Jerry Bruckheimer and MTV enter videogame industry

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Just the other day, I was thinking about how MTV, which had cool programming in the 80s and 90s, has become in the 21st century, totally devoid of any quality programming. This is why when Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean, CSI, National Treasure, Armageddon) and MTV announce that they're forming a new game development studio, I have my doubts as to the success of this venture.


It's not that games aren't a good industry to be in, it's just that when movie directors can't even make good movies, the chances of them being able to make a good game are pretty slim. MTV has a horrible track record with movie sponsorship, and I get the feeling that the reason people are moving into games as their next venture is that the movie industry as a whole is losing money, while the games industry is bringing in billions per year.


The clincher in all this is that they don't understand games, not really -- they see it as a profit vehicle, a way of generating revenue, not as an entertainment medium. MTV's association with the hit game Rock Band, no doubt has them seeing dollar signs in their eyes, but you can only do so many Rock Bands and Guitar Hero style games before the market completely vanishes. What is Guitar Hero and Rock Band, when you break it down to it's purest essence? A button mashing game where the novelty is that the controller is shaped like an instrument, and the music playing is covers of familiar songs. an MTV interview with Bruckheimer following the announcement lends little insight to what they have planned, though it is easy to see that just as Bruckheimer has his name on movies, he wants to lead with his name on the game as well.


I also think that Hollywood in particular when they enter into games think that when people buy games, that having big names on the box actually means something, the way that Hollywood has famous directors or stars on movie posters or in trailers -- but the fact is, having Bruckheimer's name on the box won't help their sales the numbers the way that it does in Hollywood.


At the core of all of this is that movies and videogames are two different types of entertainment forms. There have been many who have tried to bridge the gap between the two forms, with varying degrees of success -- Andy Serkis, after working as Gollum on Lord of the Rings now gets voicework for several video games, but his name is not the reason people are buying these games.


While people don't seem to balk at paying $10 for tickets to a movie or 15-20 bucks for a DVD, they're paying that $10-20 to see/own that film -- in charging 3 to 5 times as much for a video game, and you start to see that people are a little more hesitant in buying it.

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