Rage: Funny Blake Griffin commercial adds sizzle to the release
Let’s face it – the First Person Shooter (FPS) market is fast getting saturated. From blowing up space aliens to turning Mexican drug cartel henchmen into Swiss Cheese to blasting paranormal beings to hanging out at strip joints in between blast-a-thons, the diversity of FPS games runs a wide gamut. Yet they all work from the same general formula: weapons selection, first person perspective, graphic realism, and (lately) environmental destructibility.
Oddly, playing an FPS or worse – developing one – feels more and more like listening to the Blues. You see, while the Blues only has a very few chords, the rendition of an expert blues man can mean the difference between plunging the depths of your soul and getting in touch with your personal pain or just listening to annoyingly shallow guitar pluckings that fill your mind with the satisfying idea of getting your ticket money back. Sure, it sounds very dualistic. Manichean almost. But given the huge deluge of FPS titles out there, it’s easy to get jaded. That’s why the recent Rage commercial featuring LA Clippers great Blake Griffin puts Rage into a differing light.
Sure, Rage is a product of id Software, the same guys behind FPS classics as Doom and Quake. You’d think that pedigree alone would give Rage some bragging rights Sadly, the attention span of the FPS market is very short. It’s all about the next big thing. So if a funny commercial about Blake’s sad attempts at getting featured in Rage would give it some notoriety and differentiation from the rest of the FPS horde, good for them. They’re gonna need as much differentiation as they can get since this space is slowing turning into a battle between two series only – Battlefield and Call of Duty.
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