Slashdot Mirror
An Older Demographic May Soon Dominate Gaming
Reservoir Hill writes "An article from last week runs down the new mass audience for gaming among families, women and older people. The importance of the mass audience in gaming's spectacular growth is seen most clearly in the success of Nintendo's Wii, which is far outselling its more technically advanced hardware competitors, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and PlayStation 3 from Sony. Wii Play was the No. 2-selling game of last year even though it received an abysmal score of 58 out of 100 at Metacritic, which aggregates reviews. The Times says that as video games become more popular hard-core gamers are becoming an ever smaller part of the audience. 'Paradoxically, at a moment when technology allows designers to create ever more complex and realistic single-player fantasies, the growth in the now $18 billion gaming market is in simple, user-friendly experiences that families and friends can enjoy together.'"
...How many politicians are going to go after games continually when they gain the same status as movies in the public eye?
The new emerging Wii market can't simply be lumped into the same hardcore gaming market.
The Wii market is separate from 360 and PS3 so trying to figure out why Wii is outselling the PS3 and 360 doesn't work.
It's not simply about being a "Gamer" now. The way most Wii games work isn't in any way similar to the traditional gaming market. Stop treating it like the same thing.
Not everyone feels like getting off their ass and actually moving.
I love the Wii, but you can't use Wii Play as any kind of reliable metric for the popularity of that kind of game. It's essentially a $10 game bundled with a $40 remote that most console owners were intending to buy anyway.
Like any genre, the Minigame phenomenon is only as strong as the title itself. Raving Rabbids was actually pretty solid; Carnival Games is utter garbage. Unfortunately, publishers see the unintentional success of games like Wii Play and assume that's what people want.
Mario Party is a classic, so that's going to be popular. Raving Rabbids is a solid enough game that makes good use of the controller. Wario Ware is goofy and fun, but is becoming tired and cliche.
Frankly, the less party games we see, the better off the few that remain will be. Otherwise it all becomes shovelware at some point.
>Settlers isn't significantly (if any) more complex than Monopoly, imho.
I rarely find people who both know the rules of Monopoly and are willing to play the game by those rules.
Whenever I play Monopoly I choose to play banker/auctioneer/referee, and choose not to have an avatar on the board at all (so as to be disinterested and impartial).
When you play the game by the rules and with a designated banker, the game mechanics take a back seat and a role playing element emerges. Also, when you play the game without some of the common house rules, the game moves rapidly forward and tends to reach a conclusion in a shorter time. Many people, and to my experience *most* people have learned the game with house rules that were aimed at redistributing tax money with the goal of staving off bankruptcy, and this has a side effect of making the game much more random, and also, tends to force the game to run much longer than the design intends.
With a full-time banker, another element comes out, and that is a barter/auction economy. But in order for this to work well, the players must adhere to the rules about building and selling. The best way to do that is to broker all transactions through the bank, and to have all auctions operated by a person who is not playing the game.
I encourage people do try this (and the Parker Brothers rules do as well). With a decent referee, Monopoly can become a very satisfying RPG.
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