November 6th, 2007

Playboy gets digital gaming art pictorial

Play boy!? In the past few years Playboy made a habit out of showcasing samples of digital beauty every now and then, with a definite featurette each year before the holidays. The scoop came from the guys at G4TV, as the December issue just hit the shelves. We can taste yet another piece of virtual sensuality: the gaming bunny presents “Playing rough,” its fourth annual video game vixen tribute. Brought to you by game developers themselves, these beauties don’t look the way you’ve seen them in videogames; they’ll will steal your soul, take it into a deep pit and level-up. Here’s “Yoko” showing off for you.

We can admire the likes of:
“Keaira” from Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures“Church & Black” from Clive Barker’s Jericho
“Morenn” from The Witcher
“Yoko Retomoto” from Kane & Lynch
“A’Kanna” from Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
“Sarah Morrison” from Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa
Last year we’ve seen “Sarah Morrision” in a pretty wild stance. Here’s the one.

While sex and violence are the basis on many online worlds (take Age of Conan for example), marketing a game to reach the Playboy audience isn’t the far out idea it used to be. Just a couple of months ago we’ve seen the Hellgate London devs doing the same move with Avalon, their slim demon slayer. As long as the campaigns are within reason, gamers and playmates can get along just fine within the confines of the same cover. If game companies didn't want that kind of publicity they wouldn't have made these pictures to begin with. “Avalon” agrees.

Having the spot in Playboy is a stroke of marketing genius. It's an excellent target market. We're not talking college freshmen who can barely scrape up beer money. Playboy's target audience tends to be in their late 20's to early 40's, fairly well educated & sophisticated, with a good amount of cash for spending on toys. When the day is gone, targets for Playboy and high end gaming enterprises aren’t that far away as some think. The illustrious magazine launched a game of its own in 2005, but I have to admit, it lacks the depth of horror and MMORPG titles listed above. "Keaira" points out that you can download the Playboy issue in digital format, here.