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U2 CAN BE BRAINWASHED by Mr Biffo

27/10/2015

17 Comments

 
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I went to see U2 in concert last night. I'm not a massive fan of the band, Bono irritates me profoundly, and I haven't loved anything they've done since The Joshua Tree.

But... a mate had a spare ticket, and there are potentially worse ways to spend a Monday night. 


It had its moments, though I can't say I really engaged with the show. I didn't buy what they were selling - and selling is exactly why U2 were doing.

​What stood out most for me - whether it comes from the band as individuals, or as an organisation -  is how brilliant U2 are at branding. The games industry could learn a lot from them.

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MONOLITH
Watching last night's show, it struck me that U2 might be the most corporate band of all time.

It's little wonder that they've worked so closely with Apple in the past, because they're every bit the music world's equivalent of Apple; a massive organisation that talks about personal experience and connecting the world, while actually being an aloof, untouchable, tax-dodging, money-making monolith. U2 is a business more than a rock band.

The current U2 tour adopts a loose theme around the band's origins, footage of Bono's parents playing out on an enormous, transparent, screen - which Bono then climbs inside, as he walks along stylised footage of the street he grew up on. At other points, the entire band play from within the screen, overlaid with giant, graphical versions of themselves.

It was impressive, but for a show that supposedly touches on some very personal themes for Bono, I found it remarkably unmoving. It strives for intimacy, but was too impersonal, too calculated - as if everything, from the between-song banter to The Edge's stupid hat, had been thought through, analysed, dissected as to how it was serving the U2 brand. U2 - the U2 that the world sees - are portrayed as icons, not as people.

They clearly learned a lot from Steve Jobs, and the applause and singing along from the crowd seemed to me - sober and unmoved as I was - to come from the same font of corporate brainwashing as those who line up outside Apple Stores for a week before the launch of a new iPhone.

Yet, as with the marketing campaigns of Apple, it succeeded in what it set out to do, and I don't doubt most of the audience went home thinking they'd had the night of their lives. We'd been successfully sold the idea of the rock band U2 giving us a big Saturday night on a Monday evening. Even Noel Gallagher showed up on stage for one of the encores.

Where am I going with this? I'll tell you where I was going with this...

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THIS
You may have read that Assassin's Creed Syndicate debuted in the all-formats games charts at number one this week, but that sales were down significantly on the previous instalment or two of the franchise. People seem tired of what has become the tradition of an annual Assassin's Creed game. 

Plus, Halo 5 is out today for the Xbox One, and the sense I'm getting is that there isn't the same level of hype and excitement as there might've been in the past for a new Halo. I might be wrong - let's face it, it's not like a new Xbox One exclusive comes along that often. But still... I know I don't feel particularly excited about the game... I'm just going through the motions.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the feeling spreads through all of the major releases this Christmas. The disappointing sales of Syndicate suggests that this tradition of releasing annual instalments of familiar franchises might be backfiring, that the games aren't sufficiently different from one another. Fatigue might finally be settling in. People might want something familiar... but they also want something new. 


STRUCK WHO?
It just struck me at last night's concert that while I may have issues with U2's corporate approach to rock n' roll, the band successfully rebrands itself with every concert, while still being distinctly U2. Mullet Bono, Wild West Pioneer Bono, MacPhisto Bono, Fly Glasses Bono, and now Weird Blonde Quiff Bono... Innocence & Experience is the name of the new tour, and they've made it feel like an event. As they have with all their previous tours.

Musically, U2 appear these days to strive to sound like U2, but they tweak the visual language, and the soundbites - "Oh, with this one we learned to become a band again" etc. etc. - around that, so it feels like they're moving forwards.

These identikit video game sequels no longer feel like an event. They get the familiar bit right, the iconography - the Assassin's Creed peaked hood, Master Chief's golden faceplate, Lara Croft's pout - without giving us anything new. Syndicate's London looks too much like Unity's Paris. Halo 5 looks like all the other Halo games. Call of Duty Black Ops 3 looks like Call of Duty Advanced Warfare.

It's all becoming interchangeable to a degree that I've never before seen in the games industry. I know this is a drum I keep banging, but I'm finding it a massive issue. I want video games to excite me like they once did - with the sense of possibility, and new experiences - not elicit a sigh, and a shrug. I've never been more bored by a Christmas release schedule.

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REBRAND
So anyway. Yeah. What I appear to be saying - looking back over all that - is that I want my video games to pay lip service to the notion of new ideas, while repackaging and rebranding the same old stuff.

Which isn't entirely the case, but if you are going to repurpose gameplay and characters, making it at least feel new - finding ways to make the branding of your games, the iconography, feel fresh - is a step up from making everything feel exactly the same as before.

There's a real fear that pervades the industry right now, a reticence to take risks, to break out of comfort zones. Maybe in Halo 6 they could have a moment where Master Chief pauses to talk about his dead mother, whips off his helmet to reveal a new hairstyle, before a number of ambiguous, pseudo-compassionate slogans flash up on the screen: "SAVE EVERYONE!", "THE WORLD IS A PLACE FOR PEOPLE", "IMMIGRATION IS A THING!".

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
YOUTUBE RED ALERT by Mr Biffo
A HIDEO KOJIMA ARTICLE by Mr Biffo
BOYCOTT STAR WARS VII: A NON-MOVEMENT by Mr Biffo


17 Comments
Steve McEdge
27/10/2015 10:39:28 am

Agreed. AAA gaming has got stuck in a moment it can't get out of.

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Mr Biffo
27/10/2015 10:59:16 am

Nicely done.

