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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?"
Like other entertainment industries, the games they're turning out these days are more and more glitzy, formulaic crap; development prices are increasing due to new technology, risk is feared, and the gamer loses in the end. Nobody takes chances because nothing is new and exciting anymore. There's no trepidation about whether people want _any_ games at all, and they've hooked onto exactly what generates the highest number of net dollars in their pockets.
Hell, you could also say that other industries have now noticed the games industry--like AMD and their $1100 processors that cater to the gamers who MUST HAVE that extra 40 fps in Doom 3, even though they could run it at 75 and be happy. Let's not forget the video card folks, who've figured out that people out there are willing to buy _two_ of their enormously expensive high-end cards.
God, but PC gaming is screwed.
Of course the gaming community is getting older. How many of those "targetted 15 year-olds" could afford to pay $300-$400+ for a new console system, or $1k+ for a new PC system to play games? Back while I was playing Sword of Fargoal on my Commodore-64, yeah I was probably in that demographic, however I have taken my desire to play games through my years and now I'm twice that age with the same desire. You know what the ladies always say... Boys will be boys, they just get more and more expensive toys as they grow up.
My parents bought me my first NES for maybe $40 if I remember correctly. Super Mario Brothers (this pre-dated the free Duck-Hunt addition) then soon afterward, Excitebike and Double Dribble. I got older, the systems got more advanced and more expensive. Give the next generation (like my children) some time to grow up and I bet you'll see an explosion of the gaming community. Kid sees Dad play WoW, Kid gets older, Kid plays WoW, Kid PKs Dad, Kid gets grounded, Dad ravages Kid's account for spare gold for epic mount, Kid disowns Dad, Dad sells Kid's account on eBay for $200 (used to by WoW gold for afore-mentioned epic mount). Kid runs away at age 16.
Maybe I should stop letting my kid watch me play WoW. I don't want them to run away!
And they said zombies weren't real!