Harrison: Re-vivifying Atari's Degrading Corpse?

The Gamasutra article on Phil Harrison's move from Sony to Infogrames is here. Now, what exactly is happening here? Earlier in the year, the parent company of decaying Atari picked up David Gardner, an EA veteran (since '83!), to head up their publishing dept. and revamp their corporate vision, which until now might have been: "Bail the water out of this sinking ship". Indeed, Driver and Stuntman are gone, and what else is there? Not knowing the full history of either exec, I do know that both of them made their respective companies A BUNCH OF MONEY and that is exactly what Infogrames needs. I liken these events to a stock market scenario; when things are looking as poor as they possibly could be, that is the time to buy, and here we have two high-power execs doing just that. Will it be enough? I can only speculate just how financially ruined Infogrames is right now; probably the situation is grim but they are armed with some pretty big licenses, some of which are perennial failures in the marketplace and others that do OK:

-Dungeons and Dragons
-DragonBall Z
-Deer Hunter
-Dora the Explorer
-The Matrix
-Neverwinter Nights
-Rollercoaster Tycoon

As I read through these, I don't find a single killer app, but what's important is that within each target demographic these licenses represent there is room for a killer app. Dungeons and Dragons games have ever played fiscal second fiddle to, well, any other RPG title on the market; why? Why with such a rich base of lore and history does a license like this fail to sell? Improper handling. Why doesn't every member of the NRA own a copy of any one of the Deer Hunter titles? Mishandling. The Matrix games were awful. Neverwinter Nights? Eaten part and parcel by WoW. Rollercoaster Tycoon: why so little RTS/god game innovation? With any luck, Harrison will breathe a little life into all of these flagging franchises and maybe bring a few new prize horses into the stable.

Ew - the "art" debate!

The debate on whether or not games ought to be considered "art" by (insert ANY name here) has been raging on Gamasutra lately. If you aren't familiar with the two main players, read this article and then this one. The first is by Jim Preston, a producer at EA who is a self-styled philosopher and ex-game journalist. He's got a very EA-esque attitude; from an industry outsider's perspective, he takes a really conservative approach, just like his parent company: Sit back and wait for context to dictate whether or not games will ever be considered "art" by our country's critics. EA perennially issues derivative shit because that is their tried and tested sales model. We can't become angry with them or lose focus, however; people like him are important and companies like EA are important even if they only exist to aid in the defining of what is art and what obviously isn't. How many of EA's bestselling titles can be called "art" or at the very least "emotive"? To count them I wouldn't need all of the fingers on one hand. Is his argument valid? Probably. Is his attitude conducive to games reaching the all-hallowed plateau that film and conventional media currently occupy? Absolutely not.

After reading both articles, it occurs to me that beneath each writer's facade lies a wholly different but typical, age-old debate: conservatism vs liberality. Arey is obviously the artist here; he writes with passion, which is what is lacking both in Preston's article and his company's games. Whether sports games, their biggest sellers, ought to be artful in some way is totally up for debate; do artistic people buy those games? Without any research and an early admittance that I may be wrong, I'd say that they don't. Artless people are more likely to buy them; number-crunchers, realism fanatics...people who are passionately idiosyncratic rather than the old American model of what a man ought to be AREN'T BUYING THESE GAMES. The parallel that I'm trying to draw here is that these traditionalists go by a certain group name on the political scene: conservatives! Can we really blame EA for artlessly tailoring games when all they're really doing is skilfully aiming their product at a specific target demographic? Hell no!

With an image such as they currently have, however, it grates on me to hear a member of their ilk preach about games as art. Who are they to contest Ebert? They're the REASON he's said that "games will never be considered art". They may be the financial powerhouse of the industry, but they decidedly are NOT it's artistic leader. Granted, they are the ones who ought to defend themselves due to their station in the industry, but STILL...I don't think we ought to listen to their opinion on how to go about getting games accepted as art.

To be continued...