Killer of SheepleA Toyota advergame makes you murder for a new car.
Posted Monday, July 16, 2007, at 7:21 AM ET
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StumbleUponBut what needles me most is the game's violence. Not the extent of the violence—as Needham points out, the bloodletting is tame compared with, say, a first-person shooter like Halo. (Still, some theaters and TV networks have refused to show Toyota's long-form Scion xD trailer.) No, it's that the gore feels like edge for edge's sake. It's neither realistic enough to be titillating nor funny enough to be entertaining. (Same goes for the game's forced profanity—at one point, the narrator drops an F-bomb for no discernible reason.) Plus, most bloody video games at least give you the satisfaction of knowing you're chopping up bad guys who would otherwise be doing the same to you. But the Sheeple can barely walk straight, let alone fight back. It feels like executing the disabled.
Toyota shouldn't be worried about people being upset by the game's outré content. The kiss of death for the Scion will be the perception that it's trying way too hard to offend.
Grade: B-. They claim to be targeting people 18 to 35. But I can't imagine anyone with a learner's permit finding the game entertaining. And the pandering allegory about nonconformity? Please. I read The Giver in sixth grade. Only the art saves it from a C.
Seth Stevenson will be back next week.
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Remarks from the Fray Editor:
Talk about a mixed message. In the ad trailer, the non-conformist anti-heroes have corporate logos for faces. When they make a kill, they don the skin of dead sheeple. This campaign seems to envision a noncomformist utopia in which the "deviants" transform themselves into sheeple.
While I can't imagine these ads selling anyone on the Scion, it does look like someone at Toyota has been tricked into subsidizing a scathing indictment of identity-based consumerism. As an ad, it may deserve a B-. But, as deep-ironic social critique I think it deserves an A+.—G.A.
Remarks from the Fray:
Don't play this game! It's satanic. Look at the parallels between this game and religion. Sheep = Christians. Misfits = "demons" and they even claim to be demons. If stuff like this comes out in the media, how much longer will it be before people start murdering to get money?
Money doesn't satisfy the soul. Cars don't satisfy the soul. Only God can satisfy the soul. Read God's Bible and you'll see how much He loves you! Don't believe the lie that you can win a car from playing this game. The game is designed to desensitize you from killing sheep AKA peaceful, loving Christians.
This world is wicked. It's getting worse too because it will end sooner than you think. Get to know God now, while you still have time and He will satisfy your soul! The car isn't important even if "its just a game". It's a teaching tool to destroy you. Avoid it at all costs!
--WebArtist
(To reply, click here.)
No matter how many riffed color schemes the scion.com site flashed; the neon stripes, camouflage, etc, the scion still looks like a friendly sort of clown car. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just not a deviant badass. It's too cute.
The car doesn't carry Toyota's intended image and the scion/deviant trailer is likewise fairly misguided. I felt sorry for the sheeple-- I thought they were cute. Moreover, beheading is just a little bit too current event to be entertaining. Finally, most importantly, why does the narration rhyme?
The rhymes are not like rap. There is no disassociative slice and dice to them-- no da-daism, nothing threatening, sharp or even emo to them. Just a bad story set to rhyme.
Here's the thing: I'm a 44 year old mother of many. Quit killing sheeple, skip the loser rhyme scheme and market the car to me. I'd buy it. But if it would make Toyota advertisers feel better, I'd kick the salesman and say some curse words when I signed the purchase agreement. I can be a badass, too.
--waltz n capsize
(To reply, click here.)
The ad I saw in the theater made much of the fact that the Sheeple are all alike, but the Deviants are "customized." But the Deviants all look pretty much alike, too. Haven't we known for years that the wannabe counter-culture just conforms to a different (in this case, still very corporate) standard? Sigh.
--StochasticIdea
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(7/20)