Complaints about television advertisements for Rockstar’s over 18s game ‘Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ have been upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland.
Apparently in contrast to the publisher’s stance of marketing their over 18s games only to adults, the advertisements aired last December on a Tuesday at 5.59pm between ‘Neighbours’ and ‘the Simpsons’, at 5.11 during ‘You’re A Star' on a Saturday, and during ‘Little House on the Prairie’ at 9.27am on a Saturday morning; a slot original scheduled for the Premiership - the change was at the time unknown to the advertisers.
The complaints are in regards to an adult game been advertised at a time when children were likely to be watching TV. Rockstar, a Take Two label, said they take the complaints seriously; they apologized, but did not think they had breached the advertising codes.
Less recently, the ASAI also upheld complaints about advertisement for the PlayStation brand broadcasted around a repeat of the ‘Late Late Toy Show’. The ad, which mimicked the style of a documentary about wild animals, featured porn stars attacking golfers. Some complaints commented on the problems of explaining such to children, while others said the adverts were totally inappropriate because PlayStations are, in their view, ‘directed towards children’.
“[the ad Agency, Cawley Nea/TBWA] added that the ad forms part of a series of advertisements for Playstation. Another advertisement in the series relates to athletes and ventriloquists. The premise of this suite of advertisements is that disparate and unrelated groups in society can interact in the gaming world. Playstation brings out different behaviour in these unrelated groups – competitive behaviour, play, ritual and so on” stated the response section in a recent ASAI Complaints Bulletin.
Late last year complaints on television, poster, and radio adverts for Sony’s ‘the Getaway Black Monday’ were also upheld due to what was seen as unacceptable condoning of acts of violence.
Games Toaster’s attention was brought to this subject by an article in yesterday’s ‘the Irish Times’; thought the Irish Times only featured news of two complaints, in the ‘ASAI Complaints Bulletin 05/2’ more then 20 complaints are listed, the majority of which were upheld, including two Reader Travel Offers from the Irish Times. Although, such - of course – is not as topical.
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