If there’s one thing I’ve taken away from Game Developers Conference last week is the fallacy that mobile/social game players are some how going to transition to the console market as new game users/players looking for a bigger experience. I liken this ideology to the gamer trying to get their significant other to play games with them beyond the usual game(s) they latch on to.
A lot of gamers (for lack of a better term) try in vain to get their significant others to broaden their horizons beyond the simple games we introduce them to. Or more likely, they have an affinity towards say a Sonic the Hedgehog or Mario game, but beyond that it becomes the “there’s too many buttons” or “this is way too complicated”. Granted, there are some marginal success’, but for the most part you just have to hand them games you think they can handle, and hope that they will at least appreciate your hobby and not ostracize it as a bad habit.
The need to expand the new player market is a tale as old as time, wrought with much unsuccess. I still recall fondly the days before the need of a 30 minute tutorial on how to play a game. I still read the instruction manual, even though these days it’s about four pages long and most of that is the different languages version of the controller map. I don’t think it’s because gamers are dumb and need to their hand held, but I do believe that developers are trying in vain to corner a market that at the very least is fickle about their gameplay experience, and at the most can’t muster the attention to enjoy a lengthy interactive medium like the boxed copy of a console game.
I’m not trying to say I don’t think these social media gamers can’t go hand in hand with the more “hardcore” gamers of today, but developers need to understand that for the most part, their time is better spent not preaching to the choir, and plying those of us (“hardcore‘) with tropes from the social media side of games: the shortened bite sized experience, the micro transactions, simplistic game mechanics, on and on.
After spending much of the past decade getting people to sign up for the high definition experience, those of us who applied, I think, need to be rewarded for our efforts. To me this means cut it out with the four hour single player campaigns, or if you are going to pull that bologna, don’t charge full price and instead make the ratio of cost to game balanced and less price gouging. I know you might be saying “Mr. Mayor, isn’t the inflated cost of the game to offset the cost of the higher budget games what with their HD graphics and such?”, and to that I must concede a little. But at this point developers need to understand the audience they are developing for and make their game accordingly.
I’m getting off topic. I don’t think that the bulk of the social media gamers are going to transition in to the HD gaming crowd. They aren’t going to shell out the hundreds of dollars for the high definition television and many gigs of hard drive based consoles, superficial HDMI cables, that developers insist make their games worth the investment. They’re accustomed to free or micro transaction method, and that certainly doesn’t have much of a foothold in the console game arena. Coupling this with developers now insisting on nickel-and-diming their fans with downloadable content (DLC), in a lot of games that is already on the game disc proper and is merely “unlocked“ for enjoyment. The jury is still out on a lot of the pricing mechanics associated with DLC, most of which I think is way overpriced!
The greatest asset of the gaming industry as a whole is the fact that it’s ever changing, constantly moving. I don’t think social media gaming is a fad, but I don’t think it can sustain the glut of bloat ware that is cresting on the horizon. I do believe, however, that a lot of great games are going to be pushed on to the wrong crowd, and that a better understanding of that demographic should be heeded by developers looking to exploit it for financial gain. The games industry has a storied history on one’s game success begetting dozens of ill-conceived, bastard clones that jam up the landscape and ruin entire genres of games. For every Mario that blazes a trail there is a Gex just around the corner gumming up the works.
Much like the frustrated boyfriend that’s trying to get his girlfriend to play Halo co-op with him, developers need to bask in the glow of the tiny victories that may bring new sheep to the flock, and not try to replicate, the inundate them with samey experiences when they’re trying to expand their gaming palette. There’s a pretty plain reason why parents think games are pretty much all the same and easily confuse a Cabela hunting game with a Call of Duty title, it’s got shooting in it, it’s got loud noises…must be what Timmy was looking for. Aside from that, developers still need to cater and care for the fans that got them to this point: us “the hardcore”. Developers have plenty of slack to work with from our end. We don’t mind having more people to share our hobby with. We have been your acolytes since we were single digit aged.
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