Here's the top half of a banner ad for the latest edition of Diplomacy that I just spotted on BoardGameGeek. It's unclear whether this was designed by the BGG folks, or by Avalon Hill / Hasbro themselves, though there's no reason to think it isn't the latter case.
Even if that's so, I'm guessing it's a custom-produced ad for BGG, a very popular site with a huge slate of semi-apocryphal group-knowledge; all BGG fans know that Diplomacy's a great game that you should never play with anyone you care about. Even so, "buy this game because it will make you sad and alone" still seems an odd message to make so overt in your ad copy. It'd be like seeing an ad for Fluxx on BGG using the site's general attitude about that title: "Everyone in the world hates this game! How the hell have we sold almost 400,000 copies! Get yours today!"
They've been running the same ad as the full-page back cover of the last few issues of Games magazine. So no, it's not just a Boardgamegeek thing.
I don't see anything weird about it. It's an in-joke among the crowd that likes the game. That sells.
Your Fluxx example is an in-joke among the crowd that *doesn't* like the game. That doesn't sell, but obviously it's not the same situation.
Understood, but it still strikes me as a strange marketing direction, limiting their reach to people who already play and enjoy the game. Yes, they want these people to go buy the latest edition, too, but.
Arguably the sentiment intriguing to anyone who doesn't get the joke, but in that case it doesn't feel like they went far enough; it looks like a snarky image macro stuck on an existing ad, the way it is, matching poorly with the classy saber and the old-world look. Better to show that saber plunged into some sucker's back, like the cartoons on older editions featured.
Ah, so BGG doesn't let you look at images without a login. This is was I was talking about.