OMG, a knife and a gun!
The Advertising Standards Authority has pulled Midway's Stranglehold adverts after coming to a decision that they may encourage and condone violence.The adverts for the third person action adventure, which attracted 23 complaints, were shown on Yahoo and BT websites and apparently show Kovac brandishing a gun and a knife , whilst showing on-screen text that reads "You on my side? listen up I've killed for less. The music plays Puccini in my head."
The advert creators, TBWA said that the advert was targeted towards 18 year olds and Yahoo also said tht children could not see the advert as it "targeted registered users over 18 years of age who had provided their date of birth at the time of registering their account and were logged into the site."
So what's the problem then? Well the Advertising Standards Authority say that they "considered that there was an underlying tone of violence in the ad and we were concerned that the images of Kovac holding the knife and the gun, in conjunction with the text, 'You on my side? Listen up I've killed for less..." could be seen to glamorise violence or anti-social behaviour. We asked Sony to amend future internet ads where the content could be seen to condone or glamorise violence or anti-social behaviour.
In 2007, Stranglehold was actually banned in Germany for "excessive violence."
