Back in July, some dude posted excerpts from a GameDaily BIZ interview with some guy, on the topic of game industry celebrities.
Mike Gallagher, the new ESA president, has mentioned the need for the game industry to produce more celebrities.
I know, right? Why not more game industry unicorns while we’re at it?
The what-for is refreshingly bold: Political power.
That thinking begins with a reasonable assumption:
- Without celebrity star power, the game industry is merely a subject of the state, and has no more political influence than the people.
- With celebrity star power, the game industry may instead be an equal partner and a participant in the governance of the people.
The thinking ends somewhere around the implication that the game industry has produced any celebrities to date, before it even gets to the absurd notion that more could be produced, if only those fat cats in the executive suites would.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that a single celebrity might be all that we need.
For example, though the comic book business has it’s handful of insider-stars, in terms of actual celebrity there’s just the one: Stan Lee, as I am sure I didn’t need to tell you.
Otherwise, the big names in comics - industry-stars such as Jim Lee and Frank Miller, for example - have a celebrity status which rarely extends beyond the comic book realm.
Setting aside entertainment industries for a moment, it’s rare for any industry to have more than one celebrity (or in fact, even one).
In some cases it seems as though the general public has a tolerance threshold of about one.
When I was a lad, Carl Sagan was the scientist. These days it’s Stephen Hawking. It’s as if he sprang fully formed from the womb at the very instant Carl Sagan passed.
More or less.
You can probably think of other examples: fields in which there’s basically one name you know. It’s certain that some of the nameless people of whom you have never heard and will never hear are considered to be prominent by their peers.
Show-business, it ain’t.
It’s easy to make the mistake of equating games to motion pictures, television, books, and music. It’s easy to assume that since those fields produce many celebrities, then so should the video game industry.
That’s a mistake, not because the video game industry is so very much unlike the others, but because the game industry’s product is unlike their products.
Hollywood is a soylent green medium, their content is people. Many of their famous names aren’t so much famous entertainers, as they are famous entertainment.
That’s why they seem to produce so many more stars than the video game industry. We fail to recognize a country and western super-star as the equivalent of Halo, and so wonder why game development has no one as famous.
Gaming has no one as famous as Halo because instead, it has Halo.
The game industry also does pretty well in producing insider-stars of its own: the names we all know, but only because we are gamers. We even tend to think of them as glory-hounds and credit-hogging assholes whose notoriety is largely undeserved, just like the other industries do.
It is critical not to mistake them for actual celebrities, and to pursue the expansion of their numbers. There’s no need for more of those ‘gaming gods’ - as the game-press calls them; I’m pretty sure just to piss us off. They have no political muscle, and there are already plenty of them.
The game industry’s celebrity-dearth is in fact a lack of one man.
Or maybe even a woman, some day.
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11 Comments
Interesting post!
OK, not the greatest comment, but I’ve been enjoying the blog for several months.
OK, some actual comment-meat just came to me: what about that (American?) kid who makes a living off video game in South Korea? He’s not industry… but does he count?
Oh, alright. I’ll do it.
I kinda hate the way we clump a lot of the coolest things together by calling them “geek” culture.
As opposed to say, Country Line Dancing Culture, which is totally not geeky in any way heh.
Or its as if there’s One Correct Culture, Leave It To Beaver Style, the You Didn’t Wear The Right Sweater Today Culture, and there’s a pill you can take that will fix you, and that’s even creepier.
Well, to me, at least.
Meanwhile, I can talk to toothless hillbillies about our favorite stuff from Star Trek heh.
TV is just a far more accessible medium than stuff you have to pay for and read and junk.
Anyways the examples I can think of off the top of my head for comic book celebrity people are all TV and Movie celebrities who ALSO are into comic books.
Like Stan Lee and Quentin Tarantino.
I don’t really think Stan Lee was that famous, OUTSIDE of comic book culture, before he started doing the True Believer Intros on Saturday Morning Cartoons, and his appearance as a Comic Book God in Mallrats.
Don’t get me wrong, I yelled out loud and called my mom when I spotted Stan as the Bus Driver in Heroes, I would never say anything bad about Stan the Man, I think he’s one of the great Philosophers and Thinkers of our Age.
But I think you got this one culture that has all this No Privacy Tabloid Journalism Celebrity TV Industry built around it, y’know, like Hollywood and all the Music crap, where hundreds of people can write things about you to make money for themselves (and if they catch you with your shirt off they can make a BIG HUGE PILE of money off you heh), and its only when those people cross over into another culture that you get the kind of representation you are talking about.
And I think that’s really what makes it all work, what drives all that, the industries that make money by supplying more information about celebrities and stuff, when you didn’t get enough of ‘em from watching their movies and listening to their music or whatever.
