The Bones Brigade Versus Giant Shark : Or How To Run A Franchise To The Ground

A curious little chart made it's way from GameSpy to the larger intertubes of the Net this morning :



To "Jump the Shark", for those who may not know, is the precise moment within the lifespan of an entertainment franchise when it just becomes so ridiculous, it loses its value and starts its decline.

Well, here it is, brilliantly illustrated by GameSpy with the help of GameRankings of every title in the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series. Tony Hawk jumped the shark riiiiiight between Underground 2 and it's first step into the current-generation market, American Wasteland, where it dipped below the 80% marker.

Why is this important, and why would I mention it?

First, it's funny. No, trust me my friends, it is. The expression has been used appropriately so little in these past years that it had almost lost its meaning. We receive now, as the Holy Bread, a promise of renewal for this precious meme from 60s Television. Jumping the shark has again a sense of purpose. It's funny 'cause it's true.

Plus, the whole Tony Hawk doing a grab over the Shark...I mean, look at him : he's ACTUALLY leaping over the selachimorpha. A bounce that has no other avenue but down.

And secondly, the recent wretched release of Tony Hawk : Ride just makes for a good lesson in economics. For a while, the world economy seemed quite like the graphical analysis found above. The gaming industry, relating to companies, started trimming down on the fat. Jobs were lost, projects were canned and release dates were pushed back. Lean times indeed. Yet Activision and Neversoft continued production on a franchise release with an expensive gimmick peripheral attached to it, and persisted in focusing on the "Tony Hawk" experience.

Fanned by the success of accessory-filled Guitar and DJ Heroes, the Midas-touched corporation deemed the product a fair trade, where your hard-earned money would transmutate into some "real life" virtual skating within your living room. But having customers pay for a controller that works rather badly, and has no multi-player value, is a bad idea in this rather sober holiday period. One may point out the almost 200$ Prestige edition for Modern Warfare 2, but may I remind you that this game is also available in its normal, skeletal form of 69.99 bones?

The price tag of the game may be as much responsible for the low rating of this game as is the poor conception of the device itself. After jumping the shark, Tony kinda just fell and ended up crippled it seems.

The third reason is that people need to realize how franchises mean crap vis-a-vis success. And crap sometimes mean redundancy. And redundancy means crap. And crap means...well, you get the idea. We are all tired of series that ante up without really throwing enough chips in. You can't always make a new game and just change the freaking number next to it, never mind the freaking subtitle tweak.

Tony Hawk? Please stop. EA's Skate is already taking over your territory. Just go teach kids how to do ollies and stuff, ok? And please, leave Rodney Mullen out of any crap you sponsor for Activision. He doesn't need to go down with a tchotchke peddler the likes of you.

I Like Footnotes

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Year's Best Top Ten Game List Countdown of DOOM

Image
Everybody is doing it... A Year in Review. This Year's Ten Best. A "Must Play" list. I must admit, I deeply enjoy lists and countdowns to "Best this", and "Worst that". Lists are very satisfying, especially when you can look at one and exclaim "done this!", or "got that!". Someone once said that lists are fun because you get to cross out stuff from them. I find myself in agreement with that statement, although it all depends on how much stuff is on the list vis-a-vis what you did, or can, cross out. Like a jar of pickles that you empty out over a certain period : you can't really eat all the pickles in one sitting, and you can't let it sit there for a whole year. So you better not pick up a jar that's too big, or you won't be able to finish it before it goes to waste; and you can't get a jar that's too small because you'll quickly end up with nothing in it, and no snack. I guess what I'm trying to say
Read more

Too Much Info

There is literally too much going on this week to even mention the gems among the abject, turbulent noise of the E3 circus. If you want to know what's cool, and what's not, go check out the conferences, the Info-blogs like Joystiq and Kotaku, and watch the next episode of CO-OP . I just don't have the time to give you an account of things to come. It still is an awesome week. There are things showing up on radar now that just make gaming so much worth the time we put in it. Although the Console maker's keynotes were more often than not weak and embarrassing, this year's E3 has created memorable memes and great expectations. Alright...I have games to play now. You know? Current games that are actually OUT, like InFamous. So, stop waiting and stop reading. Go play something, will ya?
Read more

Heroes and Villains: Who Would Rather Win

I've just realized Heroes don't really wish to win. They are not in it for the glory or for the First place prize. I'm talking about real heroes here. Superman and Batman type stuff. The guys and girls that don't take a bow after saving a kid, and the kind of people that feel even villains should have their little piece of paradise. That rather small epiphany comes as I am trying to write next week's radio show. We already did one about villains, in which Jim , Schmoo and I discussed how great bad guys make games worth playing; and how they have evolved over the years, becoming more complex and allowing game narrative to grow into Novel-league size. The natural thing was to proceed to the other end of the spectrum. Although don't take this literally...villains and heroes are RARELY at the ultimate opposing end of one simple spectrum: the grey zone is where awesomeness in "Good Guys Vs. Bad Guys" relationship really lives. All of this has very l
Read more