Commentary
MTV's Sweet Harmony
- by Shankar Gupta , September 22, 2006
To be brief, this is a great buy for MTV. "Guitar Hero," as I wrote back in July (though in that piece, I mistakenly cited Konami as the company responsible for the game) is one of the budding crop of games with serious appeal to non-gamers.
Much like "Dance Dance Revolution" before them, "Guitar Hero" and "Karaoke Revolution" have accumulated a strong cachet among an audience that is not typically inclined to spend hours and hours playing video games. To boot, the games have garnered massive critical acclaim, as well as the attention of the mainstream media, which is always on the lookout for broad appeal in video games.
But the Harmonix buy has deeper implications for the role of video games in media. MTV's incorporation of Harmonix's game designs into its Web content and upcoming virtual world, VMTV, is a clear sign that games are getting a seat at the table in major cross-media integration projects.
It starts small, with MTV letting you play along with or remix your favorite songs on its Web site, but the possibilities are much, much larger. Another one of MTV's game mashups is "Virtual Laguna Beach," an online game where users can dive into a gameworld based on one of the network's reality shows, "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County." The integration there is pretty minimal, but media conglomerates like Viacom (which owns MTV) that buy up game developers could take the idea much further.
Imagine a TV show whose outcome could be influenced through the play of a simple competitive game. Millions of players going head to head could help determine who gets kicked off the island, or fired, or whatever. Games could provide a deeper level of interactivity, always a proven driver of success--after all, would millions tune in to "American Idol" if they didn't get to vote?
