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What About the Grey Gamers?
Chris Morris at CNN's Game Over column wonders out loud about the legions of older gamers, and their snubbing by most of the gaming industry. From the article: "The Entertainment Software Association reports that 19 percent of the people playing video games are 50 or older. That's a huge jump from 1999, when players of that age group made up just 9 percent of the gaming world. Game publishers, though, seemingly couldn't care less - mainly leaving senior gamers to Web-based games, such as PopCap Games' 'Bookworm'. And while it certainly makes loads of sense for publishers to focus primarily on the core market, especially in transitional times like they're experiencing now, that focus is at risk of becoming myopic."
Why aren't there more games like Syberia, Myst, The 7th Guest?
There are. Looked at store shelves lately? Everyone and their dog is making adventures like that. Sure, many aren't very good but that happens with all games.
Why not, for example, a space exploration game -- concentrating on the science, economics, and logistics involved, instead of the usual shoot-the-evil-green-aliens theme?
One of the so-called 4X games (Elite and its ilk, these days X3 is popular)? You can do anything you want in those and if you don't want to fight you won't have to (except maybe to fend off the occassional pirate).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I agree. Every once in a while I'll play a FPS game, usually with or against someone, but they just don't hold my interest for very long. As far as I'm concerned, they're really just "twitch" games, and reaction time has never really been my strong suit. I didn't like Pong, and I don't much like Quake, either.
I first played 7th Guest not as a computer game, but as a CD-I game (it was about the only useful thing I ever did with a CD-I, too). It was well thought out, the graphics were acceptable, and it was fun; although I think today the puzzles might strike most people as not flowing too well within the game -- they were almost 'mini-games.'
I spent hours, too, playing Myst and Riven, which I thought were just stellar. And the first few top-down RTS games that I played were cool, too; but I think that genre has become tired as well.
Right now I'm playing WoW, although I'm not sure I'll be very interested once I've explored the whole world; I've realized that what I really enjoy in most games is more the exploratory aspect than anything else, and WoW is neat for that because the world is probably an order of magnitude or two bigger than anything else I've experienced. Plus, if you're careful there's no reason why you get killed a lot, and that's something that's always annoyed me in other games.
I think the game industry clearly is myopic -- there's almost no question. Recently, the games that have come out which have appealed to "not mainstream" markets (where the mainstream market is 15-22 year old white males, apparently), including older folks, female gamers, etc., have seemed almost accidental. That is to say, they've ended up being popular with other groups, although it doesn't seem like they were designed that way. For right now that's okay -- there are enough games that I'm interested in checking out, once I get bored with WoW, but I have to wonder if the game industry goes through a bad round of consolidation, if these 'accidents' will become more and more rare.
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Why not, for example, a space exploration game -- concentrating on the science, economics, and logistics involved, instead of the usual shoot-the-evil-green-aliens theme?
Give Escape Velocity Nova a try, if you haven't already. It's available for Windows and MacOS and it's quite entertaining. It may not have the depth you're looking for, but it's extremely freeform for a modern game - you can be a trader, a raider, a transporter, a diplomat... sure there's combat involved, but it's more along the lines of Asteroids than Doom. I find the game highly enjoyable - it's the first piece of shareware I actually payed money for!