Players win: Mother LA flips gaming tropes with a relatable twist

Mother Los Angeles has partnered with Electronic Arts for a Battlefield 6 campaign that puts players, not celebrities, front and centre: a sign of the times, we reckon.

While actors like Zac Efron and footballer Jimmy Butler appear in the latest ad for Battlefield 6, the campaign is really about the fun the players can have, echoing its core message that "the real heroes are the gamers".

It’s a theme that Creative Moment picked up a while back: celebs playing a more down-to-earth role in creative. Or in this case, taking a backseat. 

The Battlefield 6 campaign is very ‘now’, and its player-centric focus is a nod to the game’s ‘friends pass’ multiplayer feature: letting owners invite others to play for free. This is referenced in the spot, which sees friends 'dropping in’ to accompany players in the ad’s world.

This genre-blending approach positions the online community as Battlefield’s lifeblood, subtly commenting on gaming’s role in modern friendship and social connection.

Connecting to the perma-online generation

Mother LA’s campaign stands out for celebrating gaming’s ability to bring people together: albeit in this case amidst a terrifying war scene.

The ad brings to mind Xbox’s ‘Jump In’ campaign and PlayStation’s ‘Play Has No Limits’, but with more meta-awareness. Indeed, the detachment of the players from the brutal scenes around them is relatable to anyone who’s ever picked up a console controller.

This is also something of a shift in gaming advertising, which has charted a path via the 80s/90s heyday of geeky bombast, through to the 2000s PlayStation-era which saw gaming portrayed as the height of cool.

The Battlefield 6 ad is more tailored to a 2020s audience, raised on Deadpool and Twitch and TikTok in-jokes. 

It marks a line in the digital sand towards relatable rather than aspirational advertising in gaming.