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Diary of an Aging Gamer
eToyChest has an insightful column up looking at the realities of the modern game store shelf, and how the titles there relate to the youth of today. From the article: "This year's summer trip to the software store made one thing very clear to me: In its efforts to follow initial adopters into adulthood, the videogame industry has--inadvertently or otherwise--left children in the dust.
There is no denying the fact that today's kids aren't going to have the same experience we had when we were young. Back then, the bread and butter of the big game companies (i.e., Atari, Sega, Nintendo and others) was the child market. Games were appealing to grown-ups, too--if only for the tech factor--but appealing to the kids was where the most money could be had. Walking into the game store meant finding a wall full of games dedicated to the young player."
Leaving children behind? Well, duh... Adults seem to have far more money to spend than children. Just follow the money and there's your market.
The game industry only follows the money, but if it continues like this, they will only lead themselves to a generational gap, where millions of young kids are uninspired by games, if this situation is not rectified what happens when all of us "first gen'ers" get tired of games? The bubble bursts.
I plan on introducing my kids to the classics with simple gameplay like Mario, Tetris, Asteriods and the like.
Forget all those complicated "hit points", not enough mana, and other things that are best left to more complicated games. I further reccomend this route to any person that is new to gaming or just jaded of current titles. Now I didnt RTFA when I started this comment, but I see it says much the same as I have.
There is truth in humor.
I don't think they've left the children behind. They just haven't given up on their first customers, and now they've got that much more market. Let's use RPGs as an example.
Pokemon: cute, easy to learn, good value. This one's for kids. You've just introduced a 10 year old to hit points and turn based battles.
Final Fantasy: middle of the road. This one's accessible to everybody, but adults will probably do better than your average 13 year old. The stories are starting to pick up here.
Disgaea: almost definitely for a more mature (read patient) crowd. The story is there, but the focus is now on the battles themselves. The thinking person will definitely triumph over the button-masher here.
By the time little Johnny grows up, he'll have made it through all three types of RPG, and along the way he'll have given the video game industry its fair share of his money.
Games appeal to everybody. _That's_ what game developers have realized. They can sell to 20 year olds just as well (if not better) as they can to 10 year olds.
e2 | LJ
While M rated games are great sellers, there are still awesome games for kids (and not just at Nintendo). Some recent examples that come to mind are Katamari Damacy, Gran Turismo 4, and SSX3 (although SSX isn't that great, it's still fun for a while). And, if you wish to go the Nintendo route, you have loads of stuff that is fun for both kids and adults; Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon. . .
Besides, you can always get a PC and hook them on Minesweeper and Solitare. Or SimCity and the like. Or hit up one of those free flash or java games sites (obviously NOT Newgrounds).
One thing that I like to do is to browse the cheapie Computer game section and get the old classics for a few bucks.
With so many ppl on
The key right now is buying the right console. I own all three - a Gamecube, Xbox, and PS2.
There are plenty of games for the Gamecube that will appeal to kids. They have simple game mechanics, relatively simple controls, and colorful and meaningful graphics. The awesome thing about Nintendo-developed games is that they're also very in-depth - they can appeal to almost any age.
When I want an opinion on gaming, I can come to slashdot and read the comments. I don't really understand why anyone thinks they are so interesting they can write about games and we will all eat it up. Anyways, I might understand if it was a person who knew what they were talking about.
So why do I disagree with this guy so much? Because he makes a mistake that a lot of people do on Nintendo threads when they talk about Sony and the Playstation. He states that Sony changed gaming to be adult focused. Ok, Sony is not a game company, they make consoles. Sony did not change their focus on adult gamers, the industry saw a market and shifted that way. Nintendo on the other hand, does make games. So you can say Nintendo makes great game that focus on fun. You can fault Sony for not making great games though, they let 3rd parties make the game. So his argument there is stupid.
