Cole, Spyro And The Jerk Trend

I recently interviewed Insomniac's Ted Price at Gamasutra, and I also did a profile of him for an upcoming issue of Edge. Next issue? I'm kind of not sure, actually, because when I write for print magazines lead times are long and I have trouble keeping track. I send in my work and some time later you guys tell me on Twitter that you liked my article. What would I do without you?

There were portions of the discussion that I didn't end up using in either interview; among other things, we talked about Spyro, and I asked him about Activision's multimedia toy project, Skylanders, that stars a tougher, scalier version of the little dragon that seems more likely to jive with its target audience -- today's tweens, presumably -- than the friendly spark-puffing purple guy of yore.

Price, who is one of the more pleasant executives I've ever interviewed, told me he likes Activision's take on Spyro -- "Boy, Spyro has changed!" he laughed.

For Insomniac, Spyro was an effort to diversify after Disruptor, the company's debut game, which had been a first-person shooter capitalizing on the Doom trend. The studio, which has now been around for 17 years, was relatively young at the time, and still defining its flavor, but even with Spyro the team was discovering that it liked unusual weapons, as in all of the dragon's different breath abilities.

The mascot platformer genre was in its heyday, if you remember. It wasn't just Sega and Nintendo that chose characters to represent themselves in Sonic and Mario -- almost every studio was trying to pin down a cute-but-cool animal buddy that could represent it. It was the 1990s, and it was important to be "radical", in the 1990s sense of the word, which meant your mascot had to be cute and appealing, but he also had to have "attitude."

"There was always that tension within the studio, a good tension, about who Spyro should be," Price told me. "We started out with a Spyro that was kind of cocky and a jerk... we found the fans didn't necessarily appreciate the cocky nature, and it made him a less endearing character."

In other words, it was possible to take that "attitude" too far. These days, although Insomniac is still successful with Ratchet games, mascots in general are fewer and further between, and probably for good business reason, as Sega's numerous off-the-mark attempts to resurrect the Sonic brand have demonstrated.

Recently I have played two video games back to back where the protagonist is a cocky jerk -- and they even have the same name, Cole (L.A. Noire and Infamous 2, to be specific). Is "cocky armed jerk" the game industry's new "mascot character?" I certainly think so. I even find hometown-hero type Nathan Drake to be a little bit of a dick, but I think I might be in a minority here.

But in a sense, I think we're seeing the same bell curve trend happening with our modern protagonists that touched the mascot action genre in the 1990s. In an effort to answer our cries for something more interesting than the silent space marine, games are giving us all kinds of "tortured, complex" dudes, arrogant bastards who don't have to be a "good guy" to win. Maybe they're even setting themselves up to be hoist by their own petards, because those are apparently themes that show games fans how modern and edgy our narratives are.

But Price was correct: After a while in the 1990s, we became turned off not only by the glut of sameness in the mascot genre, but even more by the "attitude" that was supposed to make those animal characters so cool. I think the reason the mascot genre became less relevant wasn't necessarily because we were oversaturated with the format or because we were tired of that type of game mechanic and level design: I think we stopped liking that type of hero.

When's the last time you played as someone you found truly endearing? How many more jerks, named Cole or otherwise, do I have to play as this year? Do you guys notice this as well, and are you bothered by it? If so, what do you think historical patterns indicate might be coming next?

In unrelated news, it is Friday, this weekend is Northside Festival and I'm going to see Woods tonight, one of my absolute favorites. This weekend is also exciting because my friends' band Quiet Loudly are playing with Holy Spirits, whom I also love. Holy Spirits just did a lovely cream-and-gold vinyl split 12" with Mutual Benefit; you can listen to it on Bandcamp and I highly recommend you do! (Substitute all these links for the usual 'Today's Good Song' and you come out ahead!)

In honor of festival weekend I've written The Different Types of Drunk You Can Be at Thought Catalog. I'm a jerk. And now we're back on topic.