The release of Halo 3 marks the climax of a revolution. The mainstreaming of video games is something we all considered a possibility, but as a gradual event rather than how it has come to pass.
I’ve been entrenched in gaming since I was young, and for the last 5 years I’ve been an enthusiastic video game journalist. I get paid to be a geek. Still, I’ve watched what is generously called a “culture” evolve from a loose association of geeks to a group resembling a “demographic.” Within the last 10 years there has been a desperate fervor to define this growing demographic and market it as quickly as possible.
Originally they were lumped in with the X-treme Marketing movement. If any word in the English language applies less to gamers its “extreme” and even less so “X-treme,” except in the following sentence: “Bobby played World of Warcraft for fifteen hours straight last night and passed out from exhaustion. His doctor considered this extreme.”
Since the Atari generation started having kids the video game has grown acceptable in the home, and now more and more people are actually playing and purchasing video games. The Nintendo Wii is being played by more demographics than any system before it, and Nintendo is taking full advantage of it. Yet the Wii, highest in current U.S. sales, is not enjoying the marketing explosion that Halo 3 has.
Halo is somehow different. It has reached into the collective unconsciousness and seated itself as the universal game that is cool to play. You’re not going to find many people saying, “Dude, Halo is for nerds.” In fact, you’re more likely to hear body builders doing bench presses passing the time talking about how much they prefer the energy sword to the shotgun.
In truth there isn’t anything that separates the Halo series from dozens of games that came before it. It is a quality title of great merit, but it isn’t different in a way that should permanently change the market, but it has. Halo has changed the way society views the video game in dramatic ways. Today the release of Halo 3 is a global marketing event that is plastered over all forms of media. 5 years ago Pepsi would not have put out a brand of Mountain Dew called “Game Fuel” for the release of any other game, even though gamers were chugging down their regular flavor at alarming rates… present company included.
So where will we be in 5 or 10 years down the road? Will we be watching Halo 5 tournaments from the Seattle Halo-dome? Brought to you by Pepsi, the AARP and Century 21.