Educating the Newborn Gamer Masses - a solution to third party and hardcore gamer wii woes?

Unless you've been living on Mars, in an Amish community or in prison for the last year or so, every gamer must have noticed the amount of attention our frowned upon pastime has garnered in this post-BrainAge and Wii Sports gaming climate. There seems to have been an unbelievable surge of traditionally non-game publications, websites, mainstream celebs and TV programming that have let the great unwashed masses know that these products exist and make these products of Kyoto appear extremely fun looking and appealing hence these reports of INSANE Product shortages, broken plasma tvs, grannies playing video games in carehomes, and families and parents who have never even touched a joystick before becoming Wii Sports mad. WTF is going on???

If you're a cynic you could label all of this a fad and say that couple of years time there will be a sizable landfill somewhere in the Arizona desert filled with more wii units than another landfill has Atari ET cartridges. If you're an optimist instead of being a negative twat you may see this as a gateway drug for these newly inducted members of our worldwide gaming family ( hereby referred to as 'newborns', as in new-born gamer or nbg if you want be all 733t and internerd savvy ) to experience what we've all known for ages - controlling Gordon Freeman, Mario and Marcus Fenix triumphs over watching pop culture dross like Eastenders on TV.

By extension, there are more of us than ever, and more chance for games to permeate mainstream mass-pop culture, and more potential chance for AAA games released on wii to sell ludricous amounts of copies, maybe even stimulating interest in the PS3 and XBOX360 amoung newborns. How are we going to get these newborns off their braintraining babymilk, suckling at the teat of Dr Kawashima (wonderful imagry I know) and progress them onto a more solid diet of platforming Mario, fps headshots, adventuring and more, before their shiny new toys go the way of hulahoops, rubiks cubes and space hoppers and ex boy/girlfriends: In the bin.

Anyway, to the point. It seems some third party publishers are cashing in on this new surge heavily with shovelware, ports and, to put it bluntly, crap games before the proverbial bubble bursts, all over their face. How are these newborns reacting to this? Well looking at the charts it seems like they are lambs being led to slaughter. Mario and Sonic at the Olympics is no.1 in UK game sales, casual -aimed but critically panned Carnival Games is selling respected amounts while games like Mario Galaxy are selling well, but I'm sure in some gamers' eyes is criminally underperforming, and in Japan dev Goichi Suda is pining that 'non-casual' games 'do not sell' on the system. All of this is resulting in gamers whining en-masse like real newborns on messageboards and fearing the days of the 'hardcore game' are numbered and their conservative tastes will be ignored.



left: Japanese game dev, wrestling enthusiast Goichi Suda










Additionally third parties who want to take time and put money into making some quality titles for the wii are using the stock excuse 'only Nintendo titles sell on Nintendo consoles'. This thought process can be attributed to several things:
1) Long term Nintendo fans who like the first party games but don't play nor buy much else ( I don't know anyone who is like this, I think this stereotype is the mythical unicorn of gaming)
2) Nintendo -haters who consider themselves 'hardcore' know too well that the N64 and Gamecube had pretty poor third party support and as such believe the wii will go exactly the same route, despite the mainstream success and exposure. So why buy a wii if no topgrade third party stuff is released for it?
3) Lack of marketing for the right audience
4) Third party tendencies to make all exclusive third party content is kid-friendly. Problem is these devs don't normally make 'family friendly' games and as such make uninspired drivel and as such patronise their potential audience, get a load of crap reviews for their games and then whip the "only nintendo games sell" statement out of their big company satchel labeled 'cliched excuses'.

Addressing the situation:

The way most of the mainstream find out about most of the entertainment they consume is through hype and marketing brought to them by newspapers and television. Thusly the way Nintendo have had the mainstream consumer embrace them is advertising in non-game mags, having celebrities they (the newborns) know and relate to endorse their products in the ads and try and buck the stereotype of 'the lone gamer' via the 'wii want you to play' TV ads. Looking at what third party publishers have done doesn't quite compare. I know they might have marketing budgets that are insignificant compared to the Kyoto powerhouse, but still they blow/waste a sizable wad of cash on ads in specialist mags read by the kind of gamer who already knows that the game exists and is waiting for it with baited breath or has already written it off due to buzz from mag and internet previews. In the abscence of sufficent marketing budget there are a few possibilities to let these people know whats up:

