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PC Games (Games) PlayStation (Games) Entertainment Games

Lara's Identity Confused By Exploitation? 38

Posted by simoniker from the or-just-needs-a-good-game? dept.
Thanks to BBC News for their article exploring whether the diversification of the Tomb Raider brand has helped lessen it. The author points out: "Rather than consolidating the brand, the multiple incarnations [games, comics, public appearances, adverts, movies..] of the character seem to have diluted it which begs the question - who exactly is Lara today?" In fact, he suggests that the public may be forgetting Tomb Raider was a game: "At least Angelina Jolie seems to be giving the stunts and iffy dialogue of The Cradle Of Life her all. As such, she is arguably now more Lara than the original digital incarnation." As well as there being no single 'image' of Lara Croft, he concedes videogame quality may have a lot to do with it: "The [most recent] game itself is such a source of irritation that the personality of its heroine gets subsumed into the negative experience of playing it."
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Lara's Identity Confused By Exploitation? More

Lara's Identity Confused By Exploitation?

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  • 007 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LordNimon ( 85072 ) on Monday August 25, 2003 @10:35AM (#6783891)
    How is this any different than James Bond?

    • Re:007 (Score:2, Interesting)

      by NedR ( 701006 )
      I don't think there is that much of a difference. In my opinion, both James Bond and Lara Croft are incredibly shallow characters, but they continue to have incredibly substandard games and movies built around them simply by merit of being cultural icons.
      • Oh, come on. Goldeneye was possibly one of the best games of its time!

        Of course, most every bond game since has sucked. :D
    • How is it possible that you didn't notice Lara's breast ? :)

  • Wow. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Picass0 ( 147474 ) on Monday August 25, 2003 @10:42AM (#6783964) Homepage Journal
    Somebody got paid to write that article.

    I have to work for a living.

    I want to do nothing like that guy and make money.

    Is SCO hiring?

  • Lara is the brand (Score:5, Interesting)

    by neglige ( 641101 ) on Monday August 25, 2003 @10:43AM (#6783974)
    I think Eidos went the obvious way. The first game received so much media attention (for those two obvious reasons) which focused on Lara, and not the game. So the logical choice is to build a brand based on the character Lara Croft, not on the game.

    This makes it much easier to market products - all they need is Lara. And with that, you can sell movies, games, soft drinks, action figures, magazines, condoms...

    The question which figure (digital Lara or Angelina Jolie) is perceived as Lara is valid, but not necessarily relevant. If a product features a picture of either digi-Lara or A. Jolie doesn't really matter, a consumer will accept both of them and think of the product as an official Lara-product.

  • But the question remains... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mmaddox ( 155681 ) <oopfoo AT gmail DOT com> on Monday August 25, 2003 @10:47AM (#6784004)
    "Who really gives a shit?"

    This isn't some big icon of popular culture that's going to go down in history as a symbol for the age - it's a videogame and a couple of mediocre movies.

    Sheesh.

    • Re:But the question remains... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by neglige ( 641101 ) on Monday August 25, 2003 @11:25AM (#6784293)
      This isn't some big icon of popular culture that's going to go down in history as a symbol for the age

      I wouldn't be so sure of that. Ask anyone on the street if they know a figure from a computer game. I guess that the two most frequent answers are "Mario" and "Lara". Perhaps "Pac-Man". Or "Gordon Freeman". Or "Duke Nukem".

      Hmmm... sounds like a ./-poll.

  • ho hum (Score:2, Insightful)

    by drfrog ( 145882 )
    really is this any different from any of the super hero movies that have come out as of late?

    in the League of Extraordinary Gentleman comics
    tom sawyers isnt even in it.. whats her name isnt even a vampire....

    new teen titan cartoons they changed some characters drastically such as thunder and lightning dont even remotely look like they did in the comics

    xmen would been really lame with yellow spandex!

    hulk origin is drastically changed in the movie

    spider man never shot webbing outta his arm in the comics
  • What was lara about in the beginning? BOOBS. LOOKIE HERE AT MY BOOBS. LIMEY BOOOOOOOBS, CHECK OUT MY BOOOOOOOOBS. But somewhere in there, they actually managed to make a PRETTY GOOD GAME. So it sold like hotcakes. I would have bought TOMB RAIDER if it was Earl from "Toe Jam and Earl." The boobs weren't what made the game great. SINCE THEN, however, everything they have put out has been shit, INCLUDING those awful movies. The "Lara Croft" phenomenon has become nothing more than media-perpetuated bul
  • The latest Tomb Raider game has the dubious distinction of being the only game I've ever taken back to the video store to get my rental money back.

    Yuck.

  • Feminist icon? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GuyMannDude ( 574364 ) on Monday August 25, 2003 @01:00PM (#6785196) Journal

    There was once a time when she was being hailed as a "feminist cyber icon", a character who not only starred in a great game but also managed to become a household name.

    I doubt she was ever hailed as that by anyone with brains. She was the ultimate teenaged boy's dream: sexy girl with incredible knockers who kicks ass. A true "feminist cyber icon" would have kicked ass without the 42DDs and the daisy duke shorts.

    GMD

  • The end of the Lara era... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by achacha ( 139424 ) on Monday August 25, 2003 @01:58PM (#6785738) Homepage
    The progression was obvious and what we have now is a dilution of a brand. When the first one came out the pixels were large and graphics were grainy, people used their imagination and made lara into a sex object. At that time the controls and camera were not the best but given the state of technology it was not unexpected.

    Many years passed and every subsequent release was barely an improvement of the previous, camera work was still poor, graphics were not leading edge (or even close), gameplay too tedious and frustrating.

    Lara became a marketing engine more than a game, that is the dicotomy. Eidos concentrated on selling Lara rather than making her a game heroine (unlike games like Gabriel Knight where the game improves with every release due to the software company's dedication).

    Licensing to consoles also dampened the character as the implementations were less than stellar.

    Lara Croft when introduced was a fun, spelunking game that was enjoyable by people of all ages, as time went on it was molded into a game that only males 15-29 could enjoy and the gameplay mechanics became too annoying to enjoy the real goal of the game, adventure.

    The latest installment is the proverbial nail in the coffin. The story is weak at best, the controls are atrocious, the came is downright poor and overall the game becomes an excersize in frustration after about 10 minutes of playing it (once you enter the first room and to find things you have to manually rotate the camera and click 30 times to finally get things to open.

    It's just sad to see greed overwhelm creativity (but is anyone surprised?)

  • who is lara? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Monday August 25, 2003 @02:17PM (#6785942) Homepage
    "who exactly is Lara today?"

    An over commercialized, mass-marketed, money-maker for Hollywood whose sole purpose is to tie in new products under the same brand umbrella and sell it to the sheep.....errr...public.

  • ...yeah, I guess the diminishing sales of Laura Croft related items is because of diversification.

    It couldn't be the tired, uninnovative, poorly QA tested, rushed to market games...or the typical videogame-licensed movie that reeks of B Action flick.
  • ...is that when I saw 'Lara' in the headline, I automatically assumed it was Lara Croft.

  • I don't think the problem is too much exploitation. After all, that's what the modern entertainment business is built on. Harry Potter, Star Wars, everything else is exploited just fine without the brand losing value. In case of Lara the problem might simply lie in the fact that two primary brand development engines - games and movies aren't so hot.

    If I was a brand manager at Eidos, I would concentrate on making the next game really good. Scrap the plans to reuse the engine for several games. Make a couple

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