The rest of his article is just silly at best. Yeah, stuff changes, deal with it. A long time ago, movies didn't have sound or voice...it will never be the same again. Let's all pout that our kids can't experience the stuff that we see through rose colored glasses. Guess what bud, buy your kids a nintendo and a bunch of games and they can experience 8-bit glory. Most likely they won't be that interested because we see this stuff through kids eyes. It's not as good as we remember (in most cases). So just give your kids one of the hundreds of titles available on any modern console and stop whining. Or maybe, tell them to use their imagination. Did you not have that as a kid?
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
In the last ten years, the game market has turned into shit.
There's really nothing new. There are piggy-backed enhancements of first person shooters, which culminate in hyper-twitching frag-fests like Halo and Unreal, or anti-social technoligized anarchist stupidity like GTA. And what's left over are the same tired RPGs and war games. It gets old real quickly.
There have been some promising games in development. I think SWG was really trying to be revolutionary, but that game has been murdered by corporate overlords who have micromanaged the design so that the game is essentially unplayable. That goes for most of the MMORPGS.
Don't even get me started on console games. The last console I bought was the N64. There were maybe a half-dozen decent games, and then the rest were crap that was stupid and badly designed. It used to be that anything that made it to cart was considered decent quality, but that's not the case any more. There's nothing more soul-sucking than spending money for a game that bores or frustrated you a half hour into it.
There is a reason why the game industry is in a glut. They're making crap. They've become too big and slow and dumb. They keep putting a fresh coat of paint on the latest thing from 1994 and finally people are tired of it.
I've skipped several generations of consoles. I still have no desire to get one. I don't think I've missed a goddam thing either, which is a sad state of affairs.
With the PSP being popular, the blowback from suck-ass game developers is beginning to turn full circle. The older the software supported, the more likely people won't throw the stuff in the trash because the new software sucks. I expect this trend to continue until people rediscover Missile Command, Joust, Asteroids, Robotron, Stargate and the hundreds of truly original and creative games from the 80s. If you think about it, there was more innvoation in six months of any given year from 1980-1990 than there has been in the entire last decade. Pathetic.
This month's Game Informer has an article addressing this same issue. I think the title was "The Greying of the Super Mario Crowd" or something similar. Basically, the article talked about how the game industry is catering to the people who played Mario Bros as kids, but are now older and have more mature tastes. When they were younger, they played Nintendo; when they aged, Nintendo was too kiddy for them, so they migrated to SNES and Sega. Then it was PS, then it was PS2 and so on.
While I think this is a great idea, I have to disagree with the idea that the game industry is more focused on older gamers. I used to work for a game publisher (the one we're all sick of hearing about these days) and our most profitable games were not the M or Teen rated games, but the kids' games. I never would have thought that if I hadn't started working there, but I think it's because we're all older and out of touch with what kids (10 and under) are into.
I don't think the industry needs to market to these kids though. Most of the kids games tie in to some kind of cartoon, kids movie (Charlie And the Chocolate Factory, anyone?), toy, etc. The kids already know of the characters and would probably want to buy the game just because it has their favorite cartoon character on the box. The thing with these games is that it's parent-friendly too. A non-game-savvy parent may stop by Toys R Us on the way back from work to pick junior up a treat. Is the parent going to buy some game he's never heard of, but there are posters of all over the store? Probably not. The parent will buy Kids Next Door or Britney's Dance Beat because he knows junior likes watching that on TV.
Is there any quantification for this or is it simply one random dude's anecdotal evidence? Sorry, but I don't trust gaming "journalists" to know d!ck-all about gaming beyond their own noses.
Moo
Yes, rehashing the same characters over and over and over and over - innovative indeed!
So did commedia dell'arte. Your point?
It makes sense that computer games, like any other form of media, should have a market representation similiar to other media. Just look at childrens books, childrens movies, childrens TV shows... all quite a niche market.
It hasn't been in the past, but this is only evidence that the market is still growing and maturing.
The same follows for women in gaming. Women don't necessarily like watching action movies, so why should the same women be expected to like playing action games? As more women become involved in the industry they will be able to shape it towards the kinds of games they enjoy playing.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Even worse - I had to explain two things that a Dad doesn't want to have to explain to an 8 year old daughter after a stroll through the game isle at CompUSA:
* Why do they always show pictures of girls with their underwear on on the front of boxes?
