Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Trailer Approaches Being Offensive

We’ve seen a lot of terrible trailers and games over the years when it comes to unnecessary sexualisation. Whether it’s a volleyball game in the Dead or Alive franchise or barely-armoured women in countless games that involve swords in some way, it’s always been a bit of a problem, one that probably lies in the audience the marketers are trying to attract.

Any previous example (Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball perhaps excluded) falls short when compared to the following trailer for upcoming shooter Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, however. Warning: this is probably not safe for work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN9du8ndcrg

For those who can’t/don’t want to watch the trailer themselves, allow me to provide a description. The trailer is titled ‘Team Ghost Member #3: Coco’, which already has alarm bells ringing, and features rather prominently a real life ridiculously proportioned blonde woman or, more accurately, it features her naughty bits.

When the camera isn’t panning from arse to chest it’s focused on her whilst she shoots various real life automatic weapons, sacrificing the top of her head in favour of keeping all the parts that might jiggle in the frame.

There’s more side boob on display here than there is game play footage and when it moves onto watching her playing the game using Kinect there really isn’t any pretense of even trying to cover up her arse. She’s wearing a bathing suit that leaves more of her uncovered than there is covered.

It practically beggars belief. The ‘Coco’ in question is Coco Austin, American glamour model and actress who is most likely to be recognised for her part in her marriage to Ice T.

Needless to say, the previous two videos in the ‘Team Ghost Member’ series (both of which feature men) are not in any way sexualised, though they do both feature repeated gameplay clips between them and American professional sports personalities: basketballer Kevin Love and American footballer Justin Blackmon, which is a whole other world of shallow advertising.

‘It’s cool to play this game, these athletes play it, look! And these boobs play it, too!’

The whole video comes off as sleazy and offensive, it’s not even subtle – in fact, this trailer would quite possibly destroy any subtlety in its vicinity like some kind of subtlety black hole. If Ubisoft are trying to successfully market this game rather than completely sink it into an abyss of possibly deserved revulsion they are definitely going about it the wrong way.

This isn’t just bad advertising, it’s offensive to the people to which they are trying to market the game. That makes it bad business, too, and quite possibly evil. And sexist.