The Death of the Videogame Mascot

With E3 on the horizon, many companies will be gearing themselves up to showcase their best and brightest products to a global audience. Developers will be brushing up code while artists, dragged from their main purpose of concepts and characters, will be mocking up designs for the company trade booth. But, as the show floor fills with technical demos, gameplay opportunities and scantily-clad (and bored) models touting the latest game they know nothing about, something isn’t quite right.

One thing (in my humble opinion) will be missing, though: the mascot. This generation appears to be the one where the company mascot is non-existent, and nowhere will this be more apparent than at the globally-famous showcase of the world’s biggest IPs.

Gone are the days where Crash Bandicoot, Sonic et al. would do battle, flying the flag for their respective platforms. They’ve been replaced by carbon-copied brown-haired generic heroes churned out of the cliché-factory that is Western gaming (and their spiky blonde counterparts in the East).

As the consoles and their developers have grown up, so have the characters. Nathan Drake, Master Chief and Kratos are altogether a more mature brand of mascot. Even those, however, are being run into the ground by continual sequels, spin offs and exposure. The newest generation has been on our shelves coming on two years and no IP has come forth to define any of them.

Okay, I can already see you pointing towards Nintendo. You’ve been doing it since you read the second paragraph of this article. I counter, however, that Nintendo is the worst of the bunch. With every generation they totter onto stage, whip ready to flog the beaten, sweating and panting horse that is Mario. Perhaps the only thing saving them from the same criticism levelled at the brown-brigade is that they have substantially re-invented Mario on occasion to give him that extra push. It’s hard to make this argument, however, amid the squeals of delight over another Zelda reboot.

Am I being too nostalgic? Is gaming as a whole too adult now to attach itself emotionally to one or two flagship franchises? Perhaps this simply isn’t where the money is: back in the day of the N64 and the Playstation, Nintendo had Rare chained in a darkened basement, pumping out new games on a demanding schedule. Sony, meanwhile, fresh from its acquisition of Final Fantasy, introduced (the sadly doomed) Crash Bandicoot to win over fans. Now it’s far easier (and more profitable) to spread your franchise across a large selection of platforms – marrying your product to one console means you won’t get at any of the other’s fans or users.

There could perhaps be an argument that trying to design games around one character or bunch of characters stifles creativity. Yet, when you consider how many of games this generation have been sequels, reboots or similar you should wonder if it’s really such a sacrifice. It’s true that this was still very much the case in gaming’s infancy so is it actually time that a new figure stride from the gloom?

Who would it be though? What makes a perfect mascot? One in whom the player can project themselves, like Master Chief and Gordon Freeman (the closest PC gamers have to a mascot other than Gabe Newell)? Or one with personality, verve and character like Mario, Sonic or Crash? The cult following that Assassin’s Creed character Ezio Auditore da Firenze (before he, too, was run into the ground) achieved shows that gamers are still able to emotionally attach themselves to a major character.

Perhaps, as Indie game begin to make a more significant impact on the gaming world with every passing year, there are simply too many new characters to choose from? In the 90s things were very black and white. You either had a SNES or the MegaDrive and then either an N64 or a Playstation. With those loyalties came a loyalty to their flagship characters. Having grown up owning a Playstation I still have fond memories of Crash Bandicoot and would, I admit, probably become far too excited should Sony ever decide to make a cash-grab reboot of the franchise.

As we march ever onwards, with each generation of consoles growing closer and closer in terms of hardware, publishing deals and content, will we ever see a rivalry like that of Mario, Sonic and Crash or Master Chief and Kratos? Perhaps those rivalries, immature as they were, reflected the infantile state of gaming’s development. As the medium grows, so do the metrics by which we decide our allegiance. What was once “who had the coolest characters” is now “which has the better resolution” or “the least disappointing launch titles”.

As the smoke of the initial broadsides in the new-gen console wars clear, though, will we see new figures appear in the clearing fog? Or will they already be lying deceased upon the debris-strewn deck of technical specifications and HD remakes? Time will no doubt tell.