And those people who are in that whole tabloid celebrity culture have to hang out where the reporters can get at ‘em and do a bunch of stupid junk (like show a nipple ahaha) just to keep the fires of their celebrity going, too, that’s a physical limitation of that system, it needs to cluster around certain areas to make it easy for people to make money off you, so that keeps things locked in place to a certain degree too.
And then the third thing this made me think about is the way certain cultures don’t have any appreciation for THAT kind of celebrity in the first place, y’know, the Underground Cultures, where you’ll no longer represent the culture you came from as soon as it appears that you’ve gone “mainstream” and become popular with an Enemy Culture or something like that.
I’ve only been thinking about that last bit for a few minutes and its already way too complicated for me to squish it all into a nice short sentence without going way outside my own personal tolerance for Error (and I’m no stickler for Perfection, I’d settle for a Truth to Error Ratio of about 1 to 20 heh).
Guy: I think that sort of scenario* is by far the most likely. If competitive play takes-off as a mainstream spectator sport sort of thing, there’s no doubt in my mind that “the video game guy” would be a player.
OBA: Stan Lee *is* that famous, outside of comic book culture: In as much as lots of people with zero knowledge of comic books can associate his name with comic book publishing. Or at least, I don’t think the game industry should shoot for a level of celebrity higher than that.
It’s not a celebrity status established by doing the thing that the celebrities are known for, though. Maybe that’s ironic. Really it just can’t be, though. The most star power you can get by doing what you do is that “insider-star” sort.
Quentin Tarantino can love comics all he wants, he’s not gonna be “the comic book guy” to the average person.
It’s definitely going to involve major media exposure: I mean, that’s what that level of celebrity means.
Carl Sagan became *the* scientist thanks to television. Really no paparazi required, either. Einstein and Van Braun were too, in their day.
But he wasn’t on television *as* a television celebrity.
That video games are also a media just muddies the waters. Video games could make a celebrity of a given name, because they do also broadcast just as television and movies do - but the video game industry doesn’t have the awareness to do that just yet, I don’t think.
So it’s gonna be someone probably via television that becomes a real celebrity - but “as the video game guy” is the thing that hasn’t happened yet.
Video games are a medium, and could elevate a person to mainstream celebrity status, too - but “as the video game guy” is sort of independent of what media places them in that role.
Tony Hawk is “the skateboard guy” mostly due to video games. I don’t think even he realized that though. He thinks the kids these days like skateboarding IRL.
LOL, as they say.
So the video game medium may not be the medium that establishes the video game celeb as such - really, probably won’t be - but it being accomplished by some other medium doesn’t negate the accomplishment.
—-
* I am assuming “that kid” is a sort of heavyweight champ for video games. If not… then I don’t know what about him, I need more of a description than “that guy in South Korea”.
Oh, I dunno, television, and all the other mediums, all the way down to friendly conversation, need archtypes and role models and all that.
We need one guy to represent the “scientist” or the “smart guy,” for our metaphors and jokes and stories and name-dropping credibility opportunities and to provide us with a sense of identity by comparison, y’know, Dennis Miller Style, collections of ideas and whatever represented by one word, which helps us communicate quicker, and also allows us to target demographics, if we’re a marketing weasel trying to sell products by association, as much as we need a “Princess” and an “Evil Emperor,” and blah blah blah blah blah, its the basis of celebrity.
That’s really why I think you usually only get one of those at a time, more than one of ‘em ain’t useful and sorta muddies the water, I mean, you ain’t gonna go after Isaac Asimov unless yer a guy trying to sell Pepsi and Carl Sagan keeps going around talking about how much he likes Coke, or in a non-commercial way, support of this person over anothe rone may be based on a divisive political issue or something.
Which is how those guys get replaced, I think.
If the mainstream folks who watch TV don’t really know what you are famous for, then you are really are just the latest Smart Guy Scientist TV Celebrity Archtype to mainstream culture.
And Carl Sagan (and Einstein) was most definitely an artist and entertainer, at least as much as anybody else is on TV, just because none of us wanna see him take his shirt off don’t mean he wasn’t judged on the same set of scales as everybody else on TV, I mean, his show was kinda kickass and awesome, and if I’m gonna say that George Lucas is awesome for Star Wars, then I gotta say Carl Sagan is pretty awesome for his show, even though I originally liked him for writing Dragons of Eden, and in that area, he’s actually a famous author.
Just look at all the posters and t-shirts with Einstein sticking his tongue out, and think about how often he really was used in stories and movies and TV shows.
Stephen Hawking has been on Star Trek.
In the end, I think what it all comes down to is what is TV and mainstream culture going to USE this Video Game Celebrity for.
You are a part of video game culture, and a supporter of it, but what pops into your mind when you think about Thresh?
What archtypes do we have in the video game world?
I think most of ‘em are kinda negative or comedic.
Like “that guy in South Korea” heh.
Or people who play WoW too much.
That’s all that TV is gonna let us have.
