CONVERGENCE RETRO MARKETING games on promo websites

I wrote this for the MusiVidz blog, but I make frequent links to the film industry - particularly the marketing of WT's Cornetto Trilogy (Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz especially)...

Ozzy's career tracks back to blues band Earth in the late 1960s so he has accrued an age diverse following, maintaining a credibility and aura of cool that attracts a large youth audience on top of his long term fan-base.

The age profile largely skipped the over-45s that are fairly core for Ozzy (who built a new teen following in the 80s with his solo success after being kicked out of the mighty Sabs), but the free 8-bit retro game playable through his website is a great example of smart marketing exploiting the potential of convergence - and reminds me of the Cornetto Trilogy's equally smart use of a similar strategy. A decade ago!

Modern console games, at the top end, have production timescales (years) and budgets ($100m - >300m) directly comparable to the tentpole (or blockbuster, to use Elberse's term).

Nonetheless, just like VFX/SFX and cinematography (helicopters displaced by drones), convergence means formats, genres and post-/production techniques which define the spectacle of the box office giants are available at the bottom and lower end of the scale.

Just look at the striking range of digipaks, websites and music videos, not to mention blogs and alt vids, produced by students at StG (and IGS previously) using cheap or free tools like Wix, blogger, FCPX and free plug-ins and TrueType fonts from the likes of DaFont.com. 

Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz had Space Invaders and Pacman versions on their promo websites (produced, unusually, not by the distributor Universal/StudioCanal but by the main production company Working Title through its main website developer RedBridge).

Just like the Ozzy game today (and his new album has been a huge success, so it's working!), this reflects a smart modern four quadrant approach. The 8-bit style has retro appeal with such games going back to the 80s and 90s (while Pacman and Space Invaders go back to the late 70s and 80s arcade machines). Such appeal doesn't just narrowly exploit direct identification (uses and gratifications), a much younger demographic also find appeal, through fashionability, irony, hipsterism, lo-fi - there are many possible explanations and labels which partly intersect with Simon Reynolds' influential 'Retromania' book and concept.

The multi-layered nature of the semiotics of these retro games includes another easily overlooked layer of the 'endless chain of signification', or signifiers, that Baudrillard proposes with his reality-questioning simulacra theory - we're all in The Matrix now, endlessly reconstructed, immersed in and perceiving through a semiotic soup of media signifiers and intertextuality.

Roll back 15 years as the smartphone concept began to evolve and millions were paying £2-3 (and equivalent currencies) to download 8-bit 'polyphonic' ringtone versions of the latest pop chart hits, and restyled classics - even sparking its own original music with the Crazy Frog phenomenon. That market spanned tweens to mid-30s. Entirely new sounds for the youngest users, but offering nostalgia for the games played by the older users (or 'consumers' to use that classic denoter of passive audiences) simultaneous with novelty through their converged devices.

So, Ozzy's simple lo-fi game works for the youngest to oldest end of a potential fan-base, exposed to plentiful lo-fi games built in to phones, linked to platforms like Facebook (Angry Birds!), on cheap 'emulators' which make 80s, 90s and noughties games from long defunct platforms like the PlayStation predecessor Sega MegaDrive and Spectrum 48k (it had 48k...KB... of memory - beaten by the Commodore 64!), and accessing these through tablets, phablets, phones - and computers of course!

It offers direct nostalgia for different generations, whether for the original games or the later intertextualised but new polyphonic ringtone market.

And one final way in which this generates appeal, or functions as a marketing tool. Alongside escapism, another uses and gratifications category (and you could work in all four), like Kim Kardashian's massively money-spinning freemium hit Kim Kardashian's Hollywood, it offers identification through faux agency - you be Ozzy! 

The existence of this game reflects how nostalgia has a notable role in the current zeitgeist, whether experienced as direct fond remembrance, hipsterism like the vinyl resurgence among the young, irony or the rejection of slick high-budget productions - and there have been multiple music genres over recent years based on using retro kit. Utter garbage to my ears, having grown up with bands like Depeche Mode and followed their development, using ever more sophisticated kit and techniques. But thrilling, novel and somewhat rebellious for a younger audience who have grown up in a converged era where an expensive 80s synth can be found as an option on Garageband or a phone app.

That faux agency is also comparable to the faux personal engagement of social media, whether that's the employee written postings of stars or the hidden hand of big 3 record labels behind the seemingly organic rise of artists like Lily Allen (back in the MySpace era - the Arctic Monkeys are arguably an example of 'authentic' growth through it) and Billie Eilish (SoundCloud and YouTube).

And - final point - disruption means that it's not just the production of the Ozzy game that's relatively cheap and affordable, but also the distribution. https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/play-ozzy-osbournes-new-8-bit-legends-of-ozzy-video-game/

The link above is how I encountered it, via my Google news feed on my Android phone (my initial no-frills draft of this post is being slowly tapped out on my phone through the Blogger app to boot). The article has the Ozzy site's hyperlink embedded - and that is all that's needed to effectively distribute the product. The audience to a large degree will work as distributors, sharing that link. From the Ozzy end, there's no need to pay for ads to promote the game (part of the album promo campaign) as it will spark e-zine features like the one I read, and I probably will share the link with a few folks I know.

I've taught tweenagers who have produced some impressive games using the free web platform Scratch. I've met a 20-something at a Photoshop course who made a work placement into a career by pitching to produce the social media for one of many record labels long ago bought up by the big 3 and resurrected for a reissue campaign.

What you can do through your Media coursework can be a hell of a pitch for a place on a competitive uni course or straight into a job/project. Or, as with the 2020 student productions for unsigned/Indie electropop artist Aem, 'actual' media and branding, not a simulacra. That Ozzy Osbourne website game is emblematic of the opportunities out there for creative, media/tech-literate folk with a bit of drive...like you? Whether for music, film or simply 'corporate' (for brands, businesses), there's a huge market out there for smart marketeers.