09.17.07

A Hero (And Bile) Will Rise

Posted in Gaming, Rants at 4:47 pm

I suppose that, in the interests of retaining my Gamer License, I need to talk a little bit about Halo 3. My sister, lovey as she is, asked me about what items might be on my Christmas list; I had no immediate concepts, so she ventured, “Halo 3?” I immediately said, “Uh, not quite.” Yeah, disregarding that my tastes run more towards MySims and the Virtual Console/XBLA stuff these days, the fact that she even mentioned the Fight what’s being Finished sort of made me pause.

I can’t say that I’ve been following the H3 advertising blitz too closely. I have to be reminded of the release date whenever I go into the store, simply because people keep asking when I’m going to pre-order it. Here’s a news flash: I’m not. While I have a passing interest in the end of the Human/Covenant war, it is not to the point where I will care enough to buy the game on its release date, or even really in its release year. Hell, depending on when the 360 gets replaced, I may actually be able to hold out until we’re out of its release decade. And yet, I am pretty much exactly Microsoft’s target demographic for the game. I literally fall dead-center in where MS and Bungie think the game’s biggest popularity will be: single twentysomething guys who are avid and self-described “hardcore” gamers.

So why is it that when I saw the one and lone Halo 3 ad during the Steelers game yesterday, it was the first ad for that game that I’d seen since E3 2006? Microsoft needs to fire their ad guys. Like, now. I should honestly be complaining that I’m seeing the ad too many times. Not that I’m not seeing it enough.

My complaint really is not that I’m not seeing the ad enough, but my sister is seeing it enough to ask me about it. I half expect my mom will ask about it too. That’s what we call bad. How damn bad do you need to screw up targeting your demographics in order to get a twentysomething bookish woman more aware of a blood-and-gore shooter than her perfectly-positioned brother? I’d much rather complain that I can’t get away from the advertising than complain that it’s irritating my family.

You could make a case that the “hardcore” already know about the game, and that the ads are reaching out to the fringe market. Let me ask you this: does an advertisement that’s nothing more than a slow pan across a Warhammer 40K scene really sound like it’s going to be appealing to girls and grandparents? The “Blue Ocean” strategy only works, fellas, when the product already appeals to the fringe. You cannot force my sister to care one iota about the Arbiter or Master Chief. You can, however, spam MySims ads everywhere and sell a zillion more Wiis to people on the fence there (wait, bad example).

That’s the thing. Gaming is trying to break into the mainstream, but the problem is that the predominant mindset is focused on games like Halo and BioShock and Gears of War. We’re this close to being able to say it’s a universal hobby, but no, we don’t promote the cute, innocent, good games like MySims, Viva Pinata, LittleBigPlanet, etc. No, if it don’t have guns and guts, it’s not on TV. I cannot be the only person to remember the Secret of Mana ad (related note: if anyone can find an English version of that one on YouTube, that’s my personal animated Holy Grail, alongside the FF3 commercials) and thinking that that was an effective spot. I only saw it once on TV, late one night, and while I already knew about the game, the ad just cemented my desire even more. Why can’t we get ads like that anymore? I know H3 is about aliens; what else?!

What I would like to see, really, is an ad for the XBLA (hopefully to coincide with another Unplugged disc– I’d have bought that one if I didn’t have all the games already) or Virtual Console, so that the niche or casual aspects of those machines could get a little more attention. Wii Sports and all that has proven that a casual audience is there, and that there’s money to be made in getting them to focus on more than one game. I recall the days when the game machines were advertised as a family entertainment thing (Nintendo and Atari in particular were big on playing that aspect up). Going back to that focus could really, really boost sales. Not to say that the hardcore should be ignored– or even that we are being ignored. If we were, Halo 3 would have been canned in favor of yet another rendition of Tetris or something inane. The hardcore are being serviced; the casual are being marginalized.

There is one other coda to all of this. Later during the game, there was a Southwestern Airlines commercial that showed two guys playing a baseball video game. The one stood up and said, “This game has motion controls, just like I was batting. Now, throw me a hot one, like we were outside.” His buddy then proceeds to hurl his controller (a red object that’s not a Wiimote) into the very expensive plasma TV setup at pro speeds. The setup dies quite spectacularly before the SW slogan, “Wanna get away?” starts. To use the Internet parlance, I lolled.

I’ll talk a little tomorrow about the Wii shortage continuing into its second year.

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