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When Videogames Publishers Go 'Street'
Thanks to 1UP/OPM for its article discussing what they describe as the 'thugging' of the videogame industry, referencing games such as Def Jam Fight for NY and Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition. The piece suggests: "Whether it was established franchises morphing into more streetwise versions of their former selves or new franchises emerging wearing their hip-hop influences on their sleeves, it was clear that the urban lifestyle is being embraced by developers and publishers alike." Marc Ecko argues "I think the problem is that the games industry is generationally nostalgic", and Steve Allison of Midway charges: "The guys bitching about this new trend are inching up on 35 years old, and they grew up on old-school gameplay. They're a very vocal bunch, but they're just not the market anymore."
Steve Allison of Midway charges: "The guys bitching about this new trend are inching up on 35 years old, and they grew up on old-school gameplay. They're a very vocal bunch, but they're just not the market anymore."
Well, this is likely true, but as one who used to play online shootemups, I can say the trend toward this has been going on for a little while at least. When all the little white kids got their computers around the same time hip-hop started going mainstream, you started seeing comments like "Whasssup Biatch" when someone joined the game or "I'm your pimp daddy" or some other affected effort at manifesting some pathetic street cred. I have sort of expected this sort of thing for a while now, but see it as a continued effort to squeeze some more marketing $$s out of a saturated hip-hop market. Perhaps when NWA or Ice-T was around this would have been interesting but come on now folks, the hip hop scene is dead and has been replaced by the thug-life affected persona that now simply looks and appears absurd. Nowhatimsayin?
So, essentially what Steve Allison from Midway is saying is that Midway has sold out and are adopting the grow the company, mainstream marketing bit. Steve..........Do you know what this means?.............It means that Midway is no longer cool. This of course is the risk companies take when they try to break from their roots and become something they are not, but hey......that's America and at least companies have that option.
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But in five to ten years time we will be in control of the market's purse-strings. Don't ignore us.
Spending money like an idiot, drinking to an excess, being only turned on by bimbos with no brains, beating eachother senseless with tire irons or whatever, shooting people you hate, getting shot at by people who hate you, eating only at drive thru, drinking alize and crystal, attending strip clubs like they were the new church, membership at the The Player'S Club, Gucci, bling-bling, bust
Riiiiiight.... with Daddy and Mommy's money. I think this kind of thing is just another outlet of "validated" rebellion the way Rock music was in the 70's - an ultimately safe way for middle-class kids to pretend they're pushing the boundaries.
The real people who actually live that lifestyle are revolting thugs.
This really isn't a big deal. I've been playing games for over twenty years. Games have their phases. A few years ago it was shooters and RPG (FF style games). Now it is the more realistic run around and buy drugs, beat hookers, and kill people. Ultimately, it doesn't make a difference. It is just another phase. We've all been through different phases in our lives. Anyways, the biggest worry to me is that the industry is going away. Sure there are the big upcoming games, but there really hasn't been innovation since the GTA series. Guess I will just have to go back to D&D.
I agree. I would never call any game "from the street" because whatever its trying to be, it's probably been made by a load of geeks who as far away from "the street" as you can be.
Fifteen years down the road, which will stand up better: a game that was released in 2004 that depicts life on the streets in that same year, or a game like the Legend of Zelda, which isn't set in our world?
Goo goo g'joob.
i don't think its all 35-year-olds. i'm 19 and i think its absolutely retarded that turbo has to be called "juice" in all these retarded ghetto games.
"NBA Nigga Be Ballin' Bling Bling on the Straight-Up Street an' Pimpin aa Bitches 2k4" makes me want to claw my brain out through my nostrils
and then the "audiences" in some of these games doing all their retarded ghetto flailing of arms in their air and stuff. UGH!
i hate what our society is becoming.
Video game designers realize there is a pile of money to be made on criminals, too, because one of their favourite hobbies are console games. I'd wager that most criminals dislike computer games
This is a joke, right?
Women prefer the "thug" men over the nice guy weak men. Men who commit crimes successfully almost always have a girlfriend.
You don't have to be a violent criminal, you just need to have a nice car, lots of money, and the tough guy image. You see its all an act just like my name being adolph hitler is a persona, the "thugs" are acting out a persona to get the girls.
Women generally hate nice guys and consider them weak and inferior. Women are attracted to thugs who spend excessive money on them. As much as you say differently, find me a woman who will go on a date with a homeless man with no job. Better yet find me woman period.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Really? Really? I've been reading that the gamer demographic keeps getting older. I've even read a little bit of that on Slashdot (although when I searched for it, all I got was a link to an article about women over 40 being a big, growing gamer market -- not quite the article I recall reading). We now have the gamer dad web site, and I'm sure a gamer mom web site either exists or will soon. I'm 33, and over the last 3 years, my income has finally been good enough to allow me to buy a Dreamcast, a PS2, and about $1,000 worth of games. I don't think I'm the only 30-something gamer in existence. I wonder if this guy just doesn't understand the market anymore. It's bigger than he imagines.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
"As if our video-games didn't have enough mindless violence."
