Games Industry And Gamers Getting Older

The Guardian Gamesblog has an interesting piece wondering outloud about the greying of the gaming population. Both the people who make the games and the people who play the games are increasingly older, far from the targetted 15-year-old male in typical gaming marketing. From the article: "Not only does this [marketing] policy cost the industry over 50% of its potential market on gender terms alone, but in a few years time, it's also going to cut out a huge audience on the age side of things too. I wonder, are forward-thinking publishers already having brain-storming sessions in order to address the challenge of the grey gamer? Wired.com ran an article this week on how the ageing population in Japan is bringing about some major cultural changes. Have Namco, Nintendo, Capcom and Konami et al caught the zeitgeist?"

Comments

Just make good games...

[Winterblink]

Call me strange, but I don't care what age group a game is targeted for, as long as it's a good game then it will be worth buying. I've got games that run the entire spectrum of ratings and subject matters in my colletion.

Re:Just make good games...

[XenoRyet]

I think you've hit on the point that publishers, marketers, and analysts are missing. It doesn't matter if they're female gamers, old gamers, casual gamers, or any other distinction you care to make, the point is they are gamers. That means they like good games. Quit trying to "target" one group or another, just make a good game, and gamers will like it, and buy it. That's why we are gamers in the first place: We like good games.

Re:Just make good games...

[jchenx]

Yup. One reason why casual games do so well (Bejeweled, Zuma, Astropop, etc.) is because they're not targeted towards any niche audience in particular. I do have one interesting story to tell ...

I was at the Casual Games Conference last year, and it was interesting hearing some of the development houses talk about the way they create their games. Many of the developers themselves are guys, big into "hardcore" games like MMOs and FPSes, but the games they make themselves are for a much broader audience. Initially, they were shocked to find that the biggest audience for their casual games were actually older (35+) women, who ended up playing their casual games during lunch time or in small breaks throughout the day. One guy in particular mentioned that his team thought about maybe targeting their games for that audience (older women), but realizes that was silly. He compares their work to G and PG movies from Hollywood. Not all of those movies are made for kids, and they suit a very wide and broad audience. It's just a good bit of entertainment ... that happens to be popular for the older women, but it's not necessarily tailored to them.

Yeah, but

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

As I get older, I am not as interesed in the A.D.D. type gaming that companies are targetting at 15 year olds. I don't get that much out of 3rd person shooters for instance, and would give my right arm for a decent RPG to hit the market that isn't based on Dungeons and Dragons.

I'm in my early 30's and still enjoy playing video games, as do most of my friends. It is something I grew up with, and I think we can safely say that video games are not childs play anymore. But is the industry really targetting adult players, or are they just hoping for enough adult players to keep up with the kids by playing overly spastic 3rd person deathmatches.

As an adult, I can't dedicate 6 hours a day to my favourite games. While I love a good RPG, I really can't waste 80 - 120 hours of my life to complete it. Few game companies seem to be making compelling games that can keep an adult occupied without reaching a point where and adult gamer is either bored with the content or can't waste more time finishing the game.

This is definitely a growing trend to have 30 and 40 somethings an older playing video games, and considering that adult gamers generally have more disposable income then a high school kids working at McDonald's, I hope the industry would recognize that targetting games at adults makes good economic sense.

Unfortunatly, companies like Nintendo can't realize this. They are too busy making ready the next pokemon or mario or zelda adventure. Zelda was fun to play, but the last overly cutesy childish Wind Waker on the Gamecube left me screaming for something more adult like to do, like my doing my taxes or doing home renovations. The Nintendo DS hasn't offered any compelling adult-centric games either.

But also just an unfortunately, companies like Sony that can be said to be more adult-centric are not making compelling games either. The PSP was a perfect adult centered device. Slick and sophisticated and expensive, adults would prefer this over the Nintendo DS, yet few games have been offered to really drive up sales of the PSP to adults.

