ANGEL OF INCOMPETENCE: Lara Croft - Death of a Brand

They realised this early. Journalists were junketed out to Egypt to impress upon them the quality of their exotic game even while the developers were finishing it in Derby. The heroine’s name and image were plastered on the cover of the game which could so easily have been made to look like an Indiana Jones clone.

And as the sales and admiring reviews poured in well into the summer, Lara was identified as the centre of the franchise. It was around this time that her creator Toby Gard left, later saying that he disliked this new direction, and insisting a little too hard that he doesn’t regret it. Jeremy Heath-Smith, meanwhile, had cut a deal based on the success of the icon that would earn him a fortune.

The machine started. Lara famously appeared on the cover of Face in the lead up to the sequel. This may be a rare instance of the importance living up to the hype – coverage of the character flourished as the self-appointed style guardians granted their approval. As a role model she was novel and strong. As a model, she was compliant.

Core managed to get the following game, now about hunting dragons in Venice and upturned ships, ready for Christmas. Talk in the industry was begging and hoping for the UK’s influential Official Playstation Magazine to burst the franchise bubble with a critical score. They damned it with a ten out of ten, sales surpassed its predecessor and the brand crystallised around the new game.

But there was something happening to Lara Croft’s world. Purists detected a dilution in the purity. The disturbingly enigmatic animals were supplemented by mute gun-toting goons, in whom similar behavioural routines seemed brainless and cheap. Other aspects gnawed away: the maps a little too big, there were a handful too many sliding block puzzles, the whole encounter was too familiar.

Core made a virtue of listening to the gamers’ feedback as a means to direct their development, but now they had a problem: post to magazines and newsgroups showed that as many fans liked the innovations, especially the occasionally mindless gunplay, as loathed it, and Core were being guided down uncomfortably diverging roads.

The follow up game would be essential to the brand. All the signs showed that 1998 would be the most important year yet for video gaming, with the market growing to encompass consumers entirely new to gaming. The industry talked about a new demographic paradigm without irony.

At this vital time, Tomb Raider had an identity crisis. Being all things to all gamers meant literally splitting the game into different styles for the third incarnation: a classic opening in India, urban fighting in London, high tech infiltration in Area 51. The game also boasted improved presentation and another couple of athletic abilities for the heroine, but that’s not what it is remembered for.

The third game was phenomenally, perilously difficult. Core seemed to be particularly sensitive to criticisms in the UK’s Official PlayStation Magazine that the previous game was too easy, so a new save system was offered. It was clever, but it accentuated traps built to ensnare veteran raiders – for everyone else in the world, the game was legendarily hard.

The Christmas of 1998 was the PlayStation’s breakthrough year of mass-market acceptance. Tomb Raider III was the first game that many novice gamers bought for the system, and perhaps had ever bought at all – too many of those never saw beyond the first level. Radio 4 listeners were treated to a lengthy review in which they heard four bemused social commentators continually impale their characters on spikes with seconds of starting the game.

But that didn’t matter: the game had sold well and Eidos was getting reputation for delivering decent quality earnings in the notoriously fickle entertainment software industry, albeit largely from one franchise and purchasing the rights to a series of mid-table titles from foreign publishers.

And the property itself had gone stratospheric. Face had lived up to its reputation as a harbinger of the zeitgeist – endorsements from Lucozade and Fiat, an abundance of merchandise, and a starring role in a U2 stadium tour were giving the brand snowball momentum. Models employed to portray Lara at press launches were becoming TV presenters and lad-mag celebrities. Douglas Coupland wrote a book on Lara. Rumours of a film abounded.

For all its reach, though, the success of the brand emanated from a player fan-base whose resilience was being tested. The latest game had been given the usual top score from the Official Magazine, but others were reigning in their enthusiasm. Long-term gamers were feeling déjà vu, and the high difficulty had failed to turn the important new consumers into advocates. By the spring, there were plenty of cheap copies to be had in second hand shops.