Can you blame people for producing what sells? Look at the number of mild to non-violent video games that go direct to bargin bin. Only with a change in our own consumption can we effect a change. What are your kids buying? What are they watching? What are you buying? What are you watching?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
This is an ongoing trend with pop-culture and culture in general. People who were once commonly referred to as "riff-raff", people you tend to see hanging around Greyhound stations (unless they can max out a credit card and get themselves a muscle car). Old gender roles have disappeared. Women are supposed to act like whores and pretend to be just as tough as thuggish, shiftless men. Mutual respect and courtesy is old hat. "Attitude" is in. Perhaps to the people who waste their life away playing video games instead of wasting their life pretending to be a character in a B-movie like "The Fast and the Furious", this is real news. It may also surprise the old shut-ins, shock middle-class parents, and be totally ignored by yuppies living in gated-communities, but the effects on the country will become obvious some 20 years hence.
As usual, the Simpsons has this trend wrapped up. Remember Poochie the Dog from the The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show?
No one saw the movie; they saw the Southpark episode.
A rose by any other name is still an overpriced flower.
Call it Thug or Urban or Street or anything you want. It will still have the same characteristics: shallow materialism, chronic sociopathy, and nihilism.
This trend is a fad, if only because the people who buy into this culture will self select themselves into that most undesireable of demographics, the poor. It's the hippie culture revisited, except this time it has none of the redeeming philosophies and principles that gave hippies their own legitimacy.
Meanwhile, I am that 35 year old (actually, 32 year old) with the 5-6 figure income, and I will most likely continue to have that income for decades. You can go chasing after the 18-34 year old urban demographic (and I have my doubts that it's legitimate to say that rather than a 12-25 demographic), but rest assured I will not buy crap simply because Madison Avenue's trend setters like it.
And, it's not just "me". It's us, and the baby boomers, and our grandpatents, and wonder of wonders, we have the wealth. The 18-34 year olds may be easy to market to due to inexperience, but they grow up. Meanwhile, you've burned your bridges with your brand and gone out of your way to tick me off (hint: the Cadillac Escalade dealer isn't telling us to f*ck off because we're irrelevant while cranking out tricked out SUVs).
Good luck with that marketing plan Midway. I expect to see you on the ash heap of failed publishers should you really follow through with this farce.
Steve Allison of Midway charges: "The guys bitching about this new trend are inching up on 35 years old, and they grew up on old-school gameplay. They're a very vocal bunch, but they're just not the market anymore."
I just turned 30 and I spend more on games now than I ever did as a kid. I was part of the first mainstream videogame generation and most of us have a lot more disposable income these days. And we still play games, even though some of us are married and/or have families.
It's incredibly stupid to dismiss us like that, but it's something I see over and over again. Games aren't maturing as my generation does, and although I spend a lot on games, I find the number of games that truly excite me anymore to be slim. My feeling is that a lot of this is due to the immaturity of many game developers, who think it's more important to have big-breasted polygons than a good storyline or gameplay. The other problem is arrogant and uninformed attitudes like this guy at Midway, which is very prevalent at the superpublishers which control the industry. I don't believe that the traditional business philosophy that the 12-18 market spends the most translates to the games market. From just personal experience I haven't seen the usual dropoff. What is needed is more independent studios again who have the creative integrity to concentrate on quality, which is what the 25-35 segment is begging for and not getting often.
Oh, and by the way Midway guy, 95% of the games your company has put out are trash.
Market.
While the PC has certainly bloomed into a mainstream gaming platform, the number of console gamers are still larger. The industry has been quite aware of a single fact. More Black Americans own gaming consoles than PCs. A large segment of the console gaming market, are the black audiences who usually buy more sports titles than others. Thats why you have games like NBA Street, NFL Street.
Also i know of several developers that have been approached by very successful rappers/producers, and so forth looking to get into the game industry. They'll fund games, lend talent, music and marketing power.
There is a movement towards black culture in gaming because there is a huge market for it among whites, and even more among blacks.
Games are just like hollywood these days. They go for markets.
Frankly i wish they would make PC games like they used to, New ideas, new concepts. Interplay's Castles 2 etc. Something other than a freaking 3d FPS.
How does rap music and def jam suddenly equal thug?
/-sist also -shist/ noun or adjective
Urban maybe, if you want to call it Urban culture go ahead, but thug is definately the wrong word and makes the person who posted the article sound like a closet racist.
