.

Please stop using the term 'murder simulator'. A real murder simulator would simulate the full experience of murder incuding guilt and self examination. It would also probably involve a large run up in the descision making process.

It's not a simulator, it's a virtual world with limited rules: you can simulate a gun, a killing, someones guts splattering on the floor after you've eviscerated them with a 12gauge - you cannot, however, simulate murder ... or at least no one has managed yet.

When someone makes a real AI that I have to listen beg for thier life - and I feel compassion - then it's a murder simulator. Until then it's an adult toy.

Please stop using crappy buzzwords that you don't really understand .. thx

How is this ad any different from movie or tv ads, they all tend to be the same. It'a a game about "Hitmen" hence the name"Hitman" you don't buy a game with that title expecting to find "Picachu" or "Hello Kitty" you find men, with guns, who kill people for money.
I haven't played a "hitman" game yet, but I have a friend who does. He's not running around planing to be come a "hitman" though he does plan to go in the army in a few years...based I think on his fondness for Socum and other military games, but isn't that what the government wants...they can't have it both ways...on the one hand critic a game as being violent, on the other glorify war.

You really have to ask yourself how the publisher would benefit from impyling rape. I havn't heard anything about raping people in the game, or anything about a lean towards hatred of women. Sure a few people might pick up the game thinking that (because obviously some of you do) however they'll soon find there's none of in the game its self and leave it. You can jump to rape but the question is why? Besides, contracts was an already dark game ignoring most of the usual sex and violence taboos.

Thanks for the link to the other posters, by the by. I love the classically executed bit. Frankly it makes the Beautifully Executed addition look less sexual and more part of the serial.

As a creative director for an ad agency, and as a gamer, my reaction to this ad (the inside cover spread in this month's Play) was visceral - I found it distasteful, disturbing, and frankly, just a bad ad.

To quote Spinal Tap: "Not sex-y, Nigel, sex-IST. SexIST."

I can't believe the number of (presumably male) commenters who seemingly have no issues with this ad. It's not a matter of being overly sensitive or a girly-man or a college-boy with an MA in media studies. If you just see "a dead chick" and have the opinion that "she's not NAKED, and it's a game about a hitman, so what's the problem?" then maybe you need to think a little more about what you're seeing, and maybe to question if you're not a little bit sociopathic.

You're not seeing this ad in the context of the game or even in the context of the other ads in the series; you're seeing it alone, in the context of a magazine. My first reference point was not Sin City or film noir, but classic glamour photography, perfume or cosmetic advertising. It's not a million miles away from that Sophie Dahl YSL ad and others like it.

The model is lying in a pose that is not typically how real dead people sprawl (artlessly) but in a classic sort of glamourous, come-hither way; she's spread across the two pages in a way that is traditionally used to invite the reader's eye to travel along her body. It is an erotic pose, sexually charged. (If you think only naked women are allowed to sexy, then maybe you need to grow up a bit.) And then there is the discongruity of the bullet hole, the invitation to imagine the horror of the (offscreen) moment of death, and the bad pun of the title, "Beautifully executed." There is the promise of sex here, the invitation to view her in a sexual way, and then the ultimate violation, murder.

As Kate noted, it is a combination of someone in a sexually submissive pose, with the ultimate "power trip" of killing them, that makes this ad disturbing.It doesn't matter that there is no actual rape here; rape is about power, not sex, and this ad is all about sexualized power.

Having looked at the other two ads in the series (coldly executed, with a guy in the freezer, and classically executed, a male cellist who's been garotted), frankly, I can see why the other two ads weren't used - those aren't common phrases to begin with, so the tagline isn't as powerful, and as other posters have noted, a dead, fully-clothed, middle-aged-looking guy doesn't evoke the same reaction from the viewer as a beautiful woman with long legs lying back on satin sheets in lingerie.

As others have noted, the classic justification for bad-taste advertising is 'if this offends you, you aren't in the market for this product,' but when you're talking about an industry where games cost millions to develop (vs whatever it costs to develop Axe body spray - can't possibly be as much, compared to what they've sunk into their racy ad campaigns), you can't afford to address your product to a niche, you want to sell it to as many people as possible...one would think...so in my view, making the choice to go with a risky campaign like this is the wrong one.

Of course, you can't legislate taste, but you'd think the editors of these magazines - particularly Play, which I've thought of as a thoughtful and well-written gaming mag for grownups, and which errs on the side of sexy vs. sexist when it chooses to show female flesh, would have exercised a bit more editorial discretion. But I guess dollars speak more than integrity, sometimes.

Anyone that gets 'offended' by this ad is an idiot, all it is, is a play of words. We have 'Beautifully Executed' because the game is about a hitman, and if anyone didn't know, they 'execute' people for a living, and in this ad we have a 'beautiful' woman (although I agree with some other posters, she looks more like Bowie than a hottie :) so you get Beautifully (woman/nice job in shooting her) Executed...get it? get it? anyone? Bueller, Bueller?

And for anyone complaining about 'it's ok to kill polygons but not real people' - well let me tell you about something called 'make-believe' and 'not real'

She's not improperly dressed (I mean seriously Doritos commercials are selling more sex than this) and it's not gorey - we have one clean bullet hole in her noggin and some difficult to see blood on the sheets.

Get over it, if you are offended by this ad, I recommend you not watch any television starting at 8pm - I'm sure some people 'offended' by this ad have no problem watchin CSI or other shows that have much more violence than this ad (or this game) and much more sex appeal than this ad.

If you're offended by both, well then just chanage the channel or turn the page and let the rest of us be.