I mean, c’mon, look at what it does to folks who play D&D ahaha.
Hello DARKON.
Its like a puzzle that will only allow certain pieces to be stuck into it, its got its own immune system, and it’ll only let things through that it can use to its advantage somehow.
And in the end, there’s always the deal where TV tends to hate the other mediums, because they are its competition.
Just like the other mediums hate TV heh.
That’s why I think you need to think about somebody like Quentin Tarantino, who was boosted up to celebrity status as a master movie maker guy, and then he turned around and provided comic book fans with the kind of intelligent political representation you were talking about.
I don’t think its gonna come from the other direction in a form that video game fans are gonna like, the altar you gotta throw yourself on ain’t gonna treat you nice unless it thinks you are one of its priests at first.
Yer Tony Hawk thing IS funny though heh.
P.S.
That Tony Hawk thing is funny in almost the exact same way that the names of Sagan and Asimov are interchangeable with the names of Einstein and Hawking in the “mainstream” television-produced culture heh.
Re: man or woman becoming famous:
Given the seemingly high instance of transgendered personae in the game industry, it’s always possible that if there’s a perceived problem of not enough women around, give the men some time to become women.
But seriously, this is a bad idea because game development personalities can’t handle scrutiny. They’d like to, but they can’t. Every instance thus far of a game industry professional trying to make a name for himself (and it’s pretty much only been men thus far), that professional has gone down in a blaze of navel-gaze.
Turn back the clock 12 years or so and there were a bunch of them, most of them associated with id Software. That shop gave Jesus complexes of damn near everyone, and damn near everyone nailed themselves to crosses before anyone realized what they were doing. Quite a few of them are in the industry, still, but how many of them get taken seriously anymore?
It would help if there weren’t so many dumpy white guys working in games. I watched the Mass Effect thingy on Sci-Fi. Ouch. No wonder why they had to keep cutting back to all the pretty famous people. Open your mouths when you talk, goddamnit.
The American I was thinking of is Jonathan Wendel.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/19/60minutes/main1220146.shtml
South Korea has several.
http://www.mongabay.com/external/pro_video_gamers.htm
The fact that I didn’t already know their names obviously means we’re not there yet. Although, seeing as the Korean guys are getting ad sponsorships, South Korea may already have video game celebrities, all players.
Einstein is a good case in point: When the scientists wanted to convince the gummint that they could build a nuke, they needed Einstein’s political power in order to do it.
I do think it much more likely to be a player than a developer - or even a game journalist. The host of a popular television series on gaming, etc. It might be a developer, but that seems the least likely, to me.
It almost takes one successful thing to establish credibility, and then some other vehicle to establish celebrity, while not ever engaging in actual game development again lest that undermine the aforementioned credibility.
J., I do agree it’s a bad idea to attempt to manufacture celebrity in that manner, though. Because, for example, that.
Overall, I suspect whither gaming ever gets a celebrity has nothing to do with it being a good idea or bad, or anyone trying to make it happen or not.
I think it’d be more like Bruce Lee was for martial arts. He wasn’t fulfilling prophecy. Promotion of martial arts to mainstream wasn’t destined to happen, and considering what a rare bird he was, wasn’t even the least bit likely to occur.
Might as well play prophet and predict the coming of The One, though. People only remember the hits anyway, so nothing to lose.
As you touched on, the problem is the medium (in my mind, at least). Motion picture celebrities have always been (for the most part) a visible, tangible part of their product. The same goes for television, broadcast, and even to some extent writers.
The entire point of quite a few games is to draw the player in…to make them almost forget they’re playing a game (immersion being the goal, of course).
Trying to make a celebrity out of a game developer (”celebrity” in the sense you’re referring to) would be about as easy as trying to make a celebrity out of a Foley artist.
If they’re good enough at their job to earn your respect, then you never really focus on the fact that they’re even there.
Meanwhile, the games themselves are starting to become celebrities (WoW commercials all over the place for products, everything under the sun attaching the “Halo 3″ logo to their packaging)…
To make this work, we need a game about devs.
Inhibitor, only if the celebrity is a developer.
I think that the most unlikely, unless it’s really something more of an ex-developer gone on to some mainstream presentation of game matters (due to having been more an undiscovered “television personality”-type all along, no less).
Carl Sagan wasn’t famous for being a scientist, but was a famous scientist for hosting a television show about science (Cosmos, which ruled).
We’re far more likely to get something like that - and far more likely from the ranks of players, critics, and journalists than from the ranks of developers, even. - than to get a celebrity developer whose fame comes from having developed games.
To clarify what I mean even further: I think the closest we have to this currently is Jack Thompson.
And though I think that also supports the notion that, for political reasons, the game industry needs to make its own celebrities: I still don’t think it is possible to manufacture celebrity, but will happen or not happen on its own, and without regard to how good or bad an idea it is…