A Look at the Gaming Industry: Hold the Panic - A Nontraditional Approach
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If we approach this issue with the idea that the gaming industry has expanded, then it’s very clear that it isn’t the whole industry that’s suffering a “crisis of attention.” Indeed, the gaming industry has never been more vital when it comes to offering different options to its customers. It’s the older, larger companies in the industry – Electronic Arts and such – that are having a problem.
In a sense, this is the same conclusion that Au comes to. But I think he makes the same mistake that the companies he’s writing about are making. By not considering the newcomers to belong to the same industry, it’s harder for traditional video games developers and console manufacturers to take them seriously as rivals. And that is part of the problem.
Au beautifully captures both the cause and the result of this narrowness of perspective: “It’s a business comprised almost entirely of young gamer dudes, serving an audience of young gamer dudes, covered by a gaming press of young gamer dudes, all of whom are only interested in creating, playing, and covering games that interest young gamer dudes – which they believe to be the pinnacle of entertainment.” So when young gamer dudes grow up, they become game developers or journalists covering the gaming industry – or at least they never stop playing games (except they do, as I’ll point out later).
Let me be the first to say that there’s nothing inherently wrong with young gamer dudes. The problems begin when they don’t look up from their games for too long. Then they fail to notice how much time has passed and they’re surprised to see that their surroundings have changed: it’s dark, it’s dinnertime, and their girlfriend has left them for a nerdy-looked bespectacled bookworm that can kill monsters just by spelling words.
So what’s a young gamer dude to do? He can dismiss his new rivals, figuring they’re not l337 enough to be taken seriously, and stick with what has always worked…except it’s not working quite so well this time. Or he can do something that gamers have stereotypically had trouble with: clean himself up, get out there and make new friends.
Next: The Challenge >>
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