There is nothing wrong with criticizing behavior, even if that behavior happens to correlate with a particular race. That's not racism.
Racism would be claiming that those behaviors are determined by race. That's a very different thing.
But notice how that idea is implicit in YOUR comment. The only way your comment would make sense is if you really think people of a certain race behave that way BECAUSE of their race and that it somehow "innate". That's just one step away from racism. The only difference being that you are witholding moral judgement.
You really make two mistakes: you refrain from being critical of anti-social behavior and you seem to believe that "those people can't help it." Race doesn't determine behavior. This isn't Star Trek.
Main Entry: racism
Pronunciation: 'rA-"si-z&m also -"shi-
Function: noun
1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination
- racist
What you talking about is the commercial bastard child of rap - NOT hip hop.
:D
Now go and download some "Immortal Technique". THAT, for example, is rap. THAT is hip hop. THAT is street.
Hip hop is just the continuation and extension of blues. Fad? You wish. It hasn't even begun. Get ready for rain
"...but its not really our place to judge the people who they are now targeting."
Sure it is. Anyone who acts like a cretin should be judged to be a cretin. Anyone who acts like a thug is a thug.
Women prefer the "thug" men over the nice guy weak men.
Ah, no no no!
Don't ever think that! I'll leave aside the issue of generalising what three billion women want (makes about as much sense as me saying that all men want 'x'). But nice does not mean weak. Yes, weakness is rarely a trait that turns a woman on, but 'niceness' which I take to mean consideration for others is not the same.
If someone is only nice because they are afraid to upset someone, then are they really nice? I wouldn't think so. But a man who will stand up for you, protect you? Now that would be nice.
Some women will go for the badguys, but not many. Badguys in real-life are not like bad-guys in the movies. Do you really think most women want a life filled with violence and aggression? I promise you they don't.
Of course a certain amount of unpredictability is exciting. Everyone is attracted to someone who does the things that we wish we could do but can't. But I think that's really different to what you mean.
And in case you think all this has been meant in a physical sense, well yes it sort of was, but women can want a trophy boyfriend (the car, the clothes, the muscles) just like men want trophy girlfriends. But don't forget that not all men want that. (Relationships like this rarely last.) The other side of the gender-divide is not that different.
find me a woman who will go on a date with a homeless man with no job. Better yet find me woman period.
You're probably limited to other homeless women at the moment. It's not that a woman would or would not like you, but is she willing to make the sacrifices for you that dating a homeless man would involve (housing you, feeding you, driving you places)? When you're back on your feet then a woman is no longer having to make big lifestyle changes to accomodate you and you'll be a better prospect.
But it has nothing to do with you not being a "thug."
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
It's simple really. Rap (lets ignore the commercialized bastard bullshit for a second - I know it's hard because it's everywhere haha) is about *lyrics*. Ideally the lyrics should be good, ie. make sense or even contain wisdom, and be delivered with good flow.
The music is secondary, if not irrelevant. That's why it's often very minimalistic. Some people actually think non-minimalistic music is pretentious and useless distraction from what it's about - lyrics.
But you can find plenty of good rappers jamming with good musicians. I have a Lauryn Hill bootleg lying around that's simply great. The music is of course a bit "repetitious" - it HAS to be, otherwise it wouldn't work and get in the way - but it's still very well done. But yeah, unless you like loops or lyrics hip will not make you happy. It's not supposed to.
The "musical fad" he was talking about is fake gangster rap music, e.g. G-Unit. I don't care how "real" or "hard" they are, real gangsters are on the streets, in jail, or dead, and they're never something to look up to.
True story.
Good, now I guess I'll just download all my games from now on. It shouldn't hurt them at all, since I'm not the target market. Good luck with your teeny boppers, video game guru's.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
It's a type of music you claim to hate. If you don't listen to it, how could you possibly think you have anything useful to say about it? This is what is called "talking out of your ass." You sound a lot like a bitter, self-absorbed nerd.
Actually, I DO try to listen to is BECAUSE I still don't get it. I'm not one that judges something if I personally haven't tried it out. And where did I say I hated the music? I don't hate it, I just don't get it yet. I don't see the appeal, but I'm sure the people that are into hip-hop aren't into the music I enjoy.
And how was my post bitter? I was pointing out how they're not really musicians...and they aren't...but more producers. A producer still makes good things, but that doesn't mean they themselves are musicians. A producer can produce music ya know. Alan Parsons comes to mind. Yes, he can noodle around on a keyboard and program a synth, but he really shines as a producer and engineer who mainly got session players to interpret and perform for his Alan Parsons Project.
