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They Have Radio in the Country, Too on Game and Player

They Have Radio in the Country, Too

Adam Bogert  //  July 15, 2010


Casual gaming is a re-introduction for non-gamers.

F

or the last several years, major game companies have been explicit about their intentions to widen the gaming demographic and to pull in the uninitiated friends and relatives of current gamers. "Casual gaming" has evolved from a joke to a niche to a full-fledged market, and in the process the industry has striven to find new and exciting ways to reach larger and more diverse audiences. But there's one factor they may not have considered: current gamers.

You see, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone today who has no notion of video games. Though there may conceivably be a gaming tabula rasa here or there — in Amish country, perhaps — most people are at least superficially familiar with games or gamers and have developed their own thoughts about what gaming means.

My parents, for example, are not gamers. Despite the fact that my brother and I (and to a lesser extent my sister) have defined our lives with gaming tech and culture, my father has only shown a marginal interest and my mother has avoided it like the plague. Yet neither of my parents is ignorant about gaming; over the years, they have observed our hobby, and in time they have developed their own assumptions. Last week, I encountered those assumptions head-on.

Exposure to gaming — specifically, to my gaming — was precisely the reason for my parents' hostility towards the activity.This summer our family will be going on vacation with several other families from our church. We recently met to discuss parameters for the outing, and not five minutes into the conversation my mother threw down the gauntlet: "No video games, right?"

As it turns out, I completely agree that a week on the Outer Banks is better spent riding actual jet skis than sitting inside playing Hydro Thunder Hurricane. But I still had a bone to pick: my mother's ban had been preemptive, nixing gaming before it was ever advocated and dismissing it as a whole as if it were inherently bad or antisocial.

I subsequently grilled my parents as to their feelings on gaming and among their complaints were gaming's inaccessibility, time commitment, relative social exclusion, skill requirement, obscene content, and lack of interpersonal interaction. Save the obscenity, they may as well have been discussing Monopoly (a game which will be heartily endorsed on our vacation). This description troubled me, not so much because it was so grossly inaccurate as because I couldn't understand how two people as oft-exposed to gaming culture could have entertained it.

Not without a certain degree of horror did I realize that that exposure to gaming — specifically, to my gaming — was precisely the reason for my parents' hostility towards the activity. Their assumption that all games are time-sucking bloodbaths was because for the most part those are the only games that my brother and I have chosen to play.

You and I know that not all gaming is Modern Warfare. We can recommend DDR and Mario Kart, LiitleBigPlanet and The Sims, because we understand that not all games are created with the same audience in mind. But we're already on the inside, and we like gaming. To us it makes perfect sense as a hobby and as a socially viable instrument.

But convincing someone like my mother that Guitar Hero could enhance Thanksgiving with the relatives is hardly that simple. She has learned, through years of exposure to first-person shooters, that gaming is violent and antisocial. If she is ever to embrace casual gaming, she'll need time and exposure to balance what she knows.

Analyst Michael Pachter asked whether hardcore gamers would give up their gaming time to let friends and family mess around with casual fare. I see Pachter's bid and I'll raise.This effectively puts the burden of expanding the gaming demographic on my shoulders, something I'm not particularly pleased with. Discussing the upcoming Kinect during an impromptu interview, analyst Michael Pachter sardonically questioned whether hardcore gamers would consider it worthwhile to give up what would otherwise be their gaming time so as to let friends and family mess around with casual fare.

I see Pachter's bid and I'll raise. To effectively hook my mother into the casual scene, I wouldn't just have to give her time to play; I'd have to spend my time playing too, laying aside the hardcore games that I enjoy while slowly fostering an environment in which, perhaps someday, she would actually want to try it herself.

Does getting my mother to play video games mean I have to spend my holidays playing Kinectimals? Because if it does — and that may very well be the case — then all the marketing in the world won't be enough to enlarge the casual market in this household.

It's all well and good for companies like Nintendo to say they are trying to create a game for everyone; yet there is a missing link that needs to be addressed. We have hardcore games, and we have casual games, but we are sorely lacking the go-between: games that hardcore gamers will want to play that also have the easily-learned, easily-enjoyed accessibility and appeal that will draw in those who have heretofore dismissed the industry.

Perhaps, when those games begin to appear, I will see the day when five minutes into the vacation-planning meeting my mother will say "We'll have video games, right?"





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