Mass Market Game Journalists Aren’t Our Target Audience

Posted on April 24, 2008 - Filed Under A Look Back, Casual Gaming, Editorial, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Retro, Xbox Live Arcade |

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Bookworm Twelve years ago the game industry had a growth spurt: 3D graphics. Although the concept of 3D graphics existed prior to 1996, the Nintendo 64, PlayStation and Sega Saturn stepped up the production value of video games. Increasing the overall cost to develop a single video game was due to the new complexities of graphic engines, pre-rendered movies scenes and realistic musical soundtracks much of which is contracted out to other studios.

The fifth generation of video game consoles also increased the complexity of many video games and boxed out some of the casual gaming enthusiasts. Many folks who loved the run and jump style of Super Mario Bros, Shinobi, Double Dragon and others were met with a new challenge: jumping through 3D space. We upped our gaming experience by learning a whole new dimension to video gaming but left a few folks behind asking, “why?”

Today, many of these early gamers have found a retro-style casual game experience more akin to their likings. They’re not the stereotype “hardcore” gamers and they don’t think like them. Casual gamers aren’t a stupid breed, hardly, but their desires for gaming entertainment are different. Much like one person loves the taste of a fine Merlot while another the a bitter dark beer, both people have a concept of perfect–they’re just not the same.

It seems Nintendo is at the forefront of the battle for casual gaming by designing a console mocked as a “novelty” with comments thrown at them like, “it will go nowhere” or “six months and people will forget it exists” yet the Wii is still impossible to buy. Not only is it impossible to purchase but the demand for the play-style is high enough to keep two big Nintendo products in the top NPD figures every month: DS and Wii.

Diner Dash Each month we’re presented with new game titles for the Wii that rate “below average” or worse by mass market game journalists around the Internet. Gamers are being told titles aren’t “worth their time” or are simply “rehashes of an old title” and have scores rating 4 out of 10 and labeled “don’t buy.” These same games manage to show up in homes around the country (not just Japan) and sell regardless to reviews, why?

Mass Market game journalists take their passion to heart much like any gamer does, but do they go home at night and play casual games? You’ll probably find they play games like Bioshock, Halo 3, Unreal Tournament, Team Fortress and Call of Duty 4. There are always exceptions to the rule, a game like Peggle or Valve’s Portal are loved by all but this is the exception not the rule. In many cases, gamers working in the mass market game industry have grown up with games and have excelled from Donkey Kong to Grand Theft Auto with ever changing tastes in hot titles. Most game journalists are not really casual gamers anymore.

Case in point, the IGN review of Doggie Dash. There is no review at all, just an excerpt about the game and some “popular games in this genre,” which they list Grand Theft Auto IV and a Doggie Dash rating of “NR” (not rated.) Nobody cares? No game journalist took the time to review the title and simply stubbed out a page related to the game. It’s up to the free lance bloggers and casual game reviewers of the world to keep gamers informed about casual games with actual coverage and an idea of how the game plays.

Casual game reviewers are into casual games, have a passion for casual games and thus review them with meaning and experience. You’ll find yourself understanding the tastes of a specific reviewer and this will help you formulate your opinion of a casual game title.

The reason sites like IGN, GameRankings and GameSpot don’t review these titles is because their audience are the hardcore gamers of the industry, the gamers that will buy one to three video games each month and purchased enough copies of Halo 3 to break entertainment records. These same gamers are lining up to blow away more records with the upcoming GTA IV release; a game who’s overall cost of production is probably that of 200 casual games. Yet, these mass market journalists try to broaden their reviews by covering obscure casual DS and Wii games and end up ranking them below average.

Perhaps they have nobody in-house that has any interest in casual games or they are basing these games against such titles as Halo and Half-Life in terms of content and graphics? There is a chance journalists genuinely believe these games are the worst in the industry but, based on market acceptance of these titles, there seems to be some flaw in the rating. Word of mouth for casual games gets around quick, if the game was truly that poor in quality the titles would have a few weeks of solid sales before dropped off abruptly.

Peggle Understandably, us casual gamers don’t spend as much on sealed in-box casual games for the consoles so it looks as if the Wii sells hardware units but no actual games. However, perhaps the industry journalists do not know how we think or react to games; we only need a few games to entertain us for months while a hardcore gamer collects new games like they were pokemon.

You’ll also notice that casual gamers invest more money on low cost casual games in electronic form from companies like Reflexive, PlayFirst and Big Fish Games. It would be great to see some statistics about how many casual gamers purchase games online from many of the popular distribution channels. It would be great, as well, to see more game journalists with actual passion for casual games!

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