* How come people like blood so much?
Of course, I cut through the phone isle to miss the pop CD section...
-- $G
Because if sepia was good enough for me when I was a kid, it's damn well good enough for the children nowadays!
I wonder if the author considered the fact that games from the Atari and NES ages barely could render people (more like stick figures).
Nudity would have been laughable (X-Rated games from the Atari VCS days were truly bad). Blood would have been red blocks. Cutesy characters and pixelized tanks were the limit of those systems.
Also, has he seen any of the old Atari and Intellivision ads? There were quite a few adults playing the games in those commercials. They were trying to sell to everyone back then.
Note to author, stop reminiscing about the "good ole days" and write something of substance.
Sure, Windows PCs dominate the market. But so do cheap toupees.
Women don't necessarily like watching action movies, so why should the same women be expected to like playing action games?
A lot of the traditional interests of women would probably be AI-complete to simulate. Women are thought to like chick flicks, which tend to be heavier on the drama than a typical action movie. It's a lot harder to simulate emotional responses to English sentences than it is to simulate the effects of a bullet.
Try Walmart or Best Buy instead of EB Games.... There are TONS of childrens titles out there. There are lots of flash games for kids too. Somebody should take the keyboard away from some people.
If I had to guess, the reason there are fewer "child" games on the shelves is the same reason there are fewer "child" movies in theatres.
The fact is that your market of 18-35 year olds is the one that is most likely to spend money on things like video games. Your 18 year olds don't have the money to spend (and parents can only spend so much) and your 35+ give their interests to other things.
While it may be depressing for this author, you can't blame the game industry for realizing their market and going after it.
-David
If I had to guess, the reason there are fewer "child" games on the shelves is the same reason there are fewer "child" movies in theatres.
Answer: Because publishers are stupid. Analogy to movies distributed by MPAA studios: There are 12 times as many R movies as G movies first published in the past year, but the mean G movie has grossed 12 times as much as the mean R movie. So you get the same box office revenue from one G movie as from 12 R movies, but it's generally cheaper to make one G movie than to make 12 R movies.
Your 18 year olds don't have the money to spend (and parents can only spend so much)
Take out "can only" and you've described the gaming situation in several households that I've seen.
Ever felt a need to complain about 11 year olds in a MMO? I know I've seen several people complain. And in one Taskforce on COH when someone said he had to go and he'll let his son control the character, the answer from the team leader was swift: "Is he older than 13?"
It's not even about kids as such, it's about new gamers, IMHO. Try introducing a older non-gamer to some modern titles and watch them be just as clueless and disoriented for hours. Try it, really. I know I've experimented on various family members.
In some genres (e.g., some MMOs) they're just utterly hopeless between steering a character in 3D, wrestling the camera, having to mix 15 different attacks and buffs, watching the enemy _and_ your health _and_ your spell timer simultaneously, all at the same time. They got utterly lost between all actions they had to manage at the same time.
It used to be that you only needed 1 joystick or Missile Command, or only the joystick in PacMan or Pong. A new gamer would understand all there is to the controls within _seconds_. And we kids were the ones who ruled supreme and topped the high score tables.
We grew up gently on more and more complexity, learning that we need just one more button, one more thing to watch for, one more nonsensical action to take for granted, one more RL instinct to ignore. It slowly piled up. New players nowadays are supposed to _already_ know all that.
As someone else called it in a post, some time ago, there's a "game grammar" you're pretty much supposed to know. What goes where, what goes well with what. And that's what it is.
And very few games take the time to hold your hand and guide you through it. To abuse the grammar analogy some more, a lot of tutorials basically assume that you already did beginner and intermediate language courses already, and they'll just give you some of the finer points. "Here's a list of words. Now use them in a small essay proving your mastery of the ablative and less-than-perfect tense, or this monster will bite your balls off." But you're supposed to already know what "ablative" is, how/when you use that case, and wth of a tense "less than perfect" is. Or for that matter WTH of a language _is_ it you're supposed write in.
