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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.
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.
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