Virgin plies new depths
"Daily Sport Football Strip" turns out to be exactly what we feared it would be
Virgin Interactive today confirmed our worst fears with the official unveiling of Daily Sport Football Strip, which has been cropping up on their release schedules for a while now under various titles. As the name suggests, Football Strip is a soccer themed quiz game "officially endorsed by the UK's brightest tabloid newspaper", in which "the idea is to lose it all" with "four fabulous fillies" just waiting to "get their kits off for the lads". As the press release so succintly puts it -
Quite frankly it's baffling that such a high profile British publisher would pick up this title, which is the kind of thing you would normally expect to download from a dubious subscription website or to get from under the counter at your local newsagents, wrapped in a plain brown paper bag. When we asked Virgin PR manager Jon Brooke about this earlier, he explained that the game is part of a long term distribution agreement with publisher Swing Entertainment which covered a number of games, including one called Football Quiz. "Quite simply it made commercial sense to make the most of this product and attach the Daily Sport license, and thus Daily Sport Football Strip was born. Is it that shocking? What we're offering is nothing worse than what you might find in the Daily Sport or indeed lifestyle magazines. It's a bit of fun and I admit it's aimed at the male audience, but then the majority of gamers are male."
With games like this it's perhaps no surprise. Ironically, just yesterday the British game development community (including the company behind this travesty of digital entertainment) were talking about widening their markets by appealing to female gamers and encouraging more women to work in the industry. It just goes to show that the gaming industry isn't afraid of appealing to the lowest common denominator in search of those ever elusive profits.
"When we signed the game, we had our list of perfect partners - and The Daily Sport was top of that list", Jon is quoted as saying in the press release. "Like the paper, the quiz features a host of beautiful girls, and like the paper the quiz is all about fun. We'll be working closely with the editorial and promotions team to ensure the game receives the maximum cross-exposure possible."
Judging from the screenshots, exposure is one thing this game won't need to worry about...