If time is money, then I have invested a fortune in ‘The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim’, role-playing as the unstoppable wizard-warrior-dragonborn Dark Elf in the magical fantasy world that Bethesda Game Studios created.
What brought me back to this 2011 video game? A chance encounter with the YouTube videos of Young Scrolls, an extremely talented musician who makes banger beats remixing and auto-tuning the voice files of the Elder Scrolls games. From ‘Dagothwave’, a synth-wave track featuring the antagonist of ‘Elder Scrolls: Morrowind’ (2001), to Zoom, an album by the game’s flamboyant Daedric god of madness, Sheogorath (he adorns the album cover in a Louis Vuitton robe).
It is hard to decide what is more impressive—the music or the lore behind it. Take Jiub, a former assassin and drug addict. Morrowind’s gameplay was often criticised for its pterodactyl-like ‘cliff racers’, who would attack players from the sky and could be difficult to manage in groups. Bethesda removed cliff racers from their next game, Oblivion (2006), presumably after player feedback. To justify the disappearance of an entire species, they added to the lore: Jiub, repenting his ways after prison, gave back to society by eradicating the cliff racers, a feat that nearly killed him. For his feats, the god Vivec christened him Saint Jiub.
From this fictional rags-to-riches story, Young Scrolls built an EP. In ‘Filthy Rich’, Jiub is flashy, wealthy and egotistical, rapping, “Chase the bag, kid, never chase a dame; I was grinding, you was dreaming, I don’t care to know your name.” (In Morrowind, Jiub is the first person to ask you your name, so that line does sting.) I named my Skyrim character Jiub in homage.
Young Scrolls testifies to the potential of Machinima: The art of film-making using video game-generated footage. His music videos demonstrate just how far a game’s fan-base can take its lore and material, long after its release.
Take the web series Red vs Blue, made of footage from the Halo first-person shooters. It predates YouTube, having begun in 2003, and has now crossed 18 seasons. Initially made with Xboxes (circa 2001), the show dubs voiceovers over gameplay footage of nodding helmeted (therefore, faceless) characters. The absurdist and comedic result was compelling enough to create a storyline that has crossed 300 episodes—now blending movie-grade CGI animation with gameplay-generated footage.
For Microsoft, which owns the Halo franchise, shows like Red vs Blue act as a form of organic PR for their games, and testify to the dedication of their players. The Redmont-based company, unsurprisingly, is betting big on gaming, having gone on a spending spree picking up video game companies. It recently acquired Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion—a few billion shy of India’s 2020 defence budget.
But the adage, “You have to spend money to earn money”, suggests that eye-wateringly large investments can pay off. In 2009, Disney acquired the rights to Marvel Entertainment for a paltry $4 billion. A decade later, by 2019, that investment had paid off over $18 billion at the global box office. But Microsoft makes $15 billion a year from gaming alone.
From Activision-Blizzard, Microsoft can claim the ‘Call of Duty’ games, among the world’s most popular first-person shooters with tens of millions of concurrent players across mobiles, PC and console; the ‘World of Warcraft’ MMO, whose in-game economy is considered among the pioneers of metaverses and virtual markets; and the ‘Candy Crush’ games, whose 27-crore monthly player-count dwarves most nations. There is also the $7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda, completed in 2021.
‘The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim’ (2011), ‘World of Warcraft’ (2004) and ‘Candy Crush’ (2012) are old games. But that does not mean they cannot evolve—or make money when in the right hands.