I wonder what it means -- if anything -- that the formal qualities of the advert recall the famous "falling rose petals" scene from American Beauty? The luxuriant austerity of the gold sheets, the pose of the body, the ad hoc flower pattern adorning the bodice, the splay of the hair, and the prominent use of the word "beauty" in the title all evoke the memory of that scene. And when we consider it, that scene was a warning that beauty and perfected idealizations are not only unattainable, they are dangerous in their seductive power no matter what use it is put to.

Applying that insight to this image, the woman might well have been as much the aggressor as the victim. It is a message of empowerment to say that she was in the process of manipulating someone else -- the crime boss? the hitman? a stooge? -- to attain her own ends when something didn't go according to plan. With her cover blown, the hitman is called in to do his art, to apply his aesthetic of the perfectly clean kill, which is of course another fallacy: death always leaves lose ends.

That most of you immediately assumed her submissive victimization as a woman reveals soft thinking and pre-programmed interpretation. That everyone immediately assumed the hitman "got away with it" reveals an assumed metric about the power and finality and omniscience of male violence. If anything, it is your own assumptions and quick judgments that should shock and disgust you, not this advert.

If we separate ourselves from the language of everyday understanding, and take a moment to consider a symbolism and meaning just below the depth of skin, I think we can all agree that this advert is so stylized and so consciously constructed that nothing so obscene as a "rape fantasy" could possibly be implied other than in the head of an adolescent moron. In form, style and content this advert begs you to consider it seriously, not flippantly, and in so doing, to consider the relationship between the violence, beauty, and simplistic idealizations in yourself.

Well let me be first to say, i'd hit it.

A game is a game, I hate when people dont have enough control over their own lives that they end up blaming their own faults on a game. Now thats fresh. ;)

There still appears to be a back to her head. The Hitman's a badass, he would have used something large. This ad fails at realism.
As far as the topic goes, someone's paying the least amount of attention and has the least number of people nearby when they're asleep. Makes sense to kill someone while they're sleeping. Also makes sense that she wouldn't be wearing a parka and commando boots to bed. Yes, it's supposed to be disturbing, cause you'll remember it. How better to promote a game than have it haunt people's nightmares for days. And really, what evidence of sex is there? I see no random fluids or discarded rubbers, and she's obviously clothed. Honestly, can gamer guys think about anything else?

I agree that it is pushing things a little bit, but like it or not that is the way society works. 50 years ago if you had that ad sans gore you have been hauled off to jail.

Ask yourself how you would have felt if this were a man lying dead? What if it were a cartoon? At what level of realisim does it all of the sudden become not OK to show?

I don't find the add offence, but I do find it ignorent with the way things are in the video game world today. With nut jobs like Jack Thompson running around you can't really go pushing boundrys like that and expect to do well (Wal-mart will pull you so fast your discs will melt) Bad busniess move, but moraly they have not done anything wrong.

Well, if it's got this much feedback, obviously it worked as an advert, yes? Kudos to Eidos! everyone that keeps this thread going is just contributing to it. Maybe that was the idea, ya think?

One person's interpretation of the piece does not constitute bad taste for everyone. Just because YOU look at it and get the impression of a rape/murder fantasy doesn't mean everyone does.

#10 asked: "A half-naked dead woman sells video games to whom, exactly? Not me, that's for sure." Its HITMAN... the story involves killing people, quite a few, and not very tastefully at times. If the combination of female, half naked, and dead makes you uncomfortable, then is it likely that you'll have any fun from a game about killing people as a career (any of whom - for story's sake - could be female, and at the time you end up killing them, in their underwear), and would you buy it anyway?

It caught my attention. It gives the impression of high-society, of wealth, and of beauty, all of which surround money. When Mr. 47 is involved, execution and blood usually follow. All this ties in perfectly with the name "Blood Money". Hey, maybe your corrupt, evil end-game bossman is actually a woman. Any number of explanations could be it.

Whining about taste and rape-murder fantasy just seems a little to one-track-minded or conservative. Not the audience they're trying to sell to AT ALL.

Come on guys. Stop with the sensationalizing "I was sick after i saw this", dude grow some. Let's see, I'm sure there is a connection between this ad and the game. Let's see, maybe a plot, sub-plot, etc? And one more thing, it's just a game, get off of Fred Thompson's horse and either play the game or don't play the game. You're entitled to your opinion, but when your opinion clashes with other people and somehow enough negative response leads to the demise of this game, that's where i draw the line. Slap a M rating on this game and ship it out. Nuff said, and if you don't like M rated titles, don't buy it. It's really that simple. I've seen way worse in detective mags from the 50's. There is no rape connection here either. "Beautifully Executed" ... Wow, that's an ad, and there need sto be more of these well-thought out ads. It'll be refreshing for a change. The ads today are dull and boring. If you don't like it, go back to being your dull and boring self.

This game has nothing to do with that. It just has a dead chick. I saw an ad in my game informer this month with a dead musician holding a cello that says "classically executed"

Has anyone else seen the partner ad to this? A man playing the cello who (upon further investigation) has been strangled by a garrote wire. I understand violence against women is bad, but if the game makers decided to run five or six ads featuring men being executed, there would not be anywhere near this backlash. Personally, I find that a little sexist.

'Murder/sex sim'? 'Rape/murder fantasy'?
Both labels are half-right; neither sex nor rape are part of the Hitman series' gameplay. How did someone conclude otherwise?

I still don't see why a dead girl on a bed is so controversial! bottom line: gamers know about the hitman series, and if they don't they'll be used to this violence that's been increasing in games since the 90's! (think mortal combat) Plus, if you happen to be a non-gamer who doesent understand the series or the violence, than why do you have a gaming magazine?

One more thing: has anyone seen the most recent ad (i believe) where, under the same line of this ad, there is a naked woman in a bathtub with a toaster in it. Plus,there's more of her body showing than in this one!