Ed Catmull, resident genius and president of Disney and Pixar animation (yes, the guy behind Catmull-Rom splines, beautiful tools for computer animators everywhere) gave an address at my alma mater a while back, describing how his companies were trying to create a third Golden Age for Disney animation. I wish I had the talk on tape, since there were a LOT of great thoughts in it. For the moment, though, a few words on his comments about goodwill and B-work.
The Disney Direct to DVD division (DDTDD?) has been able to make money from such fare as Cinderella 2 and Jungle Book 2… but they just aren’t much to speak of as far as movies go. (Let’s also offer a moment of silence for the Land Before Time Neverending Sequelitis, shall we? It’s not Disney, but the same principle applies.) That’s what Mr. Catmull calls “B-work”, and not only is it bad for the soul of the artists and producers, but also the audience. Unnecessary sequels of beloved movies can taint the rose-tinted glasses that are a core component of our goodwill. I’m sorry, but John Goodman just can’t compare to Phil Harris as Baloo, and Herbie the Love Bug should have stayed in the 60s. (Not that it was all that fantastic to start with… but Lindsay Lohan? Really?)
Oddly, though I don’t like Goodman’s Baloo, I actually liked TaleSpin. It was on the tail end (ha!) of the golden age of Disney TV (DuckTales is still the best TV cartoon I’ve ever seen), and thoroughly enjoyable. I’d have loved to have a cloud surfer… thing. Well, that, and a parachute. Perhaps TV is “B-work” compared to film, but in their realm, DuckTales, Rescue Rangers, Gargoyles and TaleSpin were A-list productions. Modern animated fare doesn’t even compare; it’s like Yogi Bear vs. Scrooge McDuck, George McFly vs. Mike Tyson, Runescape vs. WoW.
B-Work can be profitable, to be sure… but it is soul-destroying mediocrity. In Mr. Catmull’s words: “B-work is bad for the soul.”
One of the key ideas that Mr. Catmull noted is that despite being decidedly subpar, B-work can still be profitable. Cinderella fans buy the sequels for their children on the strength of the name. Slapping “Disney” on the side of a movie almost guarantees sales… at least, for a while. Mr. Catmull suggested that those B-work sales are active withdrawals against the goodwill banked in the Disney name. The spectacular successes of Beauty and the Beast or the emotional heft of Up increase the value of the Disney name. Tarzan 2 callously cashes in on the appeal of the original and contributes nothing to the brand or parent name. It makes money because the original succeeded, and wouldn’t stand on its own as anything but the B-work that it is.
I’ve seen more than a few pundits suggest that Blizzard could put horse feces in a box and sell it for $60. They can sell a digital horse for $25 without even selling a box with it, and time will tell if StarCraft 2 is crap (only $100 for the Collector’s Edition of 1/3 of the game), so there’s some truth to the joke. Blizzard can bank on the goodwill generated by its history. It might be noted that they could have sold WarCraft Adventures, probably in record numbers… but they decided to scrap it because it wasn’t up to their internal demands. It’s hard to cut something like that with promise, but like pruning a slightly rotting branch on a tree, sometimes it’s necessary to maintain company health and brand reputation. People would still have bought the game, but it might have wound up being profitable in spite of its own quality, by withdrawing money from the goodwill banked in the Blizzard and WarCraft names. Blizzard did salvage the story from the game, both in a novel and as canon to the setting of WoW, so they didn’t totally throw that work away, but the choice to kill the game release was likely a hard one.
We can’t be sure, true, but it’s an interesting case study and comparison to the awful offal that sometimes comes out of the Disney Direct to DVD grindhouse.
We might also look at Turbine’s DDO “offer wall” slipup and subsequent retraction, as well as Mythic’s WAR billing fiasco and apparently repentant offerings to those affected. Compare that to Allods Online and their item shop pricing sucker punch… and how it wasn’t fully retracted and went downhill from there. (Yes, yes, the shop prices are merely economic Darwinism in action, and not really evil in themselves, but they weren’t managed well despite some glowing beta testing reports. That’s where the goodwill broke down.)
Goodwill is a currency, albeit a fuzzy one, and managing it can be the backbone of a company’s health. Daniel James of Three Rings (Puzzle Pirates) has argued that love is the heart of modern game sales in this article that I’ve cited more than once for good reason. (Tangentially, Mr. James was also writing about DRM, and for one great example of how DRM affects goodwill, need we look further than Ubisoft?)
The trick is to make great products that are profitable and deposits to the goodwill bank. Pixar has managed to do this very well, without a stinker in their library. Sure, some of their movies will appeal to some people more than others (I still don’t particularly like Finding Nemo, but I like it better than 90% of other movies), but I don’t think that any of their offerings have been an active withdrawal against the Pixar and Disney names.
It’s no accident that Pixar and Blizzard are giants in their fields. They deposit more than they withdraw from the goodwill bank.
…there are all sorts of political, sociological and interpersonal parallels that could be explored there, but I’ll leave that to the imagination.
Goodwill banking is not that different from Image, isn’t it. Cryptic will have a hard time with their 3rd MMO, given the reception of CO and STO, just to call out a company with debts in the gamer goodwill department.
For me Blizzard has reached the turning point.
Some privacy issues with Battle.net and their games, Sparkly Horse, selling the same Cr… Craft for a 2nd time, talking about Starcraft II here, but in three parts and probably even more for optional maps over Battle.net -> was it the Activision/Blizzard merger or do they plant to turn some more goodwill into cash?
Yeah, great article. They can pull occasional stunts, but they can’t exploit their public on the big things or there will be a mass defection from their products.
