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Truly gobsmacked by Epic's anti-Apple monopoly video that parodies Apple's classic "1984" Macintosh commercial. Here's a top-of-my-brain breakdown, as a video game AND computer historian:
First, gotta get the reference. The original ad Epic references aired only once, during the 1984 Superbowl. It used Cold War tropes to present a world of computing that was gray, repetitious, machinic, totalitarian. This was intended to represent IBM.
IBM had been known for decades as the monolith of the computer industry. IBM company men were defined by their pinstripe suits and buttondowns. They were the kind of company Ted Nelson would accuse of being "the computer priesthood," locking computers up away from everyday people
Traditionally, IBM made mainframes and minicomputers. But in 1981, IBM entered the personal computing horse race with the IBM 5150, better known as the IBM PC. EVERYONE in the early PC industry was worried about IBM, b/c they had massive credibility with businesses.
If you had to outfit yr Fortune 500 company w/ personal computers, were you gonna buy from some company founded in 1976, or a company that'd served your computing needs for decades. In many ways, the IBM PC mainstreamed the presence of computing in offices beyond custom installs.
This was a direct threat to Apple, which held major market share in the microcomputing industry, but was still mostly perceived as a very high end home computer or small business computer. And everyone new IBM had the economies of scale and capital reserves to win this fight
Apple had also struggled to develop anything more impressive than the Apple II (1977). The Apple /// (1980), intended as an office computer, was a bust. NO ONE wanted the $10k Apple Lisa workstation (1983). Jobs was way out of hand and had everything bet on the Mac.
The ad was developed by Chiat/Day and directly by Ridley Scott, who had just capped off BladeRunner and Aliens.
This is a nice video of one of the ad's creatives, Lee Clow, discussing the process:
This is a nice video of one of the ad's creatives, Lee Clow, discussing the process:
The ethos the ad tried to marshal was classic David and Goliath. Apple was the brazen upstart, the hot Germanic blonde throwing a sledgehammer in the broadcast messaging model that was brainwashing the masses. Apple would free your mind, change your paradigm.
Theres some sleight of hand here. Yes, the implementation of the GUI was a marvel. But the Mac also betrayed Jobs' obsession with end to end control. If you've seen Fassbender's Steve Jobs' biopic, you know the gag: you cant OPEN the damn thing.
u can think of the Mac as the starting point of Apple's 40 year march toward platform control. Closed systems. Want in? Gotta pay the toll. We've seen it with iTunes, with Apple OS, and it reaches its peak with Apple App Store, taking 30% for the privilege of being in the store.
Epic's #FreeFortnite ad makes the argument that David has become Goliath; the rebel has become the bureaucrat. But the next gen rebellion isnt hardware v. hardware. Its application v. platform. And to declare Apple a monopoly is to bring up the specter of IBM's own antitrust case
Epic's ad, of course, runs on the same fuel that Apple's did: a juvenile understanding of competition, a self-serving appeal to the authority of the consume. Epic is now the rebel, its pink-haired heroine tossing a unicorn break Apple's spell over a sea of hipster gamers
It's clever. Play vs. Control is a strong, pseudo-ethical marketing framework (appealing to our inherent "right" to play, as well as consume), and Epic knows there's nothing more annoying than gamers activated w/ shared grievance.
I'm not done thinking about this, but will ruminate on this more throughout the day. Happy for thoughts, questions, inquires as this unpacks. Also available for comment on stories/articles, shoot questions to: [email protected]
ok maybe i'm not done. like, perhaps the biggest gag of this is that's its EPIC, which is 40% owned by TENCENT, the largest telecommunications conglomerate on earth. like...this ain't exactly a scrappy upstart (but neither was Apple in 1984...)
