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How To Move Games Beyond Geek Culture
The Lost Garden offers up a post theorizing how to break out of the circle of games by gamers for gamers. The current self-delusional state of mind, the author posits, is why the industry is having problems attracting parts of the mainstream audience. From the article: "We need take a step back and introduce some systems thinking to understand the dynamics of the industry. If we blame the publishers or the programmers or the consumers or the designers as individuals, we gain little understanding of the issue and manage to create a lot of denial, hand wringing and hurt feelings. The truth is that most individual actors in our industry are doing what they think is best. The result may be a degenerate system, but the individuals are operating with a clean conscience. There is absolutely no paradox here. Ultimately, I'm not concerned by individuals doing their jobs poorly. My concern is that they are fixating on an insignificantly tiny market when a much larger one awaits. By blindly devoting their efforts toward the current market, we starve the market expansion process."
From the article:
It's this kind of wording, thinking, angle of viewing the world (i.e., highly interdependent ecosystem that is the natural consequence of historical starting conditions., wtf?) that illustrates the niche characteristic of the gaming community. Not many others think of interdependent ecosystems (especially talking about games), nor natural consequences of historical starting conditions.
I have some loves in my life: classical music; bicycling and bicycle racing; and ping pong (yeah, I know, table tennis... and for the record I have a 1600+ rating in table tennis).
All of these loves I often wondered why the rest of the world didn't see with my passion. I got busy with committees, tournaments, advertising, evangelizing, etc. To no avail. For the longest time I didn't "get it". But maybe older and wiser I do -- all loves are not for all people. Maybe that's what makes it such a cool world.
Games is a niche world. It's a pretty cool world, but it's a niche world. It's a challenging world, but it's a niche world. I've mastered many games, but never owned any (other than what came for free with a computer).
Good luck to the gaming community, but I don't think the issue is making gaming attractive to the universe, gaming looks like gaming, people know what it is. A different selling approach may show a momentary blip in the usage and participation in games, maybe even an increase of some demographics, but the equilibrium is pretty close today to what it will probably likely be later. That's not a bad thing, it's just a thing.
Oh, and as not to be flamed for singling out games... consider: (as some other niche markets unlikely to garner larger markets)
These are all interesting in their own right, just unlikely to become world dominant.
why would we want to make games for non-gamers? If they're non-gamers, they don't want to play games. I know it's a hard concept for gamers (and I'm one too), but there are people in the world that just do not care much for games.
Screw the non-gamers, and make games for gamers.
This is a sig. Deal with it.
Why should game companies make games for non-gamers now? Yes, in the short term games for non-gamers will help, but let's consider: most of the general gaming population is below 30. Within 20 years, the general Gaming population will be below 50. 20 years after that, 70 (assuming, of course, we aren't so darn tired). By then, most of the non-gamers of today will be dead. Eventually, in the future, everybody will have at least a casual interest in Video Games, much like how almost everybody today has at least a casual interest in watching TV and watching movies (DVD or in the Theatre).
I personally hope games never get any more mainstream than they already are (which is TOO MUCH already).
That has changed.
In just overheard conversations from some of the younger generation of gamers, playing games is no longer the stigma it used to be. Kids talk about games openly. They bring Gameboys to school and play them openly during breaks. And while there will always be the too-cool for that groups, it's no longer just the geeks wearing glasses.
Just look at the growth of the gaming industry. Geeks are everywhere, true, but there's not enough of us to support the huge market that exists now. Others are buying and playing games.
It's only going to grow as home internet connectivity is approaching ubiquious. While gaming with friends used to be limited to those in your neighborhood, or those whose parents could bring them over on occassions, now it can be done both in person, and online, and peer pressure and the "do what they're doing" adolescent mentality will cause it to grow further.
Last I heard, gaming was a multi-billion dollar industry. That leads me to believe that there are more people buying games than "geeks", and that the industry is not fueled by hardcore gamers trying to amuse each other at the expense of someone who doesn't fall into that category. I know plenty of people who are neither geeks or gamers who buy consoles and the like.
Right, because no one is buying those X-Box 360s or Playstations. They're just sitting in the store unsold. It's so sad.
I can't believe this wanker referred to the Tragedy of Commons. Comparing anything to the ToC practically screams "I want to be an important thinker! Really I do! Please! I am serious! I have Big Thoughts!"
Gaming is already huge. Show me ten males under the age of 21. How many of them have never played a computer game? Zero. How many do not own a PC with games on it or a console? Perhaps one. Yeah, games are so not mainstream, right...
Granted, there are some games that are not mainstream - but tactical simulations, the Operational Art of War, play-by-email Diplomacy, etc. are never going to appeal to a wide audience.
