Juggernaut Strikes A Pose
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
Every so often, in each week’s avalanche of PR materials for upcoming content, something stands out. In this case, it’s Juggernaut’s new martial arts poses.
It stands out to me because it’s an interesting risk. And if there’s one thing we’ve all seen with Juggernaut, they’re not afraid to take risks. Some of those risks are fiscal successes and some are failures — as is true for any developer — but you always get the sense that George Cochrane and his posse don’t commit their resources to something unless it’s, at the very least, buzz-worthy. Which is quite important, because if Home 2013 is going to be anything like Home 2012, there will be so much virtual content coming out that Sony’s QA department will simply implode. There was a stretch of time, during the latter half of 2012, when it was so hectic that anything less than Bar Refaeli strapped to an atomic bomb ran a very real danger of being overlooked.
It was, and is, no longer good enough to just have a good product. You have to have some damn clever marketing to go with it. And with so many market segments thoroughly saturated in Home, you have to think asymmetrically.
So let’s look at this new product.
Martial arts poses?
Interesting.
Whether intentional or not, Juggernaut’s forcing us as a consumer base to ask some challenging questions of ourselves here. Although these are not the first new poses to emerge for sale in a post-1.7 Home marketplace, it does make us ask just how important new poses are to us, versus companions or flashier commodities such as locomotions. This is doubly true because these are highly customized poses: since they are very specifically related to martial arts, the range of contexts in which they could be used in Home diminishes greatly. This isn’t 2009, when anything out of the ordinary was gobbled up simply because of novelty and scarcity; this is 2013, in which Home users are flying around, riding bikes, and gobbling up new dance moves. Next to that, most poses seem…well, yesteryear.
It’s interesting to think about just how far consumer tastes have evolved in the last thousand days or so. There was a time when we’d all rush to buy a full-body outfit just because it had some new animation, some new action. Now we’re unhappy unless we get a locomotion that gives us the power of the Akagiyama-23 stricken with Saturday Night Fever. So when you look at something like these new martial arts poses, you naturally want complicated animations that go with them. You see a pose like that and you almost expect a full capoeira routine to go with it. But it appears that’s not the case.
I know it sounds like I’m panning Juggernaut’s new poses. I’m not. For what they are, they’re quite well done. And as a former martial arts instructor, I think it’s kinda cool to have something like this in Home. There are undoubtedly machinima creators in Home who will find these new poses quite useful, as anything which moves an avatar outside of the normal range of movements we’ve seen for the last four or five years is a welcome change. And, indeed, there are certain outfits with which these poses would actually look quite comical or dramatic.
Something else that’s new from Juggernaut to look at this week.
These poses do something else for Juggernaut, too: consumer consciousness.
There’s the old aphorism that if you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind. It can be argued that for Home developers, it’s important to have something coming out on a regular basis, no matter how simple or low-cost it might have been to create, just to keep your overall brand’s consciousness level fairly high with the consumer base. One of the challenges for small development houses is how to “root” oneself in the mind of the consumer when larger and more established developers can continue to release new content on a regular basis, and while not every new commodity is going to be a megahit sales leader, sometimes it’s just enough of a nudge to get a percentage of consumers to look at the rest of the brand catalogue, leading to greater overall monetization.
Right, then. Who’s up for some kung-fu fighting?
January 8th, 2013 by NorseGamer | 2 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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I’m ready to get these and see how they look with my gingerbread girl. Heeyah! Trolls beware!
This is also another good example of parallel development that you talked about in your Jewel of the Skies article. Apparently Konami had martial arts on their brain as well, because they released a Fighting Animation pack and I must say it rocks! These new poses will go together with Konami’s quite nicely.
Here’s something else you’ll find interesting. These particular poses were suggested to Juggernaut by me! lol
A few months back they did a Decorative Lounger picture contest on Twitter and I was lucky enough to be chosen as the winner. The prize was getting to design any pose for male and female avatars. What surprised me though is they ended up using all of the suggestions I made, and rather than just making one pose for both genders, they made three! It’s more than I ever could have hoped for and I’m thankful for having the opportunity to collaborate with one of Home’s best developers. So once again I must leave a big thank you to Elena and everyone else at Juggernaut Games! And thank you for writing this piece, Norse. It’s very thought provoking and definitely caught me by surprise!