It must be said, not all games. But some can be a nightmare as learning curve goes.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Somehow....the final fantasy series, the dragon warrior series, pilotwings, metal gear series, golgo 13, etc..... all seemed to me to be aimed at a much older age group. Games like Micky's Magical Adventure, and Mappyland, etc., never sold all THAT well as compared to the "older" games. To be honest, there really seems to me to be 4 different age groups of gamers. The Edutainment age (2-6 yr old), the kiddy game age, (7-10 year old), the target audience age (11-35 years old), and the mature gamer age (40+). The first group plays educational games bought and picked by their parents. The second group plays kiddy games bought and picked by their parents. The third group however is easily swayed by advertising and has HUGE disposable income. Furthermore, their tastes generally don't change THAT drastically from pre-teen years through teenage, through college, and into post college life. It's only once they really settle down, become parents of their own, and begin preparing the next generation of gamers that you get: The fourth group. Older gamers don't necessarily like different games from the target audience group, hell many of them love games like WoW, CS, Command and Conquer, EE2 etc. But, they're much less capricious with their spending habits, and also beginning to become concerned for what their own children are going to view. Thus, their overall spending level goes down. So where is the big money at? that 3rd group, the 11-35 year old target audience. That's why the games are target to that group. It's not that the games are being changed over time, it's the age group's tastes are maturing over time. (11 year olds back in the 8-bit days were playing caveman games and skate or die. 11 year olds now are playing Counter-strike, Doom 3, GTA series, and other more "adult" games. It's not that the younger games aren't out there on the consoles especially, it's just they're not being played.)
It has nothing to do with focus on adults, it has nothing to do with 8 bit vs 64 bit, it has to do with the learning curve. That's all. So all the rant about Sony vs Nintendo is nice, but off-topic at best.
Stuff changes, yes, but it changes in a direction that's harder and harder to grasp for a new gamer. Regardless of age, a new gamer is utterly lost in most current PC games. Kids just happen to be an example of new gamer, but try introducing your old mom or grandma to some games and you may notice the exact same phenomenon. That's the whole problem.
_You_ have likely had the privilege of having that learning curve flattened across a decade or two. We older ones have started on stuff that had just one joystick and often one that only went either let-right or up-down, but you only had to use one of the axis. (E.g., Pong.) Then we had a joystick and one button. Then a joystick and two buttons, but still, you had to mash A and shoot bombs with B when it hit the fan.
Now a console has some 12 buttons to memorize, and some PC games need you to use half the keyboard.
The move to 3D too introduced a bunch of stuff that's an extra pain in the butt, without actually making gameplay any richer. E.g., also wrestling the camera. E.g., FPS "jump puzzles" just for the sake of one extra thing to spend time learning, not because it actually adds anything to the story.
Other stuff was also added just for the sake of complex controls, not because it was needed to enable you to do more stuff. E.g., at the end of the day, between Final Fight and my martial artist in City Of Heroes, the difference isn't that big: both run around and punch hordes of NPCs in the face. But COH makes me also manage some 5 toggles, several buffs, an endurance (mana) bar, and try to string the best combo of 7 different attacks.
Etc.
That's the problem: new players are supposed to just _know_ already stuff that you and I learned in two decades.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The theory that we always wanted that, but had to wait for the technology to get there, has one problem: if you look at the best-sellers of the era where it was already possible to render photo-realistic blood and boobs, the best-sellers _didn't_.
E.g., let's talk The Sims. You know, _the_ game which outsold any Id or Epic or Rockstar title ever, as PC game sales go. It also sold 7 expansion packs, priced like full games.
The most violence you could see in the game was a cartoonish cloud with arms and legs poking out of it in random places, and even for that you had to actively try hard enough to get them to hate each other enough. And, as published, it had no sex whatsoever in it. The most you could get them to do was hug or kiss. That's all.
And yet not only it outsold stuff like SOF which was marketted _only_ as having more realistic bloody textures, or any other FPS for that matter. It also vastly outsold its own clones which tried to play the sex card big time, such as "Singles". (And to a lesser extent, "The Partners." I'm talking orders of magnitude outsold.