If we could get out of our cultural rut and design games that appealed to them, we could make money.
So go do it already, instead of sitting around getting high with your high school buddies philosophizing ad nauseum about the "decline of the gaming industry".
Biggest. Wanker. Ever.
Advice: on VPS providers
I disagree with the premise.
:P
There are tons of people making non-gamer games. The Sims. The Movies. Everything at Popcap. Zillions more here:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/8/15
Your article's proposals are so good, hundreds of entrepreneurs are already doing them, and have been for years.
Excellent point, just excellent. The problem is that the games industry wants to be the movie industry. Alot of people see movies without needing to be big movie buffs. But I can understand if many people are just not into interactive entertainment.
Here is a prime example: A female friend of mine was heavily into "Myst" when it came out. She didn't really play computer games before that. And she doesn't really play computer games SINCE that time either!
Myst is an excellent example of a "blip". It got the attention and interest of many non-gamers, but once they were over it, that was it. It's akin to the Rubik's Cube. While it sold like crazy, what percentage of those consumers became "puzzle fanatics" and sought to buy a new puzzle toy every month? Probably a miniscule fraction.
Games by gamers for gamers,my God,thats it,we should have games by firemen for grocery shopping! Games by winos for accountants! We've been so blind! lame by lamers for the lame. Who is supposed to code the "new" games? Grandmothers? penguins? rocks? underprivleged rural schoolchildren who need a chance? Nuns? Perhaps he will.Now we can all sleep knowing we will have exciting games to replace Quake and Halo.
His kind of nonlinear thinking will surely shake the foundations of the industry.
Tell me no one is paying this guy to think.
gotta lay off that quart of espresso in the mornin'
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
If "non-hardcore-gamers" are not buying, then who the heck purchased the millions of playstations, X-Boxes and even Game Cubes? Give me a break: we have so many *more* people playing games than when I was growing up that to claim that "only the hardcare" in regards to *anything* in this market is bunk. Check the top selling games out: sports games, casual platformers and a bunch of *non* hardcore games like the Sims. If anything, my concern would be the opposite: the niche hardcore games will go extinct. I know that my love for complex turn based strategy games has been blunted by the reduction of the market to two developer houses that still turn them out.
Sig under construction since 1998.
Of course, it's debatable whether games are still a "geek" thing since the advent of the PlayStation, but in any case I'd personally be happier with more geek games.
Of course, I'm a geek, so I'm biased. But I recently heard a marketing theme from Sony - they're aiming at the "Urban Nomad", which encompasses the underground racing culture, hip-hop, and extreme sports, and the sort of people who like those things.
And it seems to me that a lot of games these days have those sorts of themes. Lots of macho military type games, too, like the Tom Clancy series. All in all, I think there are more underground racing, sports, gangsta, and Tom Clancy-type games than there are fantasy or sci-fi games, especially on consoles. And frankly, since I like dragons better than hip-hop, I wish that weren't true.
Think about what might have happened had tabletop gaming aspired to be "mainstream" like console gaming is. Instead of D&D we'd be playing Streets & Thugs, and we'd have Mountain Dew: The Dominating, a CCG based on extreme sporting events (cards available inside specially marked packages of Code Red). I don't think it would be the same - it might be more popular, but it would have lost everything geeks liked about it at the same time.
But of course it's hard to have a major business catering to just geeks, the occasional LOTR notwithstanding. So it would be a bad business decision to only make video games based on the Elemenstor Saga. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.
I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
I have a newsflash for /. Gaming isn't niche anymore, it's been mainstream for quite some time. When my Abercrombie & Fitch co-workers are discussing World of Warcraft and my mother is talking about Grand Theft Auto and it's negative impact on morality in today's youth it's gone mainstream.
Also, this is not a good thing. This means more crap titles and sequels to Madden.
Who on earth in their right mind would want to bring MORE mainstream people into gaming? The one3s we've got now have already ruined it enough. Who is this moron that thinks going more mainstream is a way to improve the games industry? Mainstream music = shite, mainstream movies = shite, mainstream anything = shite. It's trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator, the mainstream, that has made recent games so bland, predictable and boring. SO the answer is to make them even more bland, predictable and boring! Brilliant. The idot ramblings of the crazy lady that lives behind my apartment are more worthy of reportage than this idiot.
