A Look at the Gaming Industry: Hold the Panic - The Challenge
(Page 4 of 4 )
The gaming industry can certainly use a few new friends. But young gamer dudes aren’t known for their social skills, so here’s the first lesson: ask questions of your new friends; put some real effort into finding out what they’re like. Pay close attention to the ways in which they’re different from you, not just the ways in which they’re similar to you.
Many of the people playing video games today do not match the young gamer dude stereotype, as I wrote about not too long ago. Grandparents are getting into gaming, many of them for the first time. Even hardcore gamers aren’t who we expect them to be.
Let’s look at a lot of the folks who started out as young gamer dudes, but are now grown up. Are they still gaming? Yes, but with a difference. They have a game console and more disposable income, but their money for buying more games is competing with other priorities, like paying the mortgage, buying food, covering kids’ expenses…you get the picture. And their time for gaming is competing with the time they need to spend working and want to spend with their family or on hobbies other than video games (to say nothing of the “honey do” jar!).
Of course Nintendo’s formula for the Wii is a great example of getting it right: make it easy, make it fun, make it different, make it appealing, and you can attract new segments of the population to playing video games. But you have to know the needs and desires of your audience – and understand the size of that audience. Baby boomers are aging; it won’t be long before there are a lot more grandparents than young gamer dudes. And those grandparents will help raise the next generation of young gamer dudes when they play video games with their grandkids on gaming consoles that may be a lot less hard core but fit their needs much better.
These days, many gamers and would-be gamers don’t have the time, money or skills to spend playing many, many hours to get through a first-person shooter game. If the traditional video game industry is having a “crisis of attention,” it is because the price of attention has gone up – especially if they want to get that attention in large chunks. The sooner the video game and console makers turn their attention to that change in reality, the sooner they can expect to get back into their customers’ hearts and living rooms.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
