ANGEL OF INCOMPETENCE: Lara Croft - Death of a Brand

Toby Gard, the original designer of Tomb Raider, left after the first game because he thought he could do better elsewhere. Jeremy Heath-Smith, who managed the development of the franchise, has resigned, so the grapevine says, because after delivering a title very late to poor reviews, he could hardly have done worse.

Or has he? Surely this talented and remarkably well-paid man deserves both credit and a rest after guiding the cult gaming figure Lara Croft to becoming an international brand. But there’s the problem: the image may have been vital to the success of the games, but in the end the games were the heart of the brand, and no matter how great the behemoth became, it was always vulnerable.

The mistake with Tomb Raider games has always been to assume that their success relied on the sordid appeal of the heroine to the core adolescent gaming market. Not so, at least not wholly: countless similar female characters had appeared games before, usually with lacklustre performances. The risqué Lara Croft was always considered a risk, but she somehow survived through numerous iterations in the development of the first game and the purchase of the developers, Core, by the fledging video software company Eidos.

There is something essential about the character, though. Identifying with the hero of a game – caring when they achieve or die – is important, more so in third person games. Players tend to project themselves onto avatars in a game – conventionally muscular and aggressive characters can be a barrier to this, but the iconic and capable Lara was an easy vessel for empathy. This was aided too by being a joy to control – jumping and tumbling about quickly became second nature. And if she was unsubtle, then at least she was, well, clearly feminine.

Lara Croft’s chief talent in the first game, though, was breaking and entering impressive tombs and temples that have lain unnoticed for eons and making off with the contents. In keeping with the language of video games, these were populated not only with ammunition and medical supplies, but increasingly endangered animals and elaborate traps that always allowed for her escape. There was a plot too – not of any great depth, an ancient intrigue involving aliens – but given that players at the time were too often used to mundane repetitions of a game’s mechanics, this was unanticipated drama nonetheless.

While playing, the gamer had the unnerving feeling that they were participating in a giant puzzle, competing against an unseen force embodied in the walls themselves. They were, of course, in that the developers had spent months adjusting the levels to draw in and challenge the players. It only took a slight shift in perception to believe that this was the design of ancient architects, a shift easily achieved by the atmosphere drawn from the immersive artwork and ground-breaking graphics engine.

Importantly, the environments were all but uninhabited. Wild animals may have prowled, and the occasional villain taunted you on, but in as much as it mattered you were on your own. Or at least, the heroine was.

And this was the key to the brand. After weeks in her company, months if you were incompetent, gamers had an affinity with the character which personified their addiction to acrobatics and deserted ruins. From nothing, and with barely any marketing, Lara Croft had become a grass roots gaming star. It was a brilliant asset that was Eidos’s to spend or squander.