Game Branding
An Editorial discussing the many ways franchises attempt to secure their place in the market
Other times your brand is on the wane and the old formula that once nourished the populace now tastes bitter and dated. Like when you forget to close a packet of potato chips and they go all weird and soft. No one enjoys that.
So what do you do? You could try the breakfast bar route, creating subpar games in an attempt to resuscitate a dying franchise. Oh, that failed? Maybe you could re-launch the game in shiny new packaging, talking about how you’ve ‘gone back to our roots on this one’ when in fact you’ve done nothing except give it a facelift. A bad one, so that the eyebrows are stuck to your hairline and your cheeks now occupy your eye sockets. Sonic Unleashed...
The product’s still dying though, its pulse is weakening; you could pull the plug, say it had a good ride and will be dearly missed. Or. OR! You could perhaps merge it will another very popular product that has stood the test of time, a little man with a mustache who has penchant for Princesses. There’s Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Winter Games for you.
Then, in an insane move you choose to go into the business of creating industrial landfill material and spit out Sonic Free Riders like the dying hairball hacked up by a freshly run over cat. A harsh analogy I know but scarily appropriate, like going to a circus performers funeral dressed as a clown.
So, you stand broken, gazing at your adulterated product. It doesn’t even look like itself anymore. There’s torn packaging from where you’d cut corners. Mismatched and cross pollinated it tastes like spooning handfuls of your own wasted time and money mixed with sewage into your mouth. The salt from your tears perhaps adding the slightest hint of flavour.
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Mar 8, 2011 10:39:13 (Mar 8, 2011 10:39)
