Ad Rock

In the past I've mentioned how video game ads often have incongruous music. But previously this has usually been to contrast beautiful music with gritty fighting. For instance, there's a Playstation ad now set to a choral rendition of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This.)"

(Off topic, but has anyone ever successfully performed that song to make it sound like "made of this" rather than "made of these?" Since "dreams" is plural but "this" singular, the correct lyrics don't even sound right spoken, nevermind in the song.)

But the latest head-scratching musical combo is the ad for Battlefield 1 - a WWI game - with Smashing Pumpkins' angst-rock classic, "Bullet With Butterfly Wings." I've tried to figure out how a song about the exhaustion of unfocused anger could be applied to a hellish conflict that changed how the world looks at war. Sure, "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" could be a poetic description of a WWI fighter plane, but that's stretching it. Online I found ads set to "Seven Nation Army" which at least makes sense in a super-literal sense. I don't know why they didn't go with that song for the TV ad. I guess they decided their demographic needed to be a decade older.

For that matter, who wants a game set in World War I? If it's realistic, it will be hours of trying to avoid rat bites in the trenches before going over the top and getting gunned down to end the game. My condolences to history teachers everywhere who are currently trying to figure out how to convince kids the war wasn't about dramatically batting people off horseback.

Personally, I've never been a war game guy. I'm not trying to put the concept down: I'm open to the idea that you can make a game that both entertaining and respectful of the reality of war. But going all the way back to the Platoon tie-in game, I've been skeptical of the game industry's ability to deliver them. I'm inclined to keep that opinion, since someone at Electronic Arts thinks war is comparable to Billy Corgan's angry pet rat.