There will always be a few gems on the market, like Civilisation 4, that will help drive sales to adult players, but for the most part I don't think the gaming industry really knows how to deal with aging adult players. Why don't the aging game developers start making games THEY would actually like to play, rather then trying to create the next teen sensation.

Re:Yeah, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintendo may not market its products to adults, but they are making exactly the kind of games that you claim to want; fun, engrossing titles that are short enough to finish in a reasonable amount of time, but that don't chew up all your free time, and they are both fun and exciting right off the bat. Sure, adults have disposable income, but we still don't like to waste it. DS is cheap; all that means is I can get some more fun games for it. My adult friends and I have spent most of our time over the last few years playing mainly our gamecube and DS's - the only game to significantly hijack our attention was GTA, and more recently God of War and Guitar Hero. With the exception of God of War, these games all offer instant gratification and you can elect to have short play sessions.

Sometimes you can't just sit on your ass and wait for some suit on the opposite side of the world to decide to market games exclusively to you; there is fun stuff out there, you just have to try a couple things out to find just what you like!

PS - If you finished Zelda, you were rewarded with an ending that was not childish in the least. In fact, most of the games settings tended much more toward artistic or expressionistic than childish. The synchronization and musicality of the sound effects and environment, combined with the stylish rendering of the characters made for a pretty remarkable animated experience. Of course, cartoons are just for kids, right?

Re:Yeah, but

[rabbot]

You made a huge mistake throughout your rant. You seem to think that most gamers (adults or kids) care about how THEY look playing a game. Most of us (I'm an adult), don't care if the game has cartoon graphics or the system didn't cost $400 dollars. Most of us aren't so shallow that we would dismiss a piece of hardware or a great game because of aesthetics. These things do not have any bearing on how fun a game is.

Re:Yeah, but

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be from the "A.D.D. type" gamer generation that grew up with the PSX, despite your age suggesting otherwise. This article isn't about you. You act too young to be "older". Me, I grew up with the NES and SNES, and I act accordingly. That puts me on the young side of "older". The truly "older" ones grew up with the Atari, Colecovision, etc, and aren't ashamed of it.

Until the SNES and Genesis era, mainstream games never focused on being "mature". And the technology was restrictive enough that they couldn't be very realistic, either. Even during that 16-bit era, only a few games dared to push the "mature" envelope. It was simply understood that games were games, and to label one as "mature" and another as "kiddy" was absolutely pointless and stupid.

Until the PSX era, it was understood that a video game system was just an appliance at best, and more like a toy or media player (VCR, DVD player, etc.). As such, the price of a system should be low, while the games should cost comparitively more. Think toaster vs. bread. A toaster could be $20, while bread can be as much as $5 if you get the "good" kind. But in the PSX era, the system itself became a status symbol. Two kids could be talking about games, one of them says, "I have a Playstation," (cool) and the other one says, "I have a Nintendo 64." (uncool) They'd argue for a few minutes about technical specs and FMV and media format and such, then one of them would throw out the Godwin-nazi-argument of system comparisons: "I paid more for mine than you did for yours. Mine *has* to be better." Thus the birth of the age of games as a status symbol was born.

Your comments about Zelda betray your "mature" vs. "kiddy" view of games (based soley on their graphics!), and your comments about the PSP being more "adult-centric" because it costs more belie your games-as-status-symbol fetish. You may be in your "early 30's", but you have the immature mindset of a teenager that purchases things based on how "cool" they make you look.

Personally, I'm 26, a former "enthusiast" gamer (now I'm classified as a "casual" gamer from what I can tell), and I found Zelda:TWW to be more of a variation of artistic expression than being "made for kids". I've also found the DS to be a *very* cool little device. It has new, interesting, fun games, and a lot of potential for more. The PSP has none of that, but has a very nice display. For my money, guess which one I picked... This is what happens when you look beyond the opinionated hype of uninformed teenagers that want to look cool - you get products that are well-designed and fun.