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Da5e
27/10/2015 10:41:33 am

I'm off to see Liturgy in Manchester tonight, which is about as far from a world-trampling behemoth of a tour as you can get. You should come, Biffo - I'd like to see what games you'd compare it to...

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Mr Biffo
27/10/2015 10:58:46 am

Yo mama.

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Bananasthemonkey
27/10/2015 11:26:44 am

Oooooo. I like Liturgy. Enjoy!

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Turpington
27/10/2015 11:52:10 am

I think a big problem is the lack of mid budget games. The 7-8 out of 10 rascals that would be quirky, and a lot of fun. Stuff like Darksiders, or Deadly Premonition. They could do things a bit different, as there wasn't as much pressure to make back massive amounts of cash.

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Keith
27/10/2015 01:08:02 pm

I'm intrigued as to why video games don't licence out their open worlds to third party designers after a given amount of time. I've got no intention of buying Assassins Creed, but it seems a waste of a beautifully designed world that the only story/game played within it is Assassins Creed. Imagine if an imaginative studio could create something small and interesting within that world?

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Reversible Sedgewick
27/10/2015 01:41:52 pm

It sounds like the kind of thing which Nintendo used to have in spades. Mechanically your Zelda 64 and your Wind Waker are pretty much identical, but show them to someone who wasn't interested in games and they might not guess that it was part of the same franchise. It's hard to think of a franchise in a different medium that would embrace such diverse aesthetics... Maybe that tedious animated Star Wars film that got a cinema release is the closest high-profile example.

Nintendo also tackled the other end of the pipe, historically. Mario looks the same, but now he's driving a car... it's a bigger genre swap than moving from Alien to Aliens, right?

But even they've lost the knack for meaninglful reinvention these days... I haven't played any Chibi Robo releases but as I understand it, they've stripped something quirky back into a side scrolling platformer... to sit alongside Mario, the latest Donkey Kong, the latest Yoshi...

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Steve McEdge
27/10/2015 02:16:01 pm

Nintendo might essentially release modified versions of the same game, but since they don't do it annually, it still feels like an event when it comes out. We'd likely all be sick of Mario Kart if they started releasing slapdash sequels every Christmas.

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RichT
27/10/2015 02:20:47 pm

At the rate that Assassin's Creed is advancing, in the 2017 installment you may actually receive missions from Bono.

"BEGORRAH! Oi've left me ruddy-bluddy hat at the top of the Oiffel Tower ag'in. Climb to the top an' oi'll give you a sack of iPods, pre-loaded with me new album. TER, TER-TER TER-TER!!

"Free Nelson Mandela. Love and peace."

Excellent criticism as always, Mr Biffo. I wonder if the games industry is now out-pacing its own customer refresh-rate? I felt that during the previous console generation there was a deliberate moment of choice where, faced with the option to either evolve or simply repackage familiar gaming tropes to an emerging audience, they chose the latter. It was an objectively sensible business decision to target a larger, younger customer base with more disposable time and money.

But what happens now when that generation of gamers is bored with the offer? And when the teens that are the incoming "new" customers have already played this stuff for the past seven years or more?

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Seano
27/10/2015 03:53:04 pm

Games are very confusing at the moment - confusing insomuch that they're dull. The excitement that you should get from playing a new title just isn't there for me.

The combination of re-hashed ideas, re-hashed worlds to play in, the lack of artiatic diversity in visual approach (I'm still finding Borderlands 2 interesting, after a couple of weeks, as the "look" makes it feel different, despite it being pretty, well, derivative).... Phhffffff. Bored!

Definitely stuck in a rut. A Hollywood-aping money-making samey rut.

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Col. Asdasd
27/10/2015 04:35:41 pm

Great article. What concerns me even more than than this trend (which is predictable, with development costs sky-rocketing and technological advances beginning to calcify) is that this is the only place I'm reading such things. Other sites are dutifully cranking up the hype cycle with every major, stagnant, samey release.

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Mr Biffo
28/10/2015 09:54:55 am

It is starting to worry me too, actually... Particularly the unanimous euphoria which has greeted Halo 5.

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Kelvin Green link
27/10/2015 06:28:11 pm

I hope the boredom doesn't drive you away from games again, Biffo; we need people like you saying things like this.

At least digital distribution and crowdfunding have led to an undercurrent of innovation while the AAA industry -- and how I loathe that term, almost more than "hardcore gamer" back in the Wii days -- stomps around doing the same, safe things over and over. You do get a bit of trash along with the innovation, but at least you get some new ideas.

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Mr Biffo
28/10/2015 09:55:23 am

No no no - I'm going nowhere anytime soon. It was never boredom that drove me away!

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Kumma-summa
27/10/2015 07:56:51 pm

The one thing I think that may separate games from Hollywood's current predicament (at least temporarily) is that there is still a lot more scope for invention in games than there currently is in film.

Of course money dictates that the same things are recycled to try and repeat profits but at least the potential for invention remains greater in games- the technology is still evolving and so the ways and means of storytelling are too.

I suspect we'll see independent developers to exploiting this and then bigger companies buying the rights and remaking the game into a saccharin, over polished honk-up starring your mum.

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Seano
27/10/2015 09:54:03 pm

That story telling but is an interesting one. I want to be drawn into the story in games but on reflection, or maybe just that it's been pointed out by some on this site, I don't end up giving a fig about the story, most of the time. Give me some Mario head crushing whilst flying, in 3D, then on different planets. Give me that over and above the story.

Perhaps the way in which the stories are being told is where the technological advances need to be made. Or is this just cocking things up? Stories have been around for a while, haven't they.... ?

Reply



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