Stereotypes, women in promotional art, and Prince Rurik

Via the magic of our tips page, we were recently submitted a link that takes a very humorous look at women in promotional videogame art.Guild Wars in particular has always taken this to ridiculous extremes; from wallpaper, to box art, to the entire website, really.

And yet -- it's marketing. And marketing will always do what they think will sell best, even if it alienates other potential customers; whatever will sell to the majority. If Blizzard thought World of Stardiablo 4 would sell best with box art consisting of David Hasselhoff wearing only speedos (hey, after seeing Mr. T playing a night elf mohawk?anything can happen), that's what we'd get.

This issue comes up all the time in the videogame world, be it unrealistic avatars, promotional art, or just general portrayal of either gender -- but it's probably not going to change any time soon. Not until advertising grow the balls to do something different. Seriously though, does it even matter any more if your game lacks big-breasted, semi-nude women? Would The Bane or General Garriott box art really of affected Tabula Rasa sales? I mean, they loved the latter enough to use his name as a prefix.

Realism seems like an impossible goal for MMOs; or at least, not worth pursuing. My night elf is going to look a little underclothed in Winterspring, but I've just got to accept that. Is respect also impossible? Is it already there? Judge that for yourselves.

Now then, who's for Prince Rurik or Charr box art?

[Thanks, Katie!]