Be Excellent To Each Other

What the fuck does that actually mean? I saw a TV advert for the Sims and I wished Sims 3 looked that good.
"representative of gameplay" means fuck all, doesn't it? It's like "this is how we wanted it to look in an ideal world".

"this isn't the game you'll be buying"

"the footage shown isn't the actual game, but we hope you think it is so you buy it"

"the art department wants it too look like this, but the programmers said it'd fuck the CSS tables, and marketing were drunk and OK'd it"

This always pisses me off, too. "actual gameplay footage" is just as bad, appearing as it invariably does over footage of cut scenes, which are NOT GAMEPLAY, GODDAMN YOU.

A while back a game (think a WWII one) that escapes me was reported to the ASA for pretending that it was showing gameplay footage. Harry Potter games were called out as well.

Then for a time we got real gameplay footage, but now it seems they've returned to their old ways as they are confident that 'representative of gameplay' is enough to prevent the ASA from shutting it down.

It takes 5 minutes to complain to the ASA, and they are awesome. A guide to doing so is here:
http://www.badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1831
But you only need it for the link.

If someone wants to tell them that the Sim 3 footage isn't representative then from past experience I would say you have a 50:50 chance of them banning the advert.

That FPS set on Mars is another guilty party.

Would make an excellent UpToJump article....

I presume it means it's the actual gamplay footage, not just fancy cutscenes...

Right then. I'm going to pressure you into writing it. *turns on hob*

I'd like Bioshock's 'attract' footage to exist as a game or not exist at all.

I assumed it meant 'not actual gameplay, but uses the engine'.

I haven't time for Skeptobot at the minute, so er, no.

Maybe we can do by crowd sourcing.

We need

[1] a youtube clip of the Sims 3 advert
[2] a youtube clip of the Sims 3's actual gameplay
[3] a complaint to the ASA
[4] Some text to describe that
[5] Someone typing it up to make a pleasent U2J post. Maybe with pics.

I'll try and find to do 3 and maybe 4 if you do 1,2 & 5.