Bloggery and ramblage

The problem with gaming celebrities

You know what one of the biggest problems with the game industry is? Gamers worshipping the wrong damn people. Because of gamers like you and I, we rarely hear from people that are truly interesting or actually care about the industry.

Reggie Fils Aime? A random PR jack ass that worked for Pizza Hut and VH1. I'd hazard a guess that he knows little about games beyond sales statistics and market demographics.
Peter Moore? Another random PR jack ass that initially worked for Reebok before he was brought on board at Sega. He seems to be a bit more in touch with the average gamer, but he still doesn't say much beyond the usual company line for whatever company he belongs to at the time.

Most recently Activision's CEO (Bobby Kotick) was the face brought out for the unveiling of Guitar Hero World Tour at All Things D, with Tony Hawk as his little gimp to play the game for him and Paula Abdul to tell him how awesome his shitty playing of the game was. The God damned CEO, Tony Hawk and the washed up tart from Idol. No developers, no designers, no one involved with the creation of the product what so ever. Just a PR monkey, his spokes person for a skate boarding game and a trollop from a God damned reality TV show that has no relation to the product what-so-ever. Ridiculous, much?

Sure, once in a blue moon we'll see someone involved in the creative process come out on stage and actually have something insightful to say, but it's only in cases where they're people that have already made a big name for themselves (like Will Wright for instance). Beyond that all we get are little snippets of them saying heavily scripted lines, having their strings pulled by their PR puppet masters. Yet no one questions it. Messageboards are filled with adoration of the PR goons I mentioned above (well, maybe not Kotick), but I've never ever seen a post from someone saying how much they love Dan Houser's writing in GTA or enjoyed Harry Gregson-William's soundtrack for a Metal Gear game, and it sickens me.

So yeah, if you ever find yourself disgusted by the amount of PR bullshit the industry seems to be drowning in, blame your fellow gamers. They're the ones glorifying it.

1. Comment by lexielab, Friday May 30 2008, 12:03 AM

   I'd say that a lot of this adoration is a symptom of the "console war". These PR people provide a face to attach to the beloved console/publisher of choice/worship, so they are worshipped as well. Often the people that actually develop the games are too ordinary and real for adoration.

2. Comment by Acerlyte, Friday May 30 2008, 12:15 AM

   I could be way off base here, but i've a hunch you are no fan of Paula Abdul... can't possibly understand why...
   
   Yes, gaming fanboyism is ripe to the point of smelly poopy-ness. Anything to constantly justify why they spent X amount of dollars on the current console and why you should have too. It's fun stuff ^_^.

3. Comment by nspa, Thursday Jun 5 2008, 11:38 PM

   I welcome this Faboy/girlisms only because back in the day, gaming was thought to be only played by the pock-marked, reclusive nerds. It's only now when Sony and Microsoft, with their large budgets and hordes of PR Crew, that they've brought this awesome past-time out of the shadows and because of this, there's now a new market emerging for people who haven't considered playing games a past-time.
   
   It's interesting to see how many people at my work have Xbox360s, play World of Warcraft and who converse with me about it. It seems they have now found another possible way for the older crowd to converse with the younger crowd here.
   
   Maybe it's just me, but, it's still pretty exciting to over-hear conversations about gaming that aren't confined to some kid's underground bedroom or on the internet... The same goes for people who you've met but never really considered them to invest a large ammount of their free-time gaming.
   
   
   
   

4. Comment by Demaar, Sunday Jun 8 2008, 03:57 PM

   Oh I'm not denying that. Games being sold to a mainstream audience isn't a problem. The problem is that the enthusiast media is becoming another part of the PR machine to sell shoddy games to uninformed consumers. They're glorifying people that are hired to sell an image, not creating the games that we all love.

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