E.g., take WoW, which at 3.5 million subscribers is _the_ best selling MMO ever. We're talking almost 9 times as many subscribers as EQ at its peak, and some 14-15 times as many subscribers as UO, which invented the genre. (And just in case someone feels a need to say "bah, only because they banked on the Warcraft name", no, TSO banked on the much bigger The Sims franchise name and peaked at 100,000 subscribers.)
And by virtue of those 3.5 million paying some 14$ a month, it's a bigger license to print money than even The Sims ever was, even including all 7 expansion packs.
WoW's graphics are, you guessed, cartoonish and often cutesy. (See the gnomes for example, especially the females.) Coming from titles like, say, COH or Anarchy online, my first thoughts when trying to create a male human warrior were, "eew, this guy looks like Popeye." No, literally.
Also while technically it does show (cartoonish) splashes of blood at some warrior moves, it doesn't have damage textures, nor gibs, nor blood trails all over the place. And you could play something like a mage or priest and never see even those splashes.
It also doesn't seem to play the nudity card much. Compared to AO's female armours, some of which were barely thin strips of kevlar on the _sides_ of the body, or COH's oversized-boobs-in-spandex (or better yet, without much spandex) approach, WoW is actually a surprisingly decent game. And the players tend to keep it that way too. In two months or so (ok, so I'm a newbie), I've only seen one character in a bikini so far.
(Not that most races would even seem even remotely sexy even if they got naked, except to a handful of people with some weird fetish. E.g., dwarf females look, well, like someone short and overweight. Taurens look, well, literally like cows. Undead look, well, like someone who was burried and rotting for a month, with patches of flesh missing and bones poking out.)
And yet it's the best selling MMO ever.
_The_ most played online FPS ever? Counter-Strike. When was the last time you saw realistic gore or nudity in it? Right.
Or conversely, let's look at a franchise that was driven into the ground by focusing only on bra size: Tomb Raider. Focusing all design just into giving Lara ever increasing melons didn't seem to work that well for Eidos, did it?
Etc.
For some reason people actually buy cartoonish games with not much blood or nudity. Even if the technology allows it. Go figure. Quality (including QA, a good interface, good balance, etc) seems to actually sell more copies than blood and violence do.
"Also, has he seen any of the old Atari and Intellivision ads? There were quite a few adults playing the games in those commercials. They were trying to sell to everyone back then."
Well, see, that's just the thing: they were trying to sell to everyone back then, not just to teenagers wanting to wank over some polygonal female character >:)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What's with 'new games journalism' and its hatred for Nintendo? Either it's completely ignored or slammed for not filling each game with blood spatter and hookers. How can kids get left behind in modern videogames, while Nintendo is 'too kiddy', simultaneously?
I 3 my Gamecube.
My son is 4.5 and has been playing (or watching me play) video games since, oh, he was born. Naturally, when he was tiny, he just saw cool moving shapes and loud noises... used to sit on my lap when he was six months old, randomly slapping the keyboard while I tried to play Unreal Tournament. Luckily, they don't pick up swearing at that age. ;-)
The biggest thing preventing him from playing games like Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (which he loves) by himself is the complete lack of voice-over. It's unusual for kids this age to be able to read. He gets on just fine with games that don't rely on text, or if someone's there to tell him what's going on.
For gaming diversity, he's lucky enough to have a dad who grew up in the golden age of arcades, and who has quite a MAME collection to draw from.
