Sony killed the video game star?

A fantastic interview with British satirist Charlie Brooker popped up today at MCV, one of the top UK sources for interactive industry news.

The interview comes on the heels of Brooker’s equally fantastic Gameswipe special for BBC4 television last month, where he offered a brief snapshot of the gaming landscape (both past and present) while still managing to lay into 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand for a good five minutes.

With its refreshing wit and  dead-on insight into current gaming canon, the special truly offers something for the confused and the enthused alike.  Highlights include Mock the Week host Dara O’ Briain’s caustic irritation over having to earn content within the games he buys, “It doesn’t happen in any other medium… If you buy a Klaxons album, it doesn’t go, ‘Your dancing isn’t good enough, dance again!’”  In fact, if you have some time, just watch the whole thing on YouTube or, if you’re in the UK, iPlayer.

But aside from a rant about Rock Band here, and poor 50 getting his ass dragged through the sand there, the main artery of the program deals with the dismal cultural perception of video games.  Not surprisingly, it’s an issue addressed within the interview, but what is surprising is Brooker’s answer when asked where he thinks things started to go wrong:

“[I]t’s interesting to see that when you go back the very first coverage we had of games wasn’t assuming they were for children. That belief was something that came about in the late ‘80s.

MCV: When it became a bit more commercialised?

Yes. That was when Sonic the Hedgehog arrived. I think really Sonic the Hedgehog is to blame in making people assume games are for children.”

– Ben Parfitt, INTERVIEW – Charlie Brooker (Part I), MCVUK.com

I kind of want to side with the guy just because I like the program so damn much but, truth is, I’m not entirely sure.  Though, having lived through most of the ’80s being – well, a kid – I might not be the best authority on the matter either.

In retrospect, I can agree that the success of Sonic ushered in the era of Magic Kingdom rejects, whose sole purpose was to peddle games and consoles to younger consumers – among them: Aero the Acrobat, Boogerman and Bubsy (and this is only A through B folks).  And I also recall Sony being met with a dose of skepticism in 1995 when they introduced “Polygon Man” as spokesthing for its new console – the PlayStation – instead of something more approachable, like an Italian in red overalls.

Because looking back, clearly, they needed the help.

Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, in the years following the release of the PlayStation, Sony would be perceived as the “mature” choice for players.  Their success seemed to prove that interactive entertainment didn’t require forest-friendly mascots to survive, and possibly needed to eschew them altogether in order to thrive.

So following this line of thinking, did Sony actually help steer games away from their adolescent stereotypes?  Or did the console and its successors merely replace one with another, with the advent of the gun-toting bald space marine taking over for gas-passing bald super hero?

Images courtesy of Wikipedia (1), (2)