Poll of the Day > Who is the most recognizable video game character?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Sufferedphoneix posted...

Mario. It's like superman being the most recognizable superhero despite not being the most popular. Everyone who knows anything about comics knows superman. But tons of people who know nothing about comics also know superman

Batman has been bigger than superman for decades

Muscles posted...

Batman has been bigger than superman for decades

I'm still positive anyone who knows batman knows superman. You can probably then go to a third world shit hole where they don't have the luxury of being able to consume media then I'd bet more there would be familiar with superman. Batmans only leg up on supes state side is bats pushes more merch these days. But as said I'm confident anyone here who knows bats also knows super.

It's not about who's more popular it's about how many people know them

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Last time I heard a study on it, it was suggested that Mario has actually surpassed Mickey Mouse to be the most globally recognizable fictional character period.

So presumably Mario is still the most recognizable video game character, because I don't think any characters since have had the same level of global pop culture penetration. Some may be more recognizable in specific regions, but none have the full-spectrum appeal.

It really depends on the parameters used. Some updated lists still have Sherlock, some Mario or Santa, but most still go with Mickey. I also can't find any true studies on the topic that are even remotely recent.

Muscles posted...

Minecraft Steve? Might as well throw in the last dragonborn too if we want to disregard anything before the 2010s

It's not a matter of disregarding anything before the 2010's (Minecraft is actually pre-2010 itself, but that's beside the point), it's a matter of recognizing Minecraft's phenomenal staying power and status as a modern cultural icon, even among non-gamers. The Last Dragonborn fails to satisfy that last point, as does anything from Fortnite, because as much as Skyrim and Fortnite are huge among gamers (core and casual alike), they aren't nearly as recognizable to the general public (TES looks like pretty generic fantasy to laypeople, Fortnite like a pretty generic cartoonish game).

That said, as I mentioned earlier, Minecraft is mostly recognizable for its art style, not its characters. Plenty of non-gamers will recognize pretty much any distinctive asset from Minecraft as being from Minecraft (including stuff from other games with similar art styles, in the same vein as calling all consoles "Nintendo"), but I expect you'd be hard-pressed to find any that could actually name Steve or a Creeper (they could probably name a Cow, but that doesn't count). It's a very recognizable IP, but not so much on the character front.

DragonClaw01 posted...

Yeah, but merch is only for hardcore fans.

Quite the contrary: Buying the merch may be for more hardcore fans (though even then, a ton of it is sold to kids instead), but merch makes up a huge portion of non-fans' experience of the franchise. A non-gaming parent is really only going to see and pay attention to the gaming aisle 2-4 times a year, to get Christmas and birthday gifts for their gaming children. Any other visits where they buy games for their kids, the kids will likely be there and their role will be supervisory, rather than actually having to look at what's on the shelves.

By contrast, they see the branded clothing every time they buy kids' clothes. They see the toys every time they buy any sort of toys. They see posters with the most popular characters displayed anywhere that sells posters kids might want. They see and hear bits and pieces of TV shows and take their kids to movies. Especially for a series like Pokemon, where until very recently the games were overwhelmingly handheld and therefore not something a parent can catch in passing (and even then, the characters being used are too variable to pick out any one as being an iconic representation of the series), non-gamers' impressions of the series are going to be almost exclusively based on non-game media, with the games themselves not influencing much.

That said, Mario also has a strong presence in non-games media, on top of - as you say - being very prominently the face of every single one of his myriad games (which is the best-selling game franchise in the world by a huge margin). He lacks the TV show and movies that give Pikachu so much of his iconic status (the Mario TV shows and movie being largely forgotten by the general public, and I don't exactly have high hopes for the upcoming one to change that), but he was the face of video games for over a decade before Pokemon even showed up. Pikachu is an extremely recognizable, iconic character, but I expect Mario does indeed beat him in terms of overall recognition.

Zareth posted...

Minecraft has probably sold more copies than every Mario game combined

Source: I made it up

Not quite. The Minecraft franchise has sold 238 million copies (the vast majority of which are Minecraft itself, not the handful of spinoffs), while Super Mario (that is, the core platformers) alone has sold 384 million and the whole franchise has sold 760 million copies. Minecraft does extremely well in that comparison, given Mario's 30-year head start and the fact that most of Minecraft's sales have been a single game, but it still doesn't measure up to the juggernaut that is Mario.

adjl posted...

That said, as I mentioned earlier, Minecraft is mostly recognizable for its art style, not its characters. Plenty of non-gamers will recognize pretty much any distinctive asset from Minecraft as being from Minecraft (including stuff from other games with similar art styles, in the same vein as calling all consoles "Nintendo"), but I expect you'd be hard-pressed to find any that could actually name Steve or a Creeper (they could probably name a Cow, but that doesn't count). It's a very recognizable IP, but not so much on the character front.

On that, I would say the Creeper is more recognizable over Steve. The Creeper is more of a mascot to the series then Steve is. Plus the creeper name appears on more merchandise, Steves name is a bit obscure knowledge, as it doesnt appear as often.

Ogurisama posted...

On that, I would say the Creeper is more recognizable over Steve. The Creeper is more of a mascot to the series then Steve is. Plus the creeper name appears on more merchandise, Steves name is a bit obscure knowledge, as it doesnt appear as often.

Yeah games where it's first person has a harder time imo making the MC recognizable without it being story heavy that has cutscenes which show Said MC.

There are exceptions of course like doomguy.