Whoops, Well, Classifications Anyway.
So, I’ve totally neglected this blog. Not out of laziness, I just forgot about it.
Working on this recent project as of late has made me realize that trying to classify anyone is almost impossible. People have too many diverse interests to think that you’ll ever appeal to anyone.
I also think that attempting to group people together by age and assume that you’ll make something that appeals to them is also a very naive hope. You just can’t do it with any certainty.
Ultimately, I think it’s all about how you create a game and knowing your target audience. To me there’s several separate groups:
- Plus gamers- This is pretty much “us.” I use the term plus because we’re pretty much modern gamers with the knob turned to 11. We play video games and don’t get freaked out by complex controls, and learn the mechanics of game-play really quickly. But we also appreciate how the games are made, and spend more time analyzing what could or should be done to make it better (The “how I would have done it” conversation we’ve all had).
- Modern gamers- regular gamers, typically from our generation. They pick up controls as fast as we do, but don’t really enjoy games for the same reasons. It’s tough to differentiate, but generally, these guys don’t get philosophical when it comes to their games.
- Casual Gamers- These are the kind of people who will play mostly for time-suck or when they get hooked on addictive game play. They’re not involved for story or witty dialogue. They can appreciate graphical quality, but generally, not with the same scale. These are also the guys who feel the need to yell at the screen when something goes wrong and throw the controller (stop doing that, it’s not nice)
- Retro-Modern Gamers- The generation who grew up with the very first video games, and are willing to at least take a stab at the new titles. Generally the controls come very slowly, and they get overwhelmed easily. Typically they are most comfortable with really simple objectives and controls. Most enjoy very shallow plot-lines and very few things to remember.
- Retro Gamers- If it goes much more beyond pac-man, these gamers want nothing to do with it, and shun the new technology.
- Retro-New Comers- This is mostly adults who missed getting into video games and are trying to now (i.e. the Wii crew). They play like Retro-Modern Gamers, but lack the preexisting knowledge.
- Young Children- These kids don’t have the motor skills necessary to play Halo yet, but Cooking Mama is just fine. While maybe not intellectually stimulated by games just yet, they like being entertained by bright colors and cute characters. On par with the retro-newcomers
- Unreachable- Some people just don’t want to play. These are typically adults who disliked games as a kid, or just never got into it, and have no intention of doing so now.
I dunno, this is overly simplified, but I tried to generalize the types of players as opposed to their age groups. I mean, if I’m making a game, I want it to appeal to a certain type of person, not an age group. I think that’s why Halo is so successful. Maybe not the simplest of games, but Bungee reaches out to our entire generation on so many levels. And they don’t try to be something that they aren’t. That’s pretty important. I mean, I could puke at all of these awful Nintendo Wii games. Some of them are laughable. Who are they even for? I dunno, I don’t see them being as popular as they look on television. I feel like those people in commercials are just passing that console around.
