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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.
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.
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.
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Ah, how much truth condensed in a single post!
I grew up playing (mostly) Japanese games on my MSX, and with a few exceptions, modern games don't appeal to me so much as the mid-80s to mid-90s games did.
Yes, nowadays games have better graphics and are faster, but they more often than not playability sucks. Hell, sometimes they aren't even fun! Often they rely on very successful franchises in order to sell lots of copies (like happened with Tomb Raider 6: Age of Darkness).
I guess I'm not the only one who thinks like this. I'm living in Japan, and in the biggest video game shops you can see LOTS of games from the 80s ported to GBA, adapters for playing old NES cartridges on new hard, and more recently, retro game collections for PSP (Space Invaders, Namco Museum, etc). And guess what? These "retro" games are selling almost as much as the new ones.
I think it is also significant the fact that most game arcades have "retro" games mixed among the newer ones. Here are some photos of this.
I guess this has something to do with the fact that older machines had fewer hardware resources, so game developers had to write FUN games in order to sell them. Sadly, nowadays it is all about flashy graphics.
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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.
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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.)