The Ozzy Osbourne Game?
Now that the KISS game is out, another aging rocker is trying his hand at making a computer game: Ozzy Osbourne.  The Black Sabbath alum has begun work on music for a new game, Ozzy’s Savage Skies, that is billed as a fully-3D vehicular combat game with first person shooter elements.   The developer is the new studio iRock, put together from former employees of companies such as Interactive Magic and funded by Virtus, a partner in Red Storm, the company responsible for Rainbow 6.

Is it just me, or does it seem like the industry is going back to bringing in Hollywood talent to justify the games they are making?  We saw a similar theme a few years ago with all the FMV titles, and now it appears as if musical artists aren’t just contributing tracks to a game, but rather lending their name and likeness to the actual product.  The way David Bowie was integrated into Omikron was smart – great music and a limited role – but it wouldn’t have made sense to make the game, “David Bowie’s Omikron,” would it?

More often than not. the added name recognition a celebrity brings to a game creates suspicion among gamers – we wonder, why couldn’t this game just be Savage Skies as opposed to Ozzy’s Savage Skies?  While it’s certainly possible the game will be something special, there’s also a distinct possibility that this will be a game created only to further leverage the Ozzy Osbourne brand into the computer market.  I wish the developers luck, but it probably would have been a much better idea to just get Osbourne to contribute music and leave his involvement at that.  Savage Skies is scheduled for release in 2001.