Zombie Game Commercial Banned In Australia For Showing Suicide

Zombie Game Commercial Banned In Australia For Showing Suicide


Get a good look at that clip up top, because you won’t be seeing it on your TV screens ever again. Following complaints from members of the public, Australia’s Advertising Standards Board has banned the advertisement for Dead Island: Riptide, mostly on the grounds that it uses “images which are strongly suggestive of suicide”.

In defending the clip, local publisher AIE said:

The cinematic implication of violence in the advertisement is intended to convey the desolate terror afflicting the game characters, and I believe is contextually relevant to the product being advertised, as it conveys the hopelessness of the games’ characters as they are faced with the overwhelming horror and violence of vast numbers of zombies hunting them, without actually depicting the violence of zombie vs character interaction in the game.

The final scene of the advertisement shows the logo of the game, which consists of a silhouetted palm tree, signifying the island in the game title, a silhouetted zombie hanging by the neck from the palm tree, signifying the dead in the game title, placed to the left of the title ‘Dead Island Riptide’ which is written in dark dripping red to appear bloody.

But the ASB were having none of it, deciding:

The Board noted the fantasy content and the stylised nature of the advertisement, and it considered that the issue of suicide is a depiction of violence, which is not justifiable even in the context of an advertisement for a computer game aimed at adults.

The issue of suicide is a very significant community concern and considered that the use of images that are strongly suggestive of suicide is not appropriate in the context of a television advertisement for a computer game.

Good thing they only had to handle complaints about the ad and not the game itself.

Case Report [ASB, via Mumbrella]


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