Playstation "Gamefaces" not really a new idea.

As Creativereview noticed the playface commercial isn't the first one to do photographs of peoples faces as they react to stuff. Not sure if the Playstation ads were meant to look like sex, but some of the expressions do. (And IMHO the whole sex-angle makes it funnier, to me) Creative review reckons it reminds them of Coco De Mer & Trojan campaign that we badlanded here previously.

The photographs are based on portraits of men taken at the moment of climax.

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Phil Toledano did a photo series back in 2002 called Videogamers, photographing their best game faces - and he has said about the PS3 campaign "It pretty much looks like they happily ripped me off...".

But there's also a cool video installation called We will destroy you by Chris Evans, where people got to play an old Space Invaders game, and the video camera in the machine beamed their best game faces onto a wall in a bar, where customers had to cope with the giant evil gamefaces staring down at them with evil grins. Sounds good.

 

Immersion might be the most similar to the PS3 idea, as photographer Robbie Cooper filmed young gamers deeply concentrated in kicking ass.

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This young boy has a single tear running down his cheek as he napalms something. I wonder what game he's playing?

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Conclusion: advertising inspiration is often found in art galleries and photographic art created free of client restraints. Film at 11.