Music Videos And Video Games
I loved MTV. I used to watch it all the time when I was younger. I have no problem admitting this because I know everyone else around me did as well. Back in the days of classic VJs like Martha Quinn and the late great J.J. Jackson, I was glued to the TV hoping to catch the videos for Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher." I was obsessed with shows like "Headbanger's Ball" and "120 Minutes," which shined a light on the counter-culture heavy metal and alternative music that mainstream radio didn't play. The network oozed coolness with a devil-may-care attitude toward commercialism.
The original MTV VJs (from left) Alan Hunter, the late J.J. Jackson, Martha Quinn, Nina Blackwood and Mark Goodman
Why do I bring this up? Because MTV and parent company Viacom continued their push into the gaming industry last week with the acquisition of Atom Entertainment (for more on Atom, go here). The $ 200-million purchase gives MTV Atom's Web video and game sites, such as Shockwave.com, AddictingGames.com and AddictingClips.com. MTV has already broken into the casual and online games space with its dedicated Website to MTV Games, including the MTV Arcade section of casual and adver-games. Viacom recently bought Xfire, the online gaming application company that boasts a community of nearly five million users. Xfire's software allows gamers to message one another and communicate while playing online PC games. Previously, Viacom and MTV had acquired GameTrailers.com and Neopets, a virtual pet site with free online games.
I'll hypothesize for a moment and suggest we're not far away from the day when MTV becomes a bona fide game company, publishing and even developing its own full-length console and PC titles. Remember, people were skeptical about the network creating its own original TV shows and even more doubtful of MTV Films (which has produced excellent movies like "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Murderball" as well as awful movies like Britney Spears' "Crossroads" or 50 Cent's "Get Rich or Die Tryin'"). With the investment in gaming that MTV and Viacom have made this year alone, why wouldn't they increase efforts and make their own games?
MTV's programming may be incredibly weak these days, but the network is still a powerful media force and Viacom intends to use it to leverage its way into the gaming world. This matters because MTV had an absolutely huge effect - both positive and negative - on the music industry, and the network is clearly keen on gaming. Second, we're approaching the day when conglomerates like Vivendi Universal and Time Warner own not just most major news media outlets, movie studios and record labels, but game developers as well. Viacom is well on its way to joining that elite group, and that may not be a good thing when you consider what's happened to MTV over the last 10 or so years.
Somewhere around the early 1990s, the network began to stray, which is odd since the music industry as a whole was revived by alternative, grunge and punk acts that killed off the cheesy hair bands. Even as the quality and budgets for music videos increased during the decade, the programming began moving swiftly away from videos. This is tragic when you consider that several great filmmakers like Spike Jonze ("Being John Malkovich"), David Fincher ("Seven," "Fight Club") and Jonathan Glazer ("Sexy Beast"), got their start on MTV by directing some of the best videos in the network's history. Despite the fact that videos were getting better, Viacom-owned MTV inexplicably began showing fewer of them and instead broadcasted reality shows like "The Real World" and "Road Rules;" cartoons such as "Beavis and Butt-head" and game shows like "Singled Out." As the decade ended, things really began to spiral out of control. Old staples like "Yo! MTV Raps" were replaced with "Total Request Live," "The Tom Green Show," "Undressed" and "Punk'd."
Not all the programming during the last 10 or so years has been terrible; I admit I enjoyed watching Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla on "Loveline" and I couldn't resist "Jackass." But today the network is inundated with "reality" shows targeted at the youth audience - garbage like "Laguna Beach," "Pimp My Ride and the now infamous Jessica Simpson-Nick Lachey series "Newlyweds."
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