According to “sources” quoted in The Daily Star as being close to Page 3 Stunna Lucy Pinder, the “Bournemouth babe, 24, is a real-life Xbox fan” who “regularly takes on internet players across the world in her favourite ’shoot-em-up’ games”. The Daily Star, strangely enough, also have a pic of Lucy (partially reproduced here) in some vaguely military-related scraps of cloth to further seal the connection between gigantic breasts and, well, some game with grunting blokes and loads of blood in. Is this really what Microsoft and/or The Daily Star consider clever marketing of games?
After all, it’s not as if the core demographic of Daily Star readers who own an Xbox 360 (or might ever buy one) need another reason to buy Gears Of War 2 beyond: the multimillion pound advertising splurge, the glowing reviews and the lad-friendly mix of lashings of ultraviolence, chainsaw splatter and online aggro action. In short, Gears Of War 2 does not need pimping to this audience. And certainly not in this lowest-common-denominator way.
In the US, we’ve had the much smarter angle of “ladies love Gears Of War 2″ with Epic honcho Cliff Blezinski spinning a nice story about how women really like the game too, y’know. In the UK we get a “source close to the” model saying: “Watch out next time you go online – you could be fighting Lucy. She takes NO prisoners.” Yup, whoever is behind this sorry and sad idea couldn’t even afford to get an interview with Pinder, so has resorted to becoming a “source” for the story.
Apparently Pinder also organises an online league with her model mates. And those “sources” again go on to point out that her online experience means she’ll be better able to fend off men on a girly night out. Like gibbing the Locust horde with a chainsaw and manning a mortar really helps with creepy Gary down the pub!
This truly is the sight of the bottom of the barrel being scraped in terms of how games are marketed to the mainstream. If you can come up with a worse example, we want to hear it!
These “sources” you refer to are nothing but the Daily Star’s imagination.
Lucy is not interested in games like this and she does not “organise an online league with her model mates”.
The whole thing was invented by the Daily Star at the instigation of Microsoft… it is, as you say, marketing… but that is all it is… stuff made up for the advert, with no basis in reality.
Let nobody think they have met Lucy online playing this game – you might meet an impostor, but that’s all.