10 Insane Video Game Marketing Campaigns That Actually Happened
6. Evony - Sex Sells Anything
Evony is a free-to-play online multiplayer flash game that looks, sounds, and plays exactly like a second-rate Age Of Empires or Total War. Chances are, if you've had any interaction with Evony, it wouldn't be from the game itself but from their online advertisements instead.
Rather than promote the gameplay, the game's setting, or any of the game's actual features, the online advertising campaign focused on the one thing that is almost-always guaranteed to sell: sex.
Online advertisements for Evony featured a scantily-clad beautiful, busty woman with no relevance to the medieval era, whilst a suggestive 'Come play, my Lord' or 'Start your journey now, my Lord!' subtitle is squeezed in somewhere.
Look, sex has been used to sell video games with Bayonetta, Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, and even Metal Gear Solid having fallen victim to this. But whereas their ads were somewhat decent, the Evony ads looked like the box art for a cheap 90's pornography title.
The campaign is admittedly terrible and awesome in equal measures, but the developers had the last laugh as their campaign of sexy women was wildly successful in catching the eye of many, mostly male, gamers.