One of the most powerful things you can do when you’re crafting a message is to frame your own position as the norm, and all others as substandard. It does not work to frame your position as above average, because the human animal is at heart totally okay with average. Average means you did enough to get by, and you are now allowed to turn your attention to things you like more. Why bust your ass/spend more money/devote hundreds of hours when half the effort gets nearly the same result?
No, for a communications specialist, it’s far better to establish yourself as the market norm, as opposed to something meant for the elite. You can only get away with “elite” positioning if you’re going to charge your smaller audience enough to make up for it being… well, smaller.
In conjunction with this, I’ve always been frustrated with game marketing, because it almost always goes for the audience WE ALREADY HAVE, and not the much larger pool of people who think our products aren’t for them… even though behaviorally, our products would fit like a glove.
So of course I was thrilled when I read about the presentation at DICE that basically said, y’all, by making games for “gamers,” we’re limiting ourselves. People who watch TV aren’t “TV watchers.” Instead of an assumption of homogeny, in television the starting assumption is that the audience consists of multiple groups.
It’s so simple that I feel decidedly below average for not harping on this point years ago. I can’t pick out one quote, so just read the second half of the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/arts/television/25video.html
Good read Sanya. Not enough to get me out of my severe two month long writer’s block for my own blog, but it did get the gears turning.
The obvious counterargument to “we should be making games for everyone who has an inclination towards them” is shovelware and the fear of an overall decrease in quality of the depth of games. WiiMusic, WiiFit, and the other slew of casual games which don’t require much knowledge or effort but which makes oodles of money due to their huge gateway appeal, are intelligently developed but are in my opinion not the kinds of games that we should be heralding as the typical game that should be made going forward, just because of the almighty dollar and/or the slightly more altruistic idea of making gaming more “mainstream” so we get away from stigmas like “GTA4 Teaches Killing People, Cars, and Little Kittens”.
I don’t consider World of Warcraft, which was mentioned in the article, to be a high quality product these days. It is essentially the McDonald’s of MMOs and has extended its shelf life purely from doing the same repetitive carrot on a stick over and over again. But it’s wrapped in a convenient numbered-food-ordering system with free toys inside Happy Meals every so often, so millions and millions patronize it. That doesn’t mean that this should be the baseline standard for MMO development.
I’m really, really trying not to sound elitist. Let’s use the word “concerned” instead. I’m concerned that with the market success of the Wii, game development as a whole will take a quality dive, and that traditional or “core” games that do take some effort to play (and some lack of sunlight, stereotypically) will go the way of the dodo in favor of money-making, remote-waggling, casual gameplay, which has huge benefits, but also negative dividends in terms of what kinds of games are developed.
I get that gamer is a limiting tag, and there should be games that appeal to more people so that they are more successful, market wise. But as long games that aren’t “casual” continue to be developed, marketed, and sold, people can have all the casual games they want.
All this being said, I DO think the demographic needs tweaking. Gamers as a stereotype have become a very narrow market. I’m not against widening it – I just want to make sure that there are different degrees of games, so that we don’t just switch demographics.
This being from someone as a fan and a player, and obviously ignorant of the games development process as a whole, so, grain of salt.
Something about your premise made me wrinkle my forehead. They DO call “TV watchers” “TV watchers,” only they use the word “viewers” and much of the time, act as if it’s a homogeneous group.
So if they’re viewers, we’re gamers. I think the trick is to change the way people interpret the boundary around “gamers.” Wii goes a long way towards that. Nintendo DS games like Dogz do, too. We want many many people to say “Ich bin ein Gamer.”
Now I’m not a marketing person, so I wonder how best to achieve improving the gaming image.
Historically, to incite interest in a product or service, one would frame (artificially define) an above average example as average, and allow the target audience to compare their perceived status to the advertised norm. In turn, the audience gravitates to the advertised norm by correcting perceived deficiencies (i.e., buying into the idea that the product or service will improve their status).
But what do you do if your product or service is pre-conceived, often portrayed in popular media (note: competition for activity timespace), as below average, and is therefore undesirable (i.e., “gamers” used with negative connotation)? How do you inspire people, who want to be average and already see themselves as average, to change their perception on gaming from an undesired to desired status?
I think “gaming” encounters cognitive dissonance. Yes, we can frame “gaming” as the norm, but that conflicts with “non-gaming” that is also the perceived norm.
Just thinking aloud …
I think the Wii has made some strides in this department. I’ve seen people that would never touch a PC or console game play hours of tennis and other games.