The problem is that the money is where the hype is. Hype allows you to both sell more of your product and keep the prices high. It artificially inflates demand based on opinion, conjecture, and unfounded facts spread by word-of-mouth. The best way to tap into this gossip machine is to sell it to an easily-influenced, well-connected (socially) teen. Bam! Instant demand, higher profit. I can't say that I blame the developers. They want money, and they're probably so bored and burnt-out by games that they never want to play one ever again.

Re:Yeah, but

[AuMatar]

I think you need to fix your definition of "adult". You seem to be obsessed with the concept. A game is fun, or it isn't. Windwalker was fun (well, except for the sailing all the time). Kirby's Canvas Curse for the DS is fun, and unique gameplay- who care's what the character is. Advanced Wars DS is fun- who cares if the storyline is a little lame, its the strategy you play for. I'd have bought the game without a storyline mode. If its fun, play it. Who gives a shit if it has a cartoon character or a guy with a cigar and a BFG?

assumptions

[TheCarp]

"Not only does this [marketing] policy cost the industry over 50% of its potential market on gender terms alone, but in a few years time, it's also going to cut out a huge audience on the age side of things too. "

This makes some interesting assumptions, the biggest one is that marketing does what it claims to do.

That is to say, we assume that marketing "aimed at" 15 year old males has no relevance to older or differently gendered people. What is this marketing exactly and how exactly is it so tailored for a specific age and gender?

Remember, it is in the interests of marketers to convince us that A) Marketing works and B) Targeted marketing actually targets - whether either of these is true or not isn't so much relevant, they are assumptions that the marketeers sell to companies.

Frankly, all a game advertisement has to do is make you say "oh hey that looks cool" and make you say, when your in the store "I have seen an ad for that game, and it looked cool". Thats it. It doesn't matter if you have seen the advertisement once or one thousand times, as long as it gets you to recotgnize the product and take a look at it when you are in a position to buy it, then it has done its job.

Taking that into account, I think you will find very little difference between marketing a product to one group from another. In fact, I would bet that the gaming industry could cut its advertising budgets drastically without hardly any loss in terms of purchasing.

I think its alot more marketers and analysts who like to overthink everything comming up with ideas and selling them than a real issue. Remember, its in the interests of both media publishers and marketers to see more marketing to more groups.

In fact, if this says anything, it says that the marketers are wrong. If the marketing is nominally aimed at 15 year old males, but the real demographic is shifting older, then either A) the current marketing scheme is working just fine for older age groups or B) marketing has no real effect whatsoever (a conclusion that marketers would rather you not ever draw of course)

Remember, as someone here once said to me:
marketing is marketing marketing.

-Steve

This was MS's problem...

[BTWR]

I think MS going after the male teenage demo is a model destined to fail. You see, like the WB network going after teens, it works initially (Dawson's Creek, etc) become very popular. But, like teenagers always do, they are very disloyal to a trend. One day, it's super popular, and the next, it's totally loser-like (I was 18 when Dawson's Creek came out, and EVERYONE in my dorm watched. 3 years later, you got snickers if you mentioned it). Same with XBox. The 15 year-old demo loved it, and bought millions of consoles and games. But, in 5 years, these 22 year-olds won't want to be seen playing the same thing as 15 year-olds. There won't be any "nostalgia" for Dead or Alive volleyball

On the other hand, 25 year olds today DO want to relive Zelda, Mario and Metroid from their youths. Nintendo survives on players desire to buy the newest incarnation of their favorite games (take one look at a Nintendo Board. Before the new zelda is even out, everyone is salivating for it for 2 years now). True, we may not touch Pokemon games, but that's Nintendo's brilliant strategy. They're already seeding tomorrow's nostalgia game. In 15 years, today's 8 year-olds will have disposable income, and will want to relive (albeit, a more mature version) of the series they loved as a child.

I simply don't see this happening with XBox titles.