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Whatever Happened to the Gaming Mascot?
Ground Glass writes "Back in the days when consoles were measured in bits, they were also measured by their mascots - interestingly-designed characters that easily encapsulated everything the machine and its parent company stood for in gaming. Today they are no more than hangers-on, surviving either by cynically marketing to the very young or by remaining vestigial elements in games that would have been great with or without them. The next generation is coming, but mascots are nowhere to be found - so where did they go?"
Samuel L. Jackson mistook them for snakes.
nothing humorous to say.
Akuma killed them all.
Respect the laws of physics, for the laws of physics have no respect for you.
They died of old age. I can remember loving the first issues of Sonic the Comic back when I was about 7 years old. I was part of the generation that Sonic and co were designed to appeal to. Time passed, and we all grew up.
Now most gamers are 20+. Mascots don't carry the marketing power that they used to.
1. The companies that relied heavily on mascots-- like Nintendo and Sega-- declined in importance, while the companies that had no history or fondness for mascots-- like EA-- got really really big.
2. A vast increase in the number of games where the main character is "you". First person shooters, MMORPGs, and even to an extent with something like GTA's "everyman" sort of main characters, you spend more time trying to look through the eyes of your avatar than actually looking at them. This is not an environment where mascots thrive.
3. Gaming stopped being so cartoony. When your game is based around someone really really realistic, like a random urban italian gangster, or Master Chief, it's a lot harder to make them distinctive than it is say a huge blue hedgehog. Master Chief or that guy from GTA3 may be really deeply written characters.. uh, I guess.. but they're not really visually distinctive and it would be very hard for them to be. When it comes down to it, Master Chief has to be just a guy in a military mech suit. There's only so many ways you can present that. And if you can't make someone visually distinctive, they can't be a mascot-- that's practically what a mascot is.
Quake guy, Gordon Freeman, the 'zug zug' guys from warcraft, I could go on for hours.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Sonic: Methanpheamine overdose
Pac Man: Heart attack caused by overeating
Bomberman: Joined Al'Queda, bombed while hiding in a cave in afghanistan
Kirby: Ruptured a lung attempting to huff from a helium tank
Lara Croft: Kidney Failure, breast Implants leaked toxic chemicals
Mega Man: Went too close to an MRI machine
Cloud Strife: Shot while attacking a policeman after being caught shoplifting hair gel
Mario: Died from a turtle shaped bowel obstruction
Nintendo's entire lineup of 1st party games is built on mascots. It's not "Where have the mascots gone?" It's, "Why do certain companies lose their fanbase by screwing with their mascots in horrible ways?" Nintendo gets it. Sega would rather crap out things like every Sonic game since 1992 and hope people buy them on name recognition alone.
"Back in the days when consoles were measured in bits, they were also measured by their mascots - interestingly-designed characters that easily encapsulated everything the machine and its parent company stood for in gaming."
What, like Pac Man? How interesting is a circle with a triangular cut-out? It was more the game itself, the challenge of moving through the maze with furious speed while trying to get away from the baddies.
But let's go even further back, if we want to 'measure in bits' we should start with pong. Sure was a great mascot in that game, eh? Sarcasm aside, pong was, again, all about the game play.
Step forward a little to games like Joust on the Atari. A fun game, again, not really depending on a mascot to do well.
I tend to think that often, when a game really had no replay value, the focus was on the mascot to try to make you think there was something special about the game because of the main character, when in fact the gameplay was horrible and not fun to play again and again, I.E. Mario Brothers. These were the days when you 'mastered' a game and then never played it again: you had played it out.
Today games are so complex that a good one has immense replayability. Some games aren't enjoyable at all at first, but after suffering through the first bit you begin to get the controls down and all of the sudden you are addicted. Games like 1080 Snowboarding on the N64, which required precise 360 degree rotations on the thumbstick while also pressing a combination of buttons to pull off the truly awesome jumps.
"Today they are no more than hangers-on, surviving either by cynically marketing to the very young or by remaining vestigial elements in games that would have been great with or without them. The next generation is coming, but mascots are nowhere to be found - so where did they go?"
I think the opposite is true. Yesterday, not today, the mascots were no more than hanger's on. They were the truly vestigial elements in games, and the games really were great with or without them.