1)Magazines - I really think one of the biggest steps the industry could take in making inroads towards this casual/new market and by publishing a magazine geared towards them. This may seem an insane idea, as magazine sales are down across the board for traditional games mags as tech savvy gamers know to look for up-to-date news, reviews, buzz, controversy, screenshots and videos on blogs, forums and sites for the latest title they pretend to care about. However this previously nongamer audience wouldn't know who Chris Kohler, Dan Hsu or Ben Yahtzee were if the mentioned trio painted themselves purple and danced naked in some newborns back garden around a roaring fire singing 'we are videogame journalists doo dah doo dah day'. Being generally non-tech savvy ( a sweeping generalisation I know but bare with me on this one ) these newborns may use the internet for email and facebook, perhaps a little online poker but when it comes to blogs like Kotaku and sites like Gamespot they might as well not exist. And the magazines on the market at the moment look like they might as well be comics to the average consumer, with garish colours coupled with an unsubtle image of 'Space Marine X' on the cover with bulging veins on his arms and star-wars esque armour everywhere else including an inproportionate codpiece.Sure, in the UK there's Edge with its tasteful design and covers but even for some gamers they find it a bit too wordy and geared towards the hardcore with a taste for the obscure and niche gaming.




left: armoured codpieces ahoy






















I'm sure the idea of a magazine aimed at these newborns would be quite a profitable venture for whatever publishing company thats brave enough to take the plunge, and potential advertising revenue from companies and products that would never even consider advertising in a traditional gamesmag would also help.

2)Marketing/publicity- Take a cue from the agency Nintendo hired to do its ads - hire celebrities your intended demographic know and relate to, or look up to. Like they used High profile UK celeb Chris Tarrant to promote brain training and International superstar Nicole Kidman for Brain Training 2 use someone like Football Factory star and plastic-cockney Danny Dyer ( seen by some as cool and edgy, not speaking for myself there!) to promote No More Heroes in an advert playing the game with some stereotypically 'lad' mates. Rising Star ( Uk distro for NMH) probably couldn't afford that kind of clout, but since royalties of third party releases are profitable for Nintendo I can't see how some small grant for advertising for third parties advertising their games wouldn't be to the mega-corporation's advantage. Of course there would probably be other stars better suited for the job, but I just meant that as an example. Can't you recognise a man who can freestyle?

2)Newspapers - We know how the tabloids love to misinform the public of 'game violence' but they could also a valuble asset. When a major blockbuster movie opens there's coverage of it in the paper, and maybe over the next couple of weeks there will be articles with info about the movies, eg "The creatures of Lord of the Rings" or I specifically remember (many) years ago a 2 page spread in The Sun about the slang used in 'Wayne's World'. The mainstream coverage of the release of Halo 3 must have benefitted the game's sales immensely, so imagine how it would benefit a game that is released on a platform that is already in so many people's homes. Of course, this is all down to PR and networking with people who work in such publications, not something that happens overnight.

3) Game shops - Sorry to go a little off topic, but gameshops aren't exactly geared towards exploiting this new demographic either. Shelves and shelves of boxart that means nothing to Joe Bloggs with the overall decor having a hue of that exotic colour 'grey' isn't the most inviting thing on a Saturday afternoon shopping. Also the retail units these shops are situated in are mostly far too small and inadequete for this expanded audience, with skinny aisles and no room to queue means that queues go throughmost of the shop, making casual browsing nigh-on impossible. One time recently when I went to my local gamestation they had to close the front door and let people in on a one-in one-out basis as a consequence of there being too many people actually in the shop. You can hypothesise about the demise of the 'plastic and cardboard' distribution model all you want but until every game is distributed via XBOX live, PSN or wiiware ( with an external wii hard drive) and broadband speeds are superfast, game retail is still going to be #1 method of distribution. Why wait hours, or possibly days under server strain, for a game to download when you can pop down the road and have it in your hand? The shops need to accomodate the newborns! More informative product displays explaining what an actual Game is about for the big new releases. And more colours than just grey for the decor please! Grey is just, well, depressing. GAME have the right idea, my local one has just got itself some classy looking wood panel flooring and of course theres GAME radio that plays in all the stores.


Well thats my take on three major aspects that I think have potential in the longterm to inform and develop the taste of the newborns. Who knows what the future holds? With the release of wii fit there will be even more sales of hardware and more untapped demographics taking an interest. Perhaps, if this all happened a lot earlier maybe some socalled 'cult' games may have found a wider audience. Think of Rez, Okami, Zak and Wiki, NMH as quality games that could have been blockbusters if marketed just right. The sheer fact that Okami bombed sales wise breaks my heart. If the conservative third parties and their marketing teams aren't willing to take a big risk like the House that Mario Built have done with a whole games platform we only have the industry to blame for not just simply taking advantage, but taking advantage in the right way as opposed to just cashing in as much as possible before these newborns quickly become old, jaded cynical grumps.