The whole Dead Island advertising campaign sort of drove me up a wall. It was totally manipulative, sure, but it also managed to come across as an honest attempt to get you to care for these people despite that. Then the game came out, and, well… if you had any hopes of playing anything as engaging as the commercial, they were dashed the second you heard “Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch?” blast out of the intro. This video was my attempt to suss out why that might be.
Campster
2 Comments
Osbo
Oct 10, 2011
Christopher – Great insights here, as always. There is one major difference between the film and TV industry and the game industry – the marketability of social commentary. Serious film and television have just as much of a marketing formula as crap film and television, but again, there’s a market for an audience that likes “respectable” entertainment. This audience, however, hasn’t presented itself – in a meaningful way – to the game industry.
The gaming community on the other hand (in general, not as a whole or certain individuals) has a loud majority that doesn’t accept the premise of games as art, and are vocally opposed to anything that isn’t pure fun. This is a problem. However, there is a silver lining…
I would say that the games industry is about at the Metropolis level. There’s still the novelty of silent films (wow! Moving Pictures!), and the silent feature is relatively new (Wow! That sci-fi silent picture had some undertons of socialism and communism, don’t you think?). This is where companies like RKO and the like began to take precedent over companies like Edison. As people become more and more aware of the potential of the medium, more audiences will demand more from the creators.
The fact that the marketing has more emotional appeal is exactly what you stated. We are more practiced in the medium of cinematic storytelling than we are at (video) game design.
I think the recent Deus Ex is our Metropolis. It had undertones of transhumanism and what makes a human vs. a machine, but it was only framed an a typical romance story and not on a larger epic scale.
Keith D.
Jan 1, 2012
I found my way here from a comment on a game site talking about Dead Island. I was all prepared to not like what you had to say because I’ve been enjoying playing Dead Island so far, but I’ve changed my mind.
I’m still enjoying playing the game, but I also agree with your points. There is a ton of untapped potential in games as a medium that I’d like to see developers begin to exploit. You could see a little bit of that in the The Longest Journey series and a couple of other games whose names escape me– those had more rewarding and meaningful experiences than just pure video game entertainment. I’m not sure they sold well though, so it’ll probably be another generation or so before the gaming market matures enough to start wanting more than shiny graphics and mindless escapist game play.
Bear in mind that the 30-40 year old video gaming demographic is still a pretty new one, so to be fair, the industry is still in its infancy and the market hasn’t appeared in the eyes of bean counters quite yet. But it will soon, and the sooner the better in my opinion because I fall into that demographic that needs more than mindless shooting and pretty glitz.
Excellent commentary. Clearly you put a lot of thought into what you have to say. I’ll be following along from now on. :)
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