We Place Faith in The Conduit
July 31st, 2008
I like to keep tabs on the Nintendo fanbase and their response to new games and announcements. I do so because it makes for a fascinating case study on how a loyal fanbase (such as Nintendo’s) reacts when their favourite company expands outwards to other audiences. The reality is that these players can enjoy games like Wii Fit and Brain Age (why wouldn’t they? I love them) yet haven’t made the transition into that frame of mind just yet, keeping hold of an arbitrary notion of thought (“hardcore gaming”). Their reaction is very insightful of fan culture and the identity it creates.
I myself am, of course, a huge Nintendo fan which makes up part of the fascination. You can even slap the commonly abused “fanboy” label on me too if you like. I’m not fussed. I think that the difference here is that, I’m very interested in casual games for both play and curious investigation. There’s no shame in it, contrary to popular belief, people like me can enjoy “casual” games and enjoy them because after all, they are games and I like to play games!
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Three Steps to Success: Summary
July 6th, 2008
With these topics discussed it’s time for me to tease out some conclusions. Basically I wrote the past three articles to analyze what I see as our most significant issues holding our industry back from going to the next step. These are by no means guaranteed solutions but rather a few suggestions of my own that I think if adopted will do some good.
Implications with Classification of Hardcore and Casual
When using the terms hardcore and casual in reference to games we need to ensure that we recognize that they are just loose terms to roughly describe a set of games or players. Caution needs to be taken to not use them in a polarizing or overly definitive manner.
Fanboys and How to Deal With Them
The only way in which we can defeat fanboys is to embrace them and take on board their enthusiasm. Attempting to prove their interests invalid is unfair and not the kind of culture that we should be encouraging. Players should not feel pressured by others if they have a strong interest in a particular game, console, company or brand.
Game Reviews: Critique, Subjectivity and a 10 Point Scale
The checkbox way of analyzing games has to go, in favour of describing your personal reaction to the experiences within the game through critique. Subjectivity, much like fanboys should be embraced and we need to reform to a 10 point scale in order to alleviate ourselves of the petty arguments generated over a bloated grading system.
Implications with Classification of Hardcore and Casual
June 29th, 2008
Language is particularly interesting in that it is a vehicle for natural selection; language allows us to classify objects into groups. This simple convenience makes comprehending the environment we live in a much easier task. Unfortunately such a process is usually held in our subconscious and as such we are unaware of how dangerous it can be if we take control ourselves to simplify complex issues with this form of categorization. What this means is that every time we categorize something, (particularly new, foreign and/or complex) we run the risk of allowing this simple convenience to short sight crucial properties and implications as to what it is we are defining. Being in our subconscious, we don’t realize our own shortsightedness which turns simple, necessary categorization into flawed error.
This concept can be applied to language within our own sub-culture (video games). Several pieces of language fall victims to such short sightedness, simply put, we need a re-thinking of such vocabulary. But before I get to that lets take a step back and put this language under the microscope.
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