There was no way of knowing while watching the ad, but it was discovered later that it didn’t feature Bhatt at all. Rather, the man on screen was an actor employed to impersonate a rather sllicker version of Intel’s researcher. The advert was fascinating because whilst on the one hand it did expose Bhatt to the limelight, given that he’s far more famous now than he was before it aired, but at the same time it’s not what it appears because an actor is used. Ultimately, the ad appears to confirm that the world isn’t really ready for geek stars; it’s merely a fantasy.
And although it’s a fantasy designed to entertain and to advertise a huge computer technology corporation, another reason it interest me is because it makes me think also of the games world and the figureheads our area of interest throws up. Just like high-tech researchers of Bhatt’s caliber, the men and women who develop video games toil mostly in anonymity, but the products they create can accumulate many millions of dollars in sales and make executives and shareholders exceedingly wealthy. The games they develop can be played by millions of people, sometimes obsessively, sometimes over a period of many years.
It has been much speculated before that one day those involved in the games industry could become as widely known as those who control the music or film industries. But, whilst examples of precursors to this have been pointed to multiple times, and despite the fact that the number of recognizable figures in the industry has doubtlessly increased, the predictions have not yet been proven correct. If anything, the idea of gaming celebrities seems to have waned over the last few years despite the continued rise of games as an economic and cultural force across much of the developed world. When games like Modern Warfare 2 have made the headlines recently, the actual people involved in their development have hardly been prominent, especially when compared to the coverage of major events in the worlds of music or film. So, why does this remain the case? And what are the chances that future developments could reverse the trend?
When the first of these questions is normally addressed, a tried-and-tested answer is always rolled obediently out. Games are considered sad and tragic, the argument goes. The people involved in making and playing them represent a small, homogeneous, and dull section of society that is a world away from the glamour and glitz of the rest of the entertainment industry. While this is a fairly good explanation of the situation, there’s also a case that increasingly needs to be made, that this is not telling the whole story. The situation regards gaming’s demographics is a fundamentally different one to what it was when this explanation was conceived, or what it was ten or five years ago. That’s not to say that the explanation is invalid; undoubtedly it goes some way to revealing the reasons behind what is going on. Nonetheless, it significantly relies on stereotypes that were at least partly false at the time and increasingly so now. The broadening of gaming’s portfolio of subjects, exemplified by the meteoric rise of the Wii and more recently the emergence of games like Heavy Rain, has resulted and will continue to result in a similar broadening of the average gamer’s composition. It is likelier than ever that a gamer will be female, and it is increasingly untrue to claim that games appeal only to the young and juvenile. As the player base broadens and deepens its impact into society, is it not logical that the gaming celebrity should become closer to reality?
Another facet of the time-based explanation is based not around the player but around the developer end of the spectrum. Nowadays we are seeing more of game developers than we ever have before. It’s often these major industry figures, gaming’s thinkers and designers, whom have been mooted as candidates for fame before. Take Will Wright, for example, who has acquired some degree of fame exterior to the games world as a result of the colossal success of his Sims games. Surely if a man like Bill Gates – associated with a topic equally ’sad’ as games, in many respects – can become famous, then people like Will Wright or Peter Molyneux also stand a chance? If equaling Gates would require huge wealth to draw in media attention, then this is certainly a plausible route to fame for games designers and executives; gaming is a rapidly growing industry after all, and a highly profitable one at that.
Today many games are marketed with play demonstrations overseen by developers, video interviews with designers are becoming more common, and these men and women are enhancing their role in the public perception of games. Did you see, for example, members of staff from Harmonix playing on stage to promote The Beatles: Rock Band? The very nature of games today is actually encouraging developers to become more visible. However, because this process is still at an early stage, this increased visibility is mostly noticeable only to those who are already familiar with and interested in games, and this is limiting the potential impact. E3, for example, is a major gaming event but not really a major event in a general sense. As games continue to grow this may well change, quite feasibly impacting on the wider notoriety of games developers.
Having said that, major public events based around gaming have sometimes had, if anything, a negative effect on the medium’s chance of producing celebrities because they have constituted a failure to self-represent effectively. Take, for example, the choice of the likes of Justin Lee Collins to host the Golden Joystick Awards some years back. Not only does gaming lack celebrities but it lacks credible celebrities even distantly connected to it, and so such events become embarrassments rather than opportunities for gaming to flex its muscles. The truth is that the games industry is still inexperienced at representing itself, especially by comparison to the film and music industries. It’s a talent that comes with time but it has hardly been a priority for sometimes closeted and fearful games development teams. Perhaps, though, the recent return of the gaming BAFTAs will help resuscitate gaming’s reputation in this kind of arena. But even something like this primarily awards games rather than individuals. Far more so than in the film and music worlds, creators are seen as a means to an end rather than as an object of fascination in and of themselves.
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