The Distracted Gamer

Gamasutra has done a pretty well detailed article on the desires and motivations of what they term ‘missing gamers’:

Although the ranks of the gaming masses are swelling more than ever, there are still thousands who used to play games when they were younger that have yet to return to the pastime.

Their lives have obviously changed in the intervening years — so that available time, money, and attention are now in more limited supply.

But beyond these generalizations, we wanted to discern the detail of what it was that kept them from picking up controller, mouse, or remote. Over a few weeks in the summer we organized a series of play sessions with some of these absentee gamers, a group ranging in age from 25 to 35.

This is pretty sweet, since this is pretty much the whole point of this site.

What they found from the sessions is very interesting and worth reading, but here are the main things they people said they wanted:

1. Integrated Social Experiences
   The ability to integrate gaming into existing social structures
2. Covert Gaming
   That is they don’t want to be part of the ‘gamer’ culture and don’t see themselves as ‘gamers’
3. Monumental Challenges
   ”It was clear that this group loves to rise to a really monumental challenge — games that they could study over many years to really understand.”
4. Adjacent Multiplayer
   Split-screen rather than network gaming
5. Price Point
   The people interviewed said price really wasn’t an issue
6. Adult-Oriented Products
   Not porn, but rather they didn’t like the immature packaging & marketing for a lot of games
7. Assumed Gaming Grammar
   They didn’t understand what a lot of the games required.

I find myself agreeing more or less with most of this. I would contend that for people with a family & a mortgage, price is an issue, I can’t afford to spend $100 or more on a game. Also, I don’t mind the ‘gamer’ tag, but I can see why it would turn some off. Especially with the sometimes stunning amount of childishness that goes with the name.

I’d add a couple of items to this list though:

1. Quicksave
   Any game that doesn’t allow you to stop at any point then pick it up again at the same point is not designed for people who are time-poor. The last thing I want to be doing when I manage to get an hour for gaming is replaying the same half a level again because I didn’t quite make it to the checkpoint before my daughter tripped over & needed to be taken to the hospital!
2. No unskippable cut scenes or dialog
   Seriously, I’ve already bought your game, I don’t need to spend 30 seconds staring at your really fancy animated logo. Let me skip it, I do not want to have to sit through it or any other FMV 100 times.

I’m sure there’s other things.  There’s plenty of other things that are good for more ‘casual gamers’ (I really don’t like that term though, it always sounds like someone who’s favourite game is Bejeweled, hence the name of this site), but these two are, I think, mortal sins that so many games commit for absolutely no good reason.

There’s been some announcements in the last couple of weeks that seems to suggest that game makers are starting to re-focus on your non-hardcore gamers in some cases.  As an ex-hardcore gamer I would never want to see the industry abandon the brilliant games that require the major time investment of time in favour of us poor distracted gamers.  But a little love for us guys would be nice.  I know the Wii has brought about a number of games that you can pickup & quickly get into.  But I still like my serious games.  Wii Sport may be fun for a while, but it’s not why I love gaming.

On Sunday just gone, the ABC (Australian, not US) started the second ‘Not Quite Art’ series presented by Marcus Westbury.  It’s was actually really interesting.  This first episode was called ‘Culture Shock’ and they were looking at what shapes current culture.  He had an interview with a musician, an animator and a ‘singing bridges’ fan.  But the most interesting bit was his interview with Ben Croshaw, aka Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation. 

He talks about what, how and why he does the critiques he does. One of the points he made about how influential he’s become was that his fairly positive review of Painkiller caused the sales of it to triple in the first four hours after he released his review!

He also talks about his frustration with people still refusing to recognise games as an art form (which they are).  Yahtzee gets my quote of the day award for this:

It can get frustrating when you want to talk about games as a cultural thing, it gets very frustrating with people saying “oh it’s for kids, oh it’s a bad influence.”  But what I find comforting is that they’re all old.  And old people will die first.  And we’re the ones that get to pass on our values to the next generation.  Old people have always opposed what’s new and scary because it reminds them they’re loosing control of the world.

Not diplomatic, but then that’s exactly what’s made him so popular.

You can check out the show on iView here for the next 20 or so days, or you can download it here. Yahtzee’s interview is at the 9:30 mark, but I would recommend watching the whole thing if you’ve got the time.

Update: Someone has put it up on YouTube too:

The show’s host Marcus Westbury gave a talk at the Department Of Culture and the Arts in Western Australia and he’s posted his notes for that talk, in which he talks about the show and Yahtzee’s interview in particular.

Oh, and Yahtzee’s latest video is on S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky.  As always it’s worth watching, and as always, it comes with a language warning.