And to tell the truth, they're also more vocalists too. Again, that's not wrong. But when it's all said and done and broken down, there is little difference between Britney Spears with a band/DJ and Eminem and a band/DJ. Yet they're worlds away.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Sure rap sucks--but what genre of music DOESN'T suck these days?
I want to say that I don't think there is a real "pop and rock" genre. Just a place in walmart where the clueless put both types of music.
To me, pop is not rock.
Likewise, rock is not pop.
Rock is enormously varied. There is hard rock. Soft rock. Just plain rock. Rock and roll. Blues. Metal. Death metal. Thrash... and plenty more. But none of it is "pop".
I have come to the following conclusion: Pop is its own genre, usually easily distinguishable in the first few seconds of any particular cut. Pop doesn't mean "popular" (if it did, damn near everything would be "pop" at one time or another.) Pop is about being catchy (as opposed to timeless), stylish (as opposed to classy), and generally as inoffensive as possible so it can play on top 40 stations without alienating either listeners or advertisers. Some musicians/bands produce both rock and pop. Sometimes on the same compilation. Other mixes too. I have a Tony MacAlpine CD which mixes hard rock guitar-centric tracks with classical piano tracks. Very well, I might add. I enjoy it the whole way through, and marvel at the artists skill. But that doesn't make a category for the CD called rock/classical.
Pop/rock no more exists than does country/rap. Attempts to marry catagories like that almost always result in mutant children with -0- life expectancy. There are exceptions - Kid Rock is one, he manage to do very well mixing rap and rock, and some of the harder rockers have incorporated rap as well - but it is very rare for such things to be broadly accepted over time to spawn a new genre.
Personally, I think that particular mix suffers because marketable rock is a lot more difficult to create than marketable rap is.
Don't get me wrong - I like the occasional pop tune - but I certainly don't misidentify them as "rock."
I also object to the characterization that various categories are "dead"; disco is still played in clubs and homes; soul still plays, big band still plays - they're just not on top, that's all.
Very, very few categories have actually died. Now that we record everything, it may never happen again. That's a good thing, in my view.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Rap sold out, then sold out again, and has reached the magic "100,000 sellouts" number.
The thing about thug rap is that it is based on urban poverty. The things that it glorifies are basically the pursuit of monetary success at any price. And you can see it in the icons of thug rap style - gold teeth, big gold rings, cadilac symbols for neclaces, fancy clothes, expensive shoes, cadilac escalades... it's all about conspicuous consumption.
So when THE MAN approaches THE RAP THUG and waves a big stack of green under his nose what happens? THE THUG SELLS OUT! Of course he does! There are of course exceptions, but the POINT of the pop-thug-rap icon is to sell out and make a big pile of money. Then you have money that is power that is what the thug has been thirsting after.
And, incidentally,
"Country sold out, but no one bought."
Country Music is what you get when Bluegrass sells out.
Yep. I've always been mystified by that, even when I was young. Is it white guilt? Whatever it is, it's been going on for a long time. Clothing and music trends start with the young black people and they get copied and mainstreamed by middle class white kids who want to be "street" for some reason. Fashion and music wise it's cool for white kids to take their lead from the black kids.
The interesting thing is that it doesn't really work the other way around. Black kids who get good grades, show up for class, etc. are accused of acting "white."
Obviously I'm painting with a very broad brush here and making observations about race is always extremely touchy here in the USA, but I'm just noting that the culture exchange is not a two way street.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
With artists like Rahzel who can beatbox and drop the chorus simultaniously, few could deny posession of musical skill born of years of focused practice. With artists like Rob Smith and the X-ecutioners, who recently scratched alongside the late Charlie Parker on Cheers (X-ecutioners Style) you can see that the turntable is a viable musical instrument, in the hands of a talented artist.
I'd also submit that the result is a way of judging the talent of the artist. It's not ultimately about the ability to depress this combination or that combination of keys while maintaining breath control. It's about the note. While the flute sounds like the flute and can't be replaced, with technology comes innovation. The flute might gain better seals, better plating and perhaps a lower price. The electronic forms, still in their infancy, will gain more from the technology surrounding the days of their invention. The early electronic keyboards had less advanced sound rendering ability than the ringer in today's cellular phone. Regardless of the source of the sound, be it sample, scratch, beatbox, real instrument or computer-modeled, Hip-Hop artists today are creating sounds that are undeniably music, and possessed of the power to entertain and emote.... What more would you want from a musician? Grunge is not a predessor to Hip-Hop, as you claim.
Or so say the republicans, at least. Turns out that he can actually back up his claims though. Unlike the republicans. And even if Moore gets it wrong, he'd be willing to admit it. Unlike, say, Bush.
At this point, after all that's happened, I basically consider anyone who still supports Bush a moron. There simply is no other word to describe someone who supports a presidents whose wrongs are so plentiful, obvious, and deadly.