Video Killed the Radio Star

Think of all the classic movies. Or games. Or albums. Now try to picture those pieces of art being advertised. If you are like me, it’s very difficult. There are some texts(note, for the sake of this article, I will be referring to all instances of the medium in the literal “text”) that convey a grand picture – a masterpiece of the human mind and form – that simply cannot be advertised. Trailers won’t do the film justice. Gameplay videos just don’t inspire the gamer. Radio edit singles are a far cry from the richness embodied in the album.

Marketing is slowly devouring the soul of our creativity.

I may have given it away in my first paragraph, but this article is somewhat of a shoutout – and a proof in form – to those texts that surpass the advertising limits and create a mass-market appeal all to their own. Today, we call these texts “cult” – a derogatory term at the best of times – which is a clear indication of our society’s opinion of what the minority KNOW to be great. For instance, in 1977, a film was released to cinemas. It was in the boom summer months, where we generally have one lead film by a production studio, plus a bunch of minor, cheap backups. The film I am talking about is one of those cheap, throwaway backups. It was a film where the entire cast and crew were of the opinion that they were making a joke. It would never go anywhere. It was a flight of fancy by an unskilled screenwriter who, for some reason, managed to score a small budget. That film, in case you hadn’t guessed…

Was Star Wars. Possibly today the most recognised film brand in the Western World, Star Wars was given a measly (even for the time) $8m budget. For argument’s sake, allow me to note a few other similar films: Blues Brothers, Donnie Darko, Clerks, Slacker, Saw… All these films weren’t considered to be friendly to marketing, at least as far as the publishers saw (ed: if there really were an editor, he would punLOL right now). The fact is, the big budget production studios need to make absolutely certain that the money they spend on a film comes back to them.

I hold no grudges. At the end of the day, the job of a publisher is to finance a creative work. When we come to matters of finance, capitalist society dictates that financing something must, in the end, make a return. Which means that, in order to publish a creative work, a publisher needs to be aware of exactly how they are going to recoup their interests. This leads us to the marketers…

I’m not going to pretend marketing companies are evil corporations out to brainwash the public to the “regime” mode of thinking. Marketers simply collate, calculate, predict and report statistical trends in the ‘marketplace’ (that being, us in the majority) that they know will sell. The problem is the human factor. Statistics only prove so much, and only from a scientific standpoint. When it comes to the creative media, anything is up for grabs.

I am a teacher, pioneer and citizen of “Games”, and as such I must approach this article from a game perspective. With a little thought however, I am sure you will make the same links with your own medium of choice. There have been several genres of video game that have become all but extinct – they definitely don’t hold the popularity they once did. Genres like adventure games, space sims and turn-based strategy games were once leading the charge in game sales. Today, they barely make a blip on the charts (with a few notable exceptions). I believe the reason for this is marketing, namely that these genres are very difficult to advertise. Trailers and gameplay videos don’t appear flashy enough, screenshots and posters show graphs and text more often than not, and press releases just haven’t got the forceful impact of say, a first-person shooter. This is certainly not to say that these games are bad. You just need to be playing them to appreciate them. The only games in these genres that tend to do any well nowadays are those rebooting, based on, or continuing a once-popular franchise (Sam & Max, Monkey Island, Civilization, Freelancer, Hearts of Iron and the many independent “rogue-likes”, to name a few). Films show the same trend – the biggest takers of any given chart tend to be movies with big, flashy, exciting trailers. Album sales are more often based on the radio single. A new book only really sells big when someone bases a film on it.

It is this industry that is the cause. Publishers targeting product to the mass market. In the end it all comes back to trying to please all the people all the time. The text just gets “dumbed down”, the effect lost in a thousand compromises designed to make it appeal to more people. I remember the games industry in its relative infancy at the turn of the 90′s. There was no advertising. Games were independent affairs. A game sold through word of mouth. This is where the classics make their mark – not through mass-market themed teasers, but based on the recommendation of the human element. And no, I’m not talking about the critics. They aren’t really people.