Yes, you could call it “Image” as well, though I’d say that it also includes brand loyalty, which is a little deeper than image. You’re right with Cryptic… I knew I was forgetting someone. 😉
I agree that Blizzard is on a bit of a bubble. Whether it’s a peak where they slide into goodwill withdrawal or a plateau before the next big push, I’m not sure. I do know that I’m not likely to pick up SC2, despite loving the original. The tripartate split and concurrent cost and lack of LAN play kills the deal for me. Oh, and it might wind up rated M, apparently, which also means I’m out. (Which is also why Diablo is irrelevant to my purchasing plan; I get my dungeon crawling from Torchlight.)
I’d say nah, actually. I mean, look at it this way – they need to have your goodwill and…how much do you need to have their goodwill?
Not at all.
That’s a terrible/terribly lop sided relationship to enter into.
Nah, I’d say instead it’s more the confirmation bias money pit model. Like one example I’ve heard given is of people who own about $2K worth of white wolf table top roleplay books.
Now, when they own $2k of them, how open minded and willing do you think they are to hear any fault in that product?
Not at all – it’d make them feel really, really stupid. Not to mention the identity politics – it gets to be like a football team.
I mean, moving onto mmo’s, that’s why it’s all ‘the game really starts at end game!’. Why? Because people would look stupid if they had spent all that time and money getting there then said ‘Uh, actually it sucks’. They have to find ways in which end game is great, in order to avoid looking stupid.
The amount of investment in the product bias’s their own responce. If they had been given a top level character on day one for free, they might actually say it’s not their cup of tea. Levels do that as well ‘Well, I already got five levels, I may as well play a little more’
I think goodwill is, with the current set up, a bad relationshop. Sure alot of mmo gamers think they have a relationship with the company – it’s just very profitable to not dispell that notion.
Or so my inner bastard would describe it.
You’re on the money. Given the history of how Activision has acted with Infinity Ward, I worry there’s going to be a lot of “withdrawals” from the goodwill bank here soon to make a pile of cash at Blizzard’s expense.
Hopefully I’m wrong. But, all the indicators are pointing that direction.
I’m in the beta for SC2 and I don’t think people buying it will be disappointed. Why not? Because it IS Starcraft 1.
As a rather casual Starcraft player I can barely tell the difference between the two games. There are a lot of minor innovations, new units, nice modern game select screen in battlenet. But the three races play the same, mainly have the same key units and the game interface is almost unchanged.
Possibly there may be a goodwill hit because it’s too similar. Had I paid $100 for this game and thought “oh, it’s just Starcraft, I’ve already got that” I might have been annoyed.
But then again, being cheap I never pay $100 for anything and I suspect that Starcraft will be in a box and that I’ll be able to buy that box for £10 6 months after launch.
Oh, and another thing.
I’ve seen very little evidence suggesting that people who spent $25 are unhappy. It’s an odd form of goodwill economics that the people who didn’t part with a cent are the ones who withdrew an amount of goodwill.
I’m really glad you mentioned TV animation. I’ve always wondered if I was the only one who thought that way. They have so many Land Before Time sequels that they stopped numbering: like 20 or so. Ducktales and Talespin were both excellent. So was the original Batman: the animated series.
We will see this in action soon. Bioware has a lot of goodwill with TOR, and you can see it in forum replies. Even the trolls are subdued. Very good post.
Stabs, why’s it odd? Do you have to pay to go and see jungle book 2 or otherwise it’s odd for you to dislike what they’ve done, based on reviews you’ve heard?
Maybe I’m alone in this, but I have always enjoyed the direct to Disney DVD movies. Sure, they’re lame, but when I want something silly and fun, I would rather curl up with one of those or a SyFy original than almost anything else.
But you’re right. It tarnishes the name of a good company if they never actively admit these portions are second-rate. We all know that game, movie, and book companies have “B-team” imprints. Wouldn’t it be so much easier for everyone if they embraced that B-ness and went wild? Sometimes I think SyFy has, and that’s why things like “Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus” exist.
Self-aware business of any kind can find a market, even in MMOs, I think.
I think that’s pretty damn unfair of Mr. Catmull, actually. Those sequels, merely by being made for DVD not cinema, were never trying to pass themselves off as classics equal to the originals. They are sold as a cheap substitute for babysitting, and they work spectacularly well for that. (He’s quite right about them being bad for the artists’ souls though.) Anyway, the classics remain unchanged – they are still as good as ever, regardless of the company’s current reputation.
MMOs are different. They change over time, hope for recurring income from the same customers on a single game, and also have to maintain a critical mass of players to be effective. You’d think it would be far, far more important to game companies to maintain customer goodwill.
I agree that B-rate entertainment can be bad for the soul, and big studios need to maintain their goodwill bank.
I would suggest, though, that individual developers (artists, programmers, etc.) benefit by the existence of the additional employment they offer, often while waiting for something A-rate to hit. Not only that, but they also allow places for developers with less experience to grow and learn their trade better.
I’m a game artist, and my first game was “Tom and Jerry Tales DS”. You don’t get much more B-rated than that. But I had a job 😀
Can I just say that in some old doctor who episodes, you could see the set shaking.
There’s shonkily made, but made with heart. And there’s shonkily made…with no heart.
Indeed there’s even made super professionally stuff out there…with no heart.
It’s the heart and passion that matters, even if the set wobbles or the boom mike swings past every so often. I think, anyway.
This is a subject that affects everything, not just games and films. For instance it heavily affects the industry I work in although fortunately I don’t want to say too much in case I get into trouble. But suffice to say, this idea of just churning out mediocrity in order to turn a buck is everywhere and it’s very, very soul destroying.
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