Email Discussion on Casual Gamers

Hey,

Over the summer I received an email from someone who read the casual gamer post in my blog and wanted my opinion on casual gamers buying a gaming laptop. Here are the email transcripts.
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Hi Doug,
i am from germany and i am currently interested in thoughts and opinions related to gaming. I just read your article on casual gamers and i think you are absolutely right with what you said about the differences between casual and core gamers. That is why i would like to ask you whether you can tell your opinion on this topic:
Do you think that a casual gamer (in your definiton) would ever buy a "gamer laptop" (like the ones "alienware" sells)?

Your answer will be treated in strict confidence and will not be passed on to third parties. This is not for selling purposes.

Thank you very much for your help!

"Reader"
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Hi "Reader",

I'm in total shock that someone else besides myself actually read my blog. I obviously have been slacking and haven't posted to it in a while. Right now I'm currently a production intern at a casual game company so I have a lot more knowledge then I did when I wrote that article. My opinion has changed a lot since then and I really should go and write some more posts now that I have some insider information.

To your question, I would say that a casual gamer would never buy a gamer laptop. The company I'm currently at has a goal of making sure their games will run on a computer 5 years old. This is because casual gamers are not technologically inclined and won't upgrade their computers until basic functions stop working. They have no need to have the newest and fastest graphics card because all they are really doing is word processing and checking their email.

I say all of this with the definition in mind that there is a three-way split in the video game industry consumer. There is the core gamer, generally male, who plays games 20 hours a week. There is the casual gamer who is, generally an older female, who plays games only a few hours a week. Then there is this new category that I have just learned about and agree with called the mass market consumer. This is where I would put consumers who like games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band but are not core or casual gamers. Clearly both of those games are not core AAA titles like Halo or Call of Duty, they are just as popular but they are not played solely by the core gamer. These mass market consumers are kind of the middle ground between core and casual gamers. The mass market consumer actually might buy a gamer laptop because they want to become more of a core gamer or are just interested in the technology.

From a completely personal standpoint, I would never buy a gamer laptop even as a core gamer. I know that laptops can now almost match desktop speeds but to get there you pay almost twice as much. I also don't plan on playing a core game while I'm traveling. I would rather have a solid desktop to play on that costs less and is faster. That is not to say that I don't own a laptop that is a little bit faster than is really needed but I would not buy a full on gamer laptop. I bought a laptop that is fast enough so that I could potentially play a game if I really felt the need to but it won't run well and might not run at all.

I rambled a little bit there but I think I answered your question.

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Hi Doug,

thank you very much for your help! Currently we are really trying to find a word for these gamers that are somewhere inbetween casual gamers and hardcore gamers. So your answer was a great help. So in the end your blog will have an influence on the video game industry!! Hope to read some more interesting things from you in the future.

I wish you the best

"Reader"
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I'll write a followup later this week more thoroughly discussing the video game markets. I'll also respond to my earlier post about casual gamers.

Cyaz

Improvement and Innovation

Hey,

The progression of video games has generally followed a very steady upward slope where games get more complex and more design elements are added as technology and player skill increases. People tend to complain that some new game is just like a game that came out the year before and that the game from the year before is just like the game the year before that. This is because games are normally between 60-80% improvement and 20% innovation. The creation of video games is no longer done by someone in their basement in their free time. It costs millions of dollars and oftentimes a large dedicated team. Doing something completely different is so rare because the cost of failure is so high.

Games with that type of balance have proven to be successful. Halo although innovative for the console and a good game was simply moving the first person shooter to the console. There is no huge innovation in the game play. The game is extremely successful though and has had 2 sequels. The developers simply made the first first person shooter to work on consoles. That was the innovation the rest is just improvement on the first person shooter genre.

Another example of a successful game like this is WoW. A lot of the game play is not new or innovative but it is better than its predecessors. Blizzard took what they knew worked in past games improved it and then put it in their game. They did innovate with instances, battlegrounds, etc too but a lot of the game is simply improvement.

The innovation in these games is just as important as the improvements. If the game only had improvements the game would be boring. The innovations do make the game but they shouldn't be the sole focus of the design.

The video game industry needs to study these unique cases of simple improvement and small innovation and learn to create it on a regular basis. Making a complete copycat where all the developers do is improve the last game is generally not successful. Making a game that is completely innovative and untested is also generally unsuccessful. That is not to say that they never succeed just that the chance of success is much less. I think that being able to tell these two types of games apart and specifically classify each aspect will help make better games.

Too often games are made that are copycats that are boring or innovations that players simply don't understand. A balance is necessary. Game design seems to be based on that balance.

Cyaz

New Start...etc

Hi,

I've been pretty bad at posting anything here and by pretty bad I mean not for several months. A lot has happened in that time and most of my old views about the video game industry I no longer agree with. That is the point of a blog though. To state my opinion on something at the time and get other people's comments. The comments part has not been happening so far but hopefully by actually posting I'll get some attention at some point. Anyways.....

Over the summer I managed to get an internship through a family friend at a casual video game company. It was the best learning experience I have ever had. Learning how to be a producer is incredibly hard to do while in school. It is very much a hands on kind of job and the only real way to learn while in school is to make games. Making games is exactly what I got to do.

I was ready to get an internship where all I did all day was follow a producer around and basically do busy work. This was not the case at all. I was a full assistant producer on a game. The producer I was working under tried very hard to give me an entire section that I could work on during the seven weeks that I was there. The game I was working on was in pre-production and all of the sound had yet to be worked out. By the end of the internship I had set up all of the sound for pre-production. The game I was working on was the first at the company to use voice over and I had to work with the 3rd party sound design studio and the game designers to gather all of the information necessary. I got an initial estimate for voice over and then added it into the schedule so that the producer could move forward with it after I left. I also did a preliminary revision of the sound request form adding in all the new sound effects we would need.

All of the sound work was only half the work I did over the summer but I it was the most significant. Near the end of my internship I realized that I had really worked on a making a video game and there was tangible evidence of the work I did. It was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had.

All of the work I did over the summer was a great learning experience but also just simply working in a video game company gave me insights that would have been impossible to get otherwise. That is one of the main reasons I want to start writing here again. This will be an exercise in seeing what I now think compared to before my internship and just a general way to track my thoughts. In the future my posts will hopefully be less about me and more about opinions about other people and the video game industry. We'll see what happens.

Cyaz