As far as the next generation... There are plenty of interesting main characters in today's games. But the truth is that the games of today don't focus on entirely one character. Look at World of Warcraft. There is no mascot, there is rather an entire history of lore so deep you could lose yourself in it for months just reading the entire BOOKS which have been written on it. And then there you are, right in the middle when you play the game.
I think the submitter was perhaps psychologically transferring some other emotion through their memories of playing these earlier games, perhaps life was better for them then, and so because of that, the games seemed better. Or maybe life wasn't as good, so this person was able to lose themselves in the games, simple as they were, and really imprinted a memory of the main characters.
Either way, or however it works, I don't agree with the general sentiment.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
The main point of the article seems to be that a mascot is iconic; it typifies the basic attributes of the company as well. For example, when seeing (Genesis era) Sonic, you supposedly see (Genesis era) Sega and the similar qualities; fast, cool, and somewhat rebelious. During the heyday of Sonic, the primary people playing video games were adolescent males, and they were marketed as such, and thus Sonic was successful. However, nowadays the console market has expanded considerably to the point that trying to identify several select characters with your system is counterproductive; you want to be everything to everyone.
Now everyone plays video games: jocks, nerds, boys, girls, even seniors. As such, you cannot market a console successfully under one image. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft realize this and it's evident in their commercials; they focus on the on the game not the console, until at the very end the company's icon pops up. They want you to identify the type of game you like with the console, not the characters.
I might call Master Chief the mascot for the Xboxes. I'm not sure about PS2.
My theory is that Nintendo has been able to keep Mario popular, because he was NEVER built off of anything that was ever considered "cool". He's a slightly overweight, 40-something plumber from New York, wears blue-jeans, a bright red shirt, and 1930s style brimmed cap. On top of that, he has a high, squeaky male voice with an incredibly stylized italian-american "pizza boy" accent. His image is neither "cool", nor "totally uncool", it is timeless, as he could be from 1920, he could be from 1990. Nintendo just made him cool by building a little fascination around him, and games just zany enough to involve yourself in. They MADE that image cool, specifically because they seemed to be trying so little to be cool. He's not attached to any 1980s lingo, dress-wear, his image is as uncool now as it was in the 1980s.
Noone ever wants to BE Mario, they don't think he's "cool", but they find him funny and entertaining in a why that doesn't rely on patting themselves on the back for going along with the latest fad. He's sorta like Charlie Chaplan, except less jewish... and though Charlie Chaplan may not be the talk of the town, you can still get a good laugh out of watching his commedy.
Meanwhile, Sonic talks 90s style smack (supposedly), all the cartoons have him acting like the typical "cool boy". If he had been made 2003, you can be sure he'd probably say, "What? Dr. Robuttnick is back again? GAYYYYY!" But he's not (thank god), so his 1990s "coolness" comes across as "so yesterday" to today's teenagers.
Maskots that get old? Those are the ones that people go around dressing like, saying their catch phrases, and styling their hair like, because the moment the next big fad comes along, noone wants to be caught dead following "last years'" trend. You never see people dressing up like Mario, or quoting his latest phrase, the closest thing you'll see is 9-year-olds on Halloween, (I'll admit to doing this, back in '90, I dressed up as Luigi, complete with racoon tail, the year Mario 3 came out).
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Mascots existed for one primary reason, to give people a reason to empathize with the protaganist of the story being told.
Since that time, the focus in videogames has shifted to trying to impress the lowest common denominator with "shiny things" and "reflective slime" and other graphical enhancements. Since the general public (the same people who were not gamers back during the mascot era, ie: the kids who watch MTV and go to the latest action flick directed by Michael Bay) is so easily swayed by shiny things, and shiny things are easier, and cheaper to provide than actual compelling characters, that's what you have in the majority of games nowadays.
Of course, you still see Mario and Link and Samus over in Nintendo's camp, but Nintendo never appealed to (or tried to market to) the MTV kiddies, and they paid for it in slumping sales.
It's not that the mascots turned useless, it's that the gamer demographic shifted from geeks who care more about story and characters (because they've seen all the shiny graphical advancements ahead of time, and on PC's) to the average fratboy who gets a hard-on from the rocket launcher in Halo being able to push dead bodies around.
Maybe I sound elitist, and mod me down if you must, but that's the reality of the market nowadays.