Halo 2: The video game that smacked down Spider-man. CP Photo/HO
Pity Sony Pictures. Sure,
its blockbuster film, Spider-Man 2, shattered box-office
records this summer with opening-weekend gross sales of $115
million US. Mere months later, though, the news of that movie’s
mind-blowing feat was utterly upstaged. By a damned video
game. You see, the real entertainment story last year was
Halo 2, a sci-fi console game produced by Bungie
Studios and Microsoft for the latter’s Xbox platform, which
kicked off with opening-day sales of $125 million
US.
Continuing the shoot-’em-up mayhem of the original title,
Halo, the sequel recounts an apocalyptic battle
between humanity, defended by a cybernetic super-warrior called
Master Chief, and the Covenant, an aggressive alien civilization
of religious fanatics. (One wag noted that the 2004 U.S. presidential
race offered up more than enough battling between a lone robot
and hordes of religious fanatics, but that’s another story.)
To say that Halo 2 was heavily hyped in the weeks
leading up to its release is tantamount to observing that
Canadians enjoy hockey and the occasional beer. In the six
months leading up to its Nov. 9 launch, the game notched more
than 1.5 million pre-orders (nearly 200,000 of them from Canada).
Those figures had Microsoft predicting a $100-million opening
day. That prediction, in turn, got everyone buzzing.
On launch day itself – the largest and most choreographed
in video-game history – fans exhibited the sort of face-painting,
homemade-costume-wearing fervour generally reserved for film
openings like Return of the King, the last installment
of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Across
North America, tens of thousands of eager fans lined up outside
more than 7,000 stores for the game’s midnight release. At
the Toys R Us in New York’s Times Square, where the national
launch party went down, a countdown clock ticked away the
final seconds of life before Halo 2. The assembled
faithful cheered wildly in a scene that echoed the square’s
venerable “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” bash – except with a lot
more guys wearing space helmets.
At the launch, Microsoft’s Peter Moore told MSNBC.com that
Halo 2’s release marked a revolution not just for
video games, but for the entertainment industry as a whole.
“I've been in this business for five or six years and I have
never seen a single title get this much attention. Halo nation
is a fascinating cultural phenomena,” Moore said. “It is very
clear to us that this kind of entertainment is usurping others.”
Industry insiders – not to mention Wall and Bay Streets –
have known for years that the video-game industry has become,
like the creepy Covenant critters of Halo 2, an
unstoppable juggernaut. Consider this: according to one projection,
video game sales pulled in $7.76 billion in the U.S. in 2004.
The U.S. film industry’s domestic box office takings were
not that far ahead, at $9.4 billion for the same period. True,
there has been (and will be much more) significant (and highly
profitable) cross-pollination between the two industries,
with video-games based on movies and vice versa. But the growth
curve of gaming has left Hollywood looking fidgety, especially
in light of the recent spate of mega-flops like the talk-show
punch line Gigli, the aimless Brad Pitt vehicle Troy
and, most recently, Oliver Stone’s Alexander. Each
of these films cost a fortune. Each went over at the box office
like flatulence in an elevator.
Perhaps in response to that perceived slump, the weeks surrounding
the Halo 2 launch saw video games, traditionally
depicted in the mainstream as the sole province of spotty
and maladjusted teens, touted as the Next Big Thing. In USA
Today, for instance, technology columnist Kevin Maney suggested
that Halo 2 represented a new “generation gap” between
Boomers and Gamers. “The tables have turned,” wrote Manes,
“and the axis is video games.” Writing for the Washington
Post, Jose Antonio Vargas claimed that the game was “symbolic
of a new wave of entertainment.”
Such bold pronouncements, found pretty much everywhere, raised
a puzzling question: with billions in sales already stashed
in the bank accounts of game developers, why was an industry
that had Hollywood shaking in its boots being portrayed as
an out-of-nowhere upstart? The most likely explanation is
that prior to the noisy, super-sized launch of Halo 2,
the video-game industry hadn’t yet found a recognizable
public face, a universally acclaimed megastar. Video games
were big but anonymous – just another multibillion-dollar
industry like waste management, mining or pornography. Never
mind that gaming hadn’t found its Tom Cruise. For most people,
it didn’t even have an Adam Sandler.
Previously, the model for launching a video game was this:
harness grassroots excitement, feed it with savvy, well-targeted
marketing and create a product that people like. The result,
if all goes well, is a profitable title. Gamers buzz about
it and buy it in droves. Nobody else pays attention. Halo
2 took a different approach: Do all of the above while
playing with Microsoft’s bankroll and marketing muscle, practically
guaranteeing a launch that kicks Hollywood records six ways
to Oshawa. Tell everyone, well in advance, that this is what
you plan to do. Then actually do it.
Tony Walsh, a Toronto-based designer and writer of the weblog
Clickable Culture, argues that the lasting resonance
of Halo 2 will be its significance not as a game,
but as a financial phenomenon – and from there, as a cultural
force. “From an artistic standpoint,” says Walsh, “the game
has given us nothing; from a business standpoint, it exceeded
some pretty big expectations.” In its first month, Halo
2 eventually moved a total of about five million copies,
banking $250 million. Not a bad return on investment for a
title that cost about $20 million to produce. (Poor Sony again:
Spider-Man 2 cost 10 times as much to make.) It gets
better. Another Microsoft initiative, Xbox Live, allows gamers
to play Halo 2 online for a monthly fee of about
$6 US. By the time you read this, more than a million players
around the world will have logged upwards of 30 million hours
blasting each other to bits.
So put Halo 2’s continued success in the death-and-taxes
column. It’s sure to push a lot more units and pull a lot
more loot. Even if it disappeared without a trace tomorrow,
though, people would forever revere it as the game that changed
everything. Halo 2 gift-wrapped a message to the
rest of the gaming industry – and the media world at large.
It’s an old adage, but it’s the one that swung the game right
past the intrepid Spidey in the news this year: money talks.
It’s only when it talks louder than everything else that everybody
starts listening.
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