Instead of making vanilla "mainstream" stuff in an attempt to appeal to as many people as possible (as seems to be the impression here), it would be better to bring the focus in and look for niches of people who would play a videogame if it catered to their interests. Like Guitar Heroes (a game the blog writer mentions often). There are a lot of people who'd love to experience rocking out on a stage in an auditorium but who have no desire to shoot hookers or aliens or pwn noobs. I'm probably what the demographicists would label 'hardcore', so why should I care? Because I don't want to play hardcore games. Above all else I want to experience games that are fun, and some of those games probably lie well outside what the marketers are willing to push to the hardcore crowd.
... are there such things?
Most games certainly are not "Games made by gamers for gamers" but games made by programmers that play games that are superviced by product managers that think they know gamers.
The result is a compromise of what the programemrs got through, the product managers wanted and the marketing sold.
Look at World of Warcraft. The artwork, and all the programming behind it, is awesome. The product is adictive, but if you think abiout it, complete shit.
If you are a gamer you are adicted and pissed at the same time. PVP completely sucks, but you do it because you are adicted to it, or because you have leveled up your char. Questing is superb, but it is boring after 6 monthes.
Basically because your friends see you waste your time in WoW they start palying also, to meet yout at least in game again.
Gamers, gamers making the game for gamers, had done a whole lot of thinks different, e.g. making the game more "difficult" and making a lot of stuff making more sense (like the profession Engineering, that looks good on paper, but is a complete waste of time to invest into).
90'% of the games are cheap copies of movies, like Star Wars. How can you call that "Gamers makig games for gamers"????
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
So many Slashdotters just don't seem to get the gist of the article.
The point is not that the industry is bad, wrong or not successful.
The point is that it could do a lot better than it is. There's more room for growth in game genres that aren't traditional.
Two examples - Myst and The Sims. These easily outstrip sales of games like Doom and Half-Life. They appeal to a wider audience.
Another example - those animal hunting games. Now, I hate those games, but I see them as bringing non-gamers into the fold and there were some big-sellers in those games. Bass fishing? Bear hunting? Seem silly to me, but then to the majority of non-gamers, so do most current games.
Yes, keep going with the great games that are out there, but also reach out to the current non-gamers.
Seriously what is so terrible about games by gamers for gamers? Most mainstream games, like mainstream movies and books are either rubbish or forgettable. So they make less money? So freaking what! Just because something is popular doesn't mean it is any good. Normally it is just marketed to suck in lots of consumers before they realize how crap it is, or is a fad that everyone is embrassed about a few years later.
I want to play games by people that know games and know what hardcore gamers want. You don't have to market to the widest possible audience, in fact doing so generally results in shit that doesn't sell without millions in marketing. Game companies need to only make enough money to release another game or two. I couldn't care less if companies who are only in it for the money, died off.
Why does everyone feel the need to justify their hobbies by trying to make them mainstream? You don't see crochet magazines bitching that their hobby hasn't broken into the mainstream. But of course being different is scary and horrifying.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
How to move gaming beyond the geek culture? By selling out.
Not only does the game industry want to be the movie industry but it can as well. The is such a thing as appealing to the lowest common denominator and the game industry can try that. They can also try to create many games that serve many small niches and have the game industry as a whole captuer the majority of the population.
So, in essence, I think the grandparent has a valid point: that not every body wants video games in its present form. But he seems to forget that videogames are not a static media but can encompass much more. He says h likes ping-pong and i'm sure, if there was an adequate table tennis videogame, that he would get the urge to play if he could not find a partner for a real life game. And he only has to look at the Nintendo Revolution controller hype ad to see th epossiblities for classical music. And that's all it would take to hook him...
Besides I'm tired of people writing long articles of fluff, I also find it tiring of people putting down hardcore gamers like they don't know anything or that video games that cater to hardcore video game players don't cater to casual players either.
God spoke to me.
... and realize not everyone like's games so much or thinks so much of them they are willing to shell ou $45-60 (or more) per game on release, no matter how good you games are! When I was a kid *I rented almost all my games*, all the games I bought were either with my own money from job as a teen or gifts from birthdays or at christmas.
Point #2) Gaming is an expensive hobby, try reducing the price of it and you'll increase your market. Don't like that? tough. Most people simply cannot justify $50-60 games when you can rent all the best games at blockbuster for $5 and finish them and be done with them. Most people play games through once then they sit on the shelves, the game industry should wake up and smell the economics of rentals.
Point #3) Expand into non-game related markets, i.e. use those fancy game engines and physics engines to use in business, architectural or educational products. Your biggest market is the non-game markets, I'm sure the military would love the kind of game-related technology some of the industries brightest workers are inventing right now for simulations, many of the game industries programmers would probably love to get to work on war simulations and 'terrorist AI' simulations, trying to predict what 'real people' or 'real soldiers' would do.
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