Making Games Relevant
October 8th, 2008
Before I arrived in China I decided to watch over Nintendo’s E3 2006 Press Conference. My reason for doing so is because I’ve slowly become more attuned to Nintendo’s greater vision for play to be universal and wanted to familiarize myself a little more with their message.
Watching the conference jolted my mind as to how difficult it is to initially become motivated in and then actively maintain an interest in video games. I came up with the following list of comparisons between the different entertainment mediums to highlight my point. These are all just rough ideas which I have tried to constrict to a median range:
Literature
Teaser – 30 seconds – 2 minutes (blurb)
Sample – 10-25 minutes (first chapter/few pages)
Completion – 3 - 10hrs
Music
Teaser – 20 seconds (chorus of one song)
Sample – 8-12 minutes (handful of songs)
Completion – 30 minutes – 1hr (album)
Film
Teaser – 30 seconds – 2 minutes ((teaser) trailer)
Sample – 5-15 minutes (one scene/extended trailer)
Completion – 1-3 hrs
Video Games
Teaser – 1-3 minutes (trailer)
Sample – 10 minutes – 1hr plus (demo)
Completion – 5–25hrs
This logic is highly flawed though, as each medium has it’s individual constructs which set them apart. If we talk dispensability then you can start up a Flash game on Kongregate and be done in 5 minutes, the same length as it’d take you to listen to a few music tracks. Then again it’d only take you less then 5 minutes to read this article (literature), right? So where do we draw the line? Who cares anyways? These are just loose approximations.
As you can see by the notes, “generally speaking” video games demand the highest threshold of the four, in each of the three categories. This means that for busy everyday people with mouths to feed playing a game can easily be seen as selfish fun (horrah for the manchild!). So how do you capture their attention?
You get their attention by making the game itself relevant to these people, relevant but also accessible because even if your product is relevant, it means nothing if it is out of reach. Now, we should define both ‘relevant’ and ”accessible ‘ to further understand how they operate within the notion of this “mouths to feed” market.
Relevancy
To be relevant means being set in a field (of interest/necessity) related to the consumer’s but also having merit and/or significance in that field. For example, my Mum is an unbelievably good cook so a game like Cooking Guide for the DS is relevant. Unfortunately for Nintendo, she is already a good cook hence there is little merit in her buying Cooking Guide (as it teaches her how to cook). So in the end she is disinterested.
Accessibility
Much like relevancy, accessibility is multi-faceted and can be summed up under the following:
-communication – through clear advertising, let them hear about it
-ease of access – is it a straight up purchase or does it require extras? Will it be there? I want it now!
-ease of use – is it easy to use and understand
I think that as games continue to develop and expand, these layers will then begin to disappear. That is through way of instant purchases, a widening market etc.
I’ll leave the marketing101 here and next time (or sometime thereafter) will look at some case studies of successful games to apply these concepts to.
You’re Twisting my Arm Here Sony
September 1st, 2008
NB: As it stands the Australian dollar stands at about $0.98 American dollars, so almost equivalent, keep this in mind when reading. Of course this article was also written a while ago too.
Despite my enthusiasm for the release of Metal Gear Solid 4, there was a lot of friction involved in balancing up whether a Playstation 3, at this stage in the game, was worth the $AUD750 purchase. Truth is, I am a very cautious buyer and I never like to plonk down the cash on a big investment unless I am certain that the investment with more than cater towards my needs.
Another personality trait of mine is that I hold no shame in playing games that are a few years past their used by date. So the bright lights of next gen didn’t really woo me to a great extent. Therefore if I was going to buy a PS3, I needed a real sufficient reason to do so. Fortunately for the big wigs at Sony, MGS4 was more than sufficient but it didn’t mean that the choice was an easy one by any lengths.
How Does it Feel to Play a Video Game?
August 6th, 2008
Since I first picked up a controller and pressed the buttons, to see visual confirmation on the screen, I became fascinated by games. As a child, I played them for hours on end when I could, discussed, defended and debated them in the playground, drew pictures of them during free time and art classes, read about them and wrote stories about them. Despite my interest in the medium there was and has always been resistance. By my parents who restricted play time, from classmates who stigmatized me and my friends as social inadequates, in the media whom link video games to negative social behaviour.
Throughout all of the hard times though there was something to keep me going. Something that I have faith in. Allow me to try and explain to you what it is:
When we play games there is a psychology deeply rooted between us and the experience. With the experience being feedback generated from gameplay. The interlocking of player and experience builds up an affinity within us, creating an obvious affection towards this medium. We receive visual confirmation on screen and hence relate to that, even in the slightest form. It is this affinity that I’m attempting to describe that is the core of the playing experience.
When discussing the social difficulty of being a gaming enthusiast it is easy for me to lay the blame on those outside of our collected group. This is not the case. The reason why our parents, friends, media feel this way towards us is because we have a disconnect created through misunderstanding. They have never been hit by the same impact from games that we have and no one has ever sat them down and tried to explain to them how it feels to have that impact. In a nutshell: they fail to understand and we fail at explaining it to them.
Deep down within all of us enthusiast there is an utmost love and respect for the games we play and overall we only want the best for our industry. This is, of course, very much influenced by the ‘experience of play’ which I tried to describe.
Our problem is that we fail to correctly inform our peers of the impact that games have on us. We fail to technically justify what it it exactly, within the game and all its mechanics that send endorphins rushing through our head. Infact, worse than that we still fail to justify this to ourselves. In which case how can we possibly describe it to others.
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