I heard about this upcoming adventure game called Mata Hari some time ago, and found it rather intriguing. A Belle Époque period piece, with story-relevant gameplay innovations, designed by a pair of LucasArts veterans… sounds like a guaranteed hit for a highbrow game snob like me, doesn’t it?

That is, until I saw the proposed box art, which has the titular character scantily-clad and posed like she’s on the cover of freakin’ Maxim or something. Granted, she’s a prostitute, but back in the day, people practicing the world’s oldest profession looked more like this, so there’s honestly no reason to go with that kind of look unless you’re appealing to the adolescent male market. Which most AAA games pretty much do, because apparently, common business sense dictates that women don’t have any disposable income for games because they’re busy spending it all on shoes.

The problem with Mata Hari in particular is that it’s part of a niche genre whose target audience, as I alluded in my last post, actually does consist of a significant percentage of women, many of whom are too old to tolerate such childishness. Advertising to teenage boys is only going to exclude that market… and leave everyone else disappointed by the fact that oops, the game isn’t really about ogling almost-naked ladies! Why no one on the marketing team realised this baffles me. Let’s just hope the box art isn’t final, and the folks in charge magically come to their senses and fix it before the game’s release.