Although Kline had a lot of good observations, I think what interested me the most in the reading had to do with the parallels he drew between the video game industry and the industries of music and film, and what these parallels say about the roles of the various parties involved in video games.
In 1982, Kline tells us, Trip Hawkins modeled his company’s marketing approach after that of the music industry, by “packaging its games with album-like artwork and liner notes, and promoting its developers like rock stars in game magazines” (97).
Perhaps this is merely because I haven’t really spent much time studying the video game industry, but it seems to me that there is no clear parallel to a “rock star” in a video game, or, if there is, it is not the developer but rather a character from within the game itself. While musicians make music and Hollywood stars underlie the characters in films, the primary hero, name, and face behind Pac-Man is Pac-Man. And considering that by 1982, “revenue from the game Pac-Man alone probably exceeded the box-office success of Star Wars,” and the arcade game business grossed double the international sales of the pop music industry (103-104), I am really intrigued. A yellow circle with eyes and a mouth, existing only as an animated visual in a 2-D virtual reality, somehow made a greater impression than the combined forces of George Lucas, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and a bunch of ridiculous (in a good way) special effects.
I guess what I’m really trying to get at is this: What made/makes the influence of video games, particularly in their appeal to consumers, so different from that of films and music? Is that influence centralized in a name, be it a developer or a character (like Pac-Man)? Or does the interactive nature of games, the “play” we’re so fond of discussing, cause players to view themselves as the “rock stars”? Also, where do designers (such as Warren Robinett, who created the first ‘Easter Egg’ to garner individual credit outside of the corporation) fall in our perception of video games today, and how has this perception changed from what it was 30 years ago?
Come to think of it, Pac-Man doesn’t even have eyes.
As far as “Rock Stars” in video games go, it is interesting that your post describes the actual characters of the game as the stars. From my experience anticipating the releases of new games, a lot of hype is driven by the actual developers of the games. Good developers are well known by the players of their games for a variety of reasons such as the quality of the story, gameplay, or support in patching a game. When a new game is announced, it is not the characters in the game, which the public has not played yet, that get the fans excited by the announcement. The fans are excited for the game because the people developing the game have proven themselves in some way previously which gives the players assurance that the upcoming game will excel in (at least) those expected areas. An example of a well known developer is Infinity Ward, who created Call of Duty (CoD). The way the CoD series works now, is that developers Infinity Ward and Treyarch alternate on developing each sequel. CoD 2 was made by Infinity Ward, CoD 3 was made by Treyarch, CoD 4 was made by Infinity Ward, etc. It is widely accepted that the games made by Infinity Ward have been better than the CoD games made by Treyarch. When CoD 4 was announced, it received an incredible amount of hype because people knew that Infinity Ward was making the game, and many felt that CoD 2 was better than CoD 3 and anticipated a game more of the quality of CoD 2 simply because of the developer.