- chrish
I have a 12 yr. old daughter that loves to game, but you are right when you say that they have left the children behind. That said, here are a few games that we have really enjoyed playing over the past year that have what I, as a conscientious parent, would consider acceptable content. 1. Sid Meier's Pirates! is a great game that appeals to not only kids, but adults as well. We have really enjoyed playing this. Unfortunately, it's not a multiplayer game, so we end up fighting a little over our one copy. Definitely worth checking out for the $29.99 I spent on it at Target. Rated E for everyone. 2. Neverwinter Nights is a Dungeons and Dragons game with lots of replayability due to it having the toolset used to create the game included as part of the package. The original episode and two expansions packs are a blast. The official content is generally acceptable for my daughter. If you are concerned about the violence level, it contains a slider bar to tone it down that can be password protected. We love this one. 3. Magic the Gathering Online is an online version of the popular collectible card game. Since you are an adult with money to burn, you won't have any problem shelling out money for virtual booster packs. Really though, I've got thousands of these cards sitting at home that I never get to play with. By buying the virtual cards, I can at least get a game anytime day or night within seconds. You can trade the cards online in the game with other users or sell them on Ebay if you want. There is a good secondary market. Oh and did I mention that it is an awesome strategic game too. You must use your math, logic and creativity in this one. A great, fun exercise for kids and the game is a heck of a lot of fun too. There is some concern about behavior of other players, but I've generally found the chat during games to be pretty minimal and 99.9% of the players very friendly. 4. The EA sports games are all good for kids. My daughter is not a big sports fan, but the Madden 2004 you can pick up for $15 these days is well worth it. It's light years away from Front Page Sports Football. OK, so I can't really think of many more. You are absolutely right about ignoring the kid market though. When I go in to Best Buy and my daughter and I look at the shelves, we hardly ever find anything acceptable for her. It's either for 6 year olds or the 18+ crowd. Way too much killing and having played EQ for years, I am not ready to unleash her on the perverts playing online. So maybe they are not all perverts, but there are enough to scare me away from letting her get involved with a MMORPG.
From the article:
Sony really was the driving force behind the more complex use of three dimensions. Early attempts like Mario 64, for example, are hardly comparable--in terms of intricacy--to their Sony contemporaries like Tomb Raider
I haven't played Tomb Raider that much, but do you think that's an accurate summation?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Some of these have been mentioned as kid-friendly games already, but have you considered platformers or light RPGs?
Sly Cooper series (PS2): cartoony, fun, not too hard. Yes, you're a thief, but you're a good thief).
Ratchet and Clank series (PS2): fun, can get challenging, great weapon diversity.
Jak series (PS2): pretty fun, III had a great mix of levels, too, so it never got boring.
I-Ninja (if you can find a cheap one) (multi): decent platformer. Ninja moves slower than I'd like, but it's a good time.
Mario RPG series (Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, Paper Mario 2) (SNES, N64, GBA, GCN): all good introductions to RPGs. Turn-based battles that aren't boring (especially Paper Mario 2).
Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventures (GCN): Yes, you'll need GBAs, but it's worth it. Simple control scheme, an easy inventory, LttP-inspired graphics, and excellent multiplayer make this a great choice for parents who want to game with kids.
X-Men Legends (multi): A little more complex, but the difficulty and learning curve is pretty light. And since it's multiplayer, a good parent player can carry a weaker child player while still having fun. Also, multiple X-Men available means when your child's avatar falls, you can just go snag him/her a new one from a save point.
Kart racers (Mario, Crash, etc.) (multi): quick, easy, fun, 'nuff said.
Mario sports (GCN): Yes, they're games that don't _need_ to feature Mario, but Mario sports titles have tight interfaces, are easy to get into, and are all around fun. My dad (50+) bought a GameCube and Mario Golf. Only game he owns, and we play it almost every time I visit.
Puzzle games (multi): If your kid's into puzzles, there are some great ones out there. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Polarium, Lumines, Tetris, Meteos, Dr. Mario, etc. Not only do these games foster problem solving, but most feature quick head-to-head play, too.
e2 | LJ
Go see Charlie and the Chocolate factory. It's about as much a kids movie as Mario Sunshine is a kids game. Yeah, the subject material may seem (on first blow) to be "kiddy" because they don't have titties, drugs, and explosions...
However, you'll soon realize that just because it won't be popular with the jocks and fratboys, doesn't mean it's not good, nor does it mean it's targetted at children.
It wasn't sony that moved the gamer market to more mature audiences, it was Mortal Kombat. Mortal Kombat was the first "Really, Really, Successful" adult themed game I can recall. It showed that a violent video game could, and would sell to everyone on every platform.
Mortal Kombat 3 was one of the "killer apps" available shortly after PS1's launch and I would say the maturing of the market had more to do with the success of Mortal Kombat than anything else. You can also look to Doom for more proof, but MK was successful on every platform.