Site Presented By
Monday, Nov 9, 2009
When video games look as good as action films, commercials are more fun than cartoons, and everything screams "Buy!" it's easy to lose your bearings.
Dec 5, 2002 | As the father of an 8-year-old and a 5-year-old I spend a not insignificant amount of time watching cartoons. I have learned some valuable lessons in the process. Here's one: Though the quality of programming in this golden 'toon age of "SpongeBob SquarePants," "Dragonball Z" and "The Wild Thornberrries" is unprecedented, the real action, as far as my children are concerned, comes during the commercials.
The evidence is unavoidable. If I want to encourage my children to extricate themselves from the couch to come to dinner, the cries of pain are far more muted if I cut off the "Rocket Power" kids in mid-snowboard tailpress than if I dare to abort an advertisement before its 30 seconds of gripping narrative are completed. Especially in these pre-Christmas days, when action-packed Barbie/Yu-Gi-Oh shenanigans have hit fever pitch. My kids don't flip during the commercials; they live for them.
And that means, this year, they are living for video games. I have no statistics at hand, but my guess is that there have never been as many video game advertisements flooding the airwaves as there are right now. It's the result of a combination of factors: the continuing rise of recession-proof computer gaming, the launch of the online networks for both PlayStation 2 and the Xbox, and the ever accelerating merger of the movie and gaming industries. Heck, in the middle of "Dragonball Z" on the Cartoon Channel, an animated cartoon wiseguy actually reviews video games while simultaneously battling an evil artificial intelligence that has taken over his spaceship. Is it a commercial or another show? My attempted explanations involve many amusing contortions.
And it's not at all clear that the kids care about my warnings about cross-merchandised product placement. It's all good, Dad. Relax.
My concern isn't so much that this is new. Commercials -- and video games -- have been pushing their way to the forefront of cultural expression for years, if not decades. But the production values are getting too darn good. Somewhere down the line, that's got to have significant implications for how new generations relate to various media and draw lines between fiction and fact, story and advertisement, reality and virtuality. Or maybe the result will be that they are no longer capable of drawing such lines -- or that the lines will no longer exist.
Three currently running commercials, in particular, are driving this point home for me with new, turbo-driven power. Two of the ads are tied to movie releases: "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" and "Die Another Day." Both start with scenes from the movie that segue into scenes from the game. Which looks cooler? You be the judge. Would you rather watch the dwarf or be the dwarf?
The other ad, for the military war-game SOCOM on the PlayStation 2 console, begins with some teenagers in their living room getting annihilated while playing online. "Who are these guys?" they wonder dispiritedly about their opponents. Then the scene cuts to some "real" soldiers cackling nastily in a tent somewhere in, maybe, Afghanistan.
Let's not stop to think too long about the message being conveyed by the sight of American soldiers taking pleasure in killing American teenagers. That way lies madness. Instead, consider the thread tying all these commercials together: the conceit that the video game experience is approaching real-life production quality, or, even better, Hollywood blockbuster movie production quality.
This is new. Historically, games spun off from movies have been pathetic. Computer-generated actors didn't hold a candle to the flesh-and-blood version, the dialogue was limited, the gameplay was boring. As for real life -- oh, it was cute when a Marine sergeant modified the original Doom for some squad-based Marine combat, but it was still nothing like the real thing.
As we close out 2002, the relentless advance of computer processing power has begun to deliver graphics that are, like, you know, really good, and the revenue generated by games is attracting voice actors, writers, and designers who are astoundingly creative. I'm still unlikely to go out and buy a James Bond video game, because of my lingering prejudices, but heck, if I had a PlayStation 2, I'd be itching to have a go as Legolas at the battle of Helm's Deep. Generations of Dungeons & Dragons and role-playing gamers have been inspired by Tolkien; now the game technology is at the point where it is catching up to my imagination.
But what does it mean for my 5-year-old? The commercials are more exciting than the cartoons, and it's getting impossible to differentiate between the games and the movies. And all of it, all the time, gets more and more violent. What, we haven't yet invaded Iraq? You could have fooled me, after an hour or two spent watching MTV or the Cartoon Channel.
