When Cowell Attacks

10 Dec 2009 at 00:00:00 by Andy Alderson

Yesterday was not a good day for the world of gaming. First came the news that, despite tireless lobbying, the British government has rejected a proposal for tax breaks for game developers, which is likely to result in Britain falling even further behind the competition. And, as if that wasn't enough to put a dampener on things, there was worse to come. What followed was what we'd all been fearing. What followed was soundtracked by Orff's “O Fortuna.” What followed was Simon Cowell.
 
Yes, the man who so fiendishly combines two retro hairdos (the centre parting and the flat top) is apparently ready to set his sights on the world of gaming and has joined forces with Topshop mogul Philip Green to court Sony. The aim of this dastardly enterprise, it seems, is to create an entertainment empire to rival Disney, with Cowell admitting that games must play a part in this. Never one to pass up a money-spinner, he is apparently impressed with the success of music games like Guitar Hero and wants to get himself some of that action.
 
“I should have 20 games [by now],” said Cowell, confirming that, when the inevitable happens and he forces his chubby fingers into the gaming pie, we can expect a focus on quantity rather than quality. And let's for a moment consider the state of the music game market, shall we? While there is undoubtedly a lot of quality in the market, Cowell is a few years too late having missed the real music game boom. Now we have EA announcing that, despite aggressive marketing, the Rock Band franchise is still not profitable and we have a market that is becoming increasingly saturated with music titles. Personally, I'm convinced we're only a few weeks away from Guitar Hero: Wet Wet Wet. 
 
But we will just have to come to terms with the fact that once Simon Cowell sets his mind on something, chances are he's going to ruin it. Cowell's record in the music and TV industries should surely be enough to tell us what to expect when he makes the move to gaming. This is the man who brought us the flaccid-jazz stylings of Curiosity Killed The Cat and the explosive Robson and Jerome. This is the man who released music by (then) WWF stars. This is the man who now dominates television.
 
See, Cowell, in a meglomaniacal stroke of genius, has ensured that he's on television almost all year round via his ITV residency. Between X Factor, Americon Idol, America's Got Talent, Britain's Got Talent and Germany's Got Boundary Issues, there is barely a moment when he's not on our screens. It's like this evergreen prick has moved in to my flat. Sometimes when I've just been to the toilet, I half-expect to hear “well, as a shit, Andy, it lacked believability.”

To the objective observer it seems as if Cowell operates entirely on the principles of saturation and exhasution, something which the industry is arguably already doing pretty well itself. We don't need Cowell to make it worse. The appeal of a Cowell TV show is that it is a spectacle. It's pantomime, updated.  While this often makes for passable entertainment, we must also look at the downside - a Cowell TV show is also tacky, formulaic, lazy and frequently dishonest - and at the effect he has had on TV. Shows like X-Factor and American Idol and the Got Talent brand are contributing heavily to the ideas drought in primetime television at the moment  and are largely the reason why money isn't spent on good writing and original concepts.Do we really want to see this kind of mercenary attitude in the games industry?

So when I heard that Cowell and Green are in talks with Sony's Howard Stringer my heart sank. Then I found that photo of Cowell above, thought of the games industry for a moment, and realised it pretty much represented a statement of intent.

Leave games alone, Cowell. Take something else. You can have sport or something.

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