N'Gai Croal owns me. He works for Newsweek and knows more about big business and gaming than I ever will. N'Gai's Level Up blog is required reading, and has been ever since I found my way there via Kotaku.
Besides his impressive knowledge of gaming and business, N'Gai likes to think. Most gaming mags and podcasts are focused on the next big product for so-called core gamers. That's fair. That's who works on those mags and podcasts. But N'Gai watches the bigger picture and in his latest exchange with Geoff Keighley, asks whether the gaming press is missing the boat. The Wii has sold more units than the 360. The biggest Wii games are Wii Sports and Wii Play and Mario Party 8, which don't suck, but aren't of much interest to core gamers. But with the Wii sales showing no signs of abating, I have to wonder, how big will the mainstream market get? Is it bigger than core gamers? If core gamers aren't buying most of the games, are they really core gamers anymore?
Essentially, this is how I feel about most entertainment. Most movies, TV, and music are crap. I follow a few artists and listen to what my peers (or rough approximations thereof since I'm older than many of them, now) are saying about what's new and worth following. I am not a core movie viewer, core TV watcher, or core music listener. I am on the fringes. I can enjoy the mainstream stuff, but it's not my preference. I keep thinking that these are my leanings, regardless of medium, and as gaming goes mainstream, I (and most other core gamers) will be on the fringes again.
This isn't going to be a quick process, though. The games industry is large. There's a lot of inertia. It takes a couple years to change the direction of something so big. First, they need to realize where the money really is. It's not core gamers.
They're a significant audience, and publishers will slavishly cater to them while laboring under the illusion that their game can be the next Halo. But developing games for core gamers is a huge risk because their standards are so high. Development takes lots of cash and time and even small issues with the game will immediately be trumpeted on every blog and message board, hurting sales. The big market is in reselling people the brands they already want. Family friendly, easy to learn, well branded stuff that as long as it's semi-playable, will sell for years.
Nobody else seems to fear the mainstream. Am I just crazy?
1 comment:
Or am I just too late, and this has already happened?
Sure licensed crap gets panned, but it sells (e.g. Spiderman 3). We're still seeing "evolutions" of the FPS that aren't (to me anyway) more fun than DooM, just more complicated.
That was my nightmare. That I would just see the same games over and over again. I had hoped the Wii would at least make them more interesting to control, more involving. "It hasn't happened yet."
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