The Video Game Revue

Active Gamers

I stumbled across an article about "Active Gamers" on a blog called Pag on Games. In a nutshell, the author (Pierre-Alexandre Garneau, "Pag") introduces the idea that there is a large and neglected segment of gamers who fit uncomfortably between the widely acknowledged "casual" and "hardcore" varieties. Casual gamers want simple, PopCap.com style games that take a minimum of effort to get into. Hardcore gamers want sophisticated games that soak up oodles of time and effort to properly get into. Active gamers are looking for games that are sophisticated, but not so demanding that they can't be appreciated within the gaps of a busy schedule. In other words, active gamers want "real games" but don't have time to make a hobby out of them.

Pag identifies three primary properties of the active gamer:
- Experienced with games
- Mature adult
- Busy with family, career, other responsibilities

His profile is modelled after the typical gamer who was heavily into video games as a hobby in high school or college and therefore is already familiar with gaming conventions and knows the thrill of game mastery, but who has grown up and is too busy to properly persue games as a serious hobby anymore. Pag suggests that this segment of gamers is quite large--perhaps larger than the casual or hardcore gaming populace. He might be onto something, but then, I'm inclined towards Pag's point of view since I myself am a gaming hobbist who is frequently pulled away from gaming by the demands of my career.

Pag also mentions that the Nintendo DS fits the needs of the active gamer quite well. Many of the best Nintendo DS titles are "all ages" affairs that are suitable for adults, and since it's a portable platform, games are engineered around being played during small time slices where the player could be suddenly interrupted. This is an insight that has been simmering in the back of my mind ever since my recent fondness for the Nintendo DS started, and reading Pag's bit about active gamers made me realise that I've been gaming primarily in two modes recently: hardcore games like Digital Devil Saga, Disgaea, Day of Defeat, Metal Gear Solid 3, etc. when I have the time, and active games like Resident Evil DS, Mario Kart DS, Weird Worlds, etc. when I'm particularly busy. I would consider myself to be a hardcore gamer who slips into the active gamer profile when the demands of my life get too heavy, or based simply on my mood and energy levels.

One point that occurs to me is that the segment of active gamers could stand to grow a great deal in the next decade. When you look at kids today, many more of them are hardcore gamers than there were when I was a kid. When the current set of 8-15 year olds reaches the 23-30 age bracket, one would expect a whole freaking lot of them to grow into active gamers. Young people these days are much more familiar with gaming conventions and much more accepting of gaming not only as a form of entertainment but as a genuine artistic expression than young people were ten years ago. People talk about the rise of casual gamers and jock gamers, but I really think that Pag is onto something with this active gamer idea. If active gamers aren't already the largest gaming segment, I think that they are at least the fastest growing segment.

And while Pag talks about the requirements for a video game to appeal to active gamers (sophisticated, easy to learn, not demanding on time or commitment), what he doesn't mention is that such games are perhaps the most difficult type to develop. I don't mean that games for active players will cost the most to develop, or demand the most work per artist/developer on the project, but rather that games for active players, in my mind, require a special attention to the game design--a sort of balancing act between making the game a little bit hardcore but not too hardcore.

After all, there are certain formulas for writing games for casual and hardcore gamers. For the casual player, create something colourful and cheery with few rules and barely any learning curve. Puzzle games featuring bubbles, gems, and drops are common-place. Such games are very limited in scope and can be developed by a single person creating cute little graphics, simple game logic, and a small game engine that may use a platform like Flash or Java. For the hardcore player, develop a game with the mentality of it being like a massive Hollywood production. Pour lots of money into the development of artistic resources like detailed 3-D models and animations. Develop sophisticated controls and build a complex system of rules with layers of impressive functionality. There's no pressing need to make the gameplay accessible because the intended audience will be willing to invest lots of time into mastering the controls as long as they're won over by the game's other qualities. Despite the fact that these project lie on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of development effort and target audience, they share in common the fact that their extreme approach simplifies their development strategies. It's clear that with the casual game you want to keep things small and simple, and with the hardcore game you want to be massive and impressive.

Writing a successful game for active gamers requires a certain degree of elegance. The game needs to have complexity, but that complexity can't spill over onto the player's shoulders like it does in hardcore games. The gameplay needs to be intuitive, and the game's production values need to be impressive enough that ex-gamers will be satisified, but there can't be that sense of a massive production that requires the player to sit through a 30 minute opening cutscene or play through a 30 minute tutorial before gameplay starts. The game needs to have raw appeal--it needs to be fun, addictive, and easy to learn but tough to master. To do all of that and still keep the game from being a heavy commitment is a very difficult thing to achieve. It's far easier to limit oneself to the realm of a casual game or to shoot for the moon with an outrageously massive project than to try to ride that line down the middle where the game is simply beautiful and elegant.

Ultimately, this brings me back to a theme that I've been rambling on about for a few years now. Video games have broken into the mainstream, and players in the industry now recognize the market segments for casual and hardcore gamers quite readily. What we will see rise amidst the noise is a middle ground for "artistic" games, which I believe will largely appeal to the sophisticated yet reserved crowd of active gamers that Pag is talking about. In much the same way that Hollywood produces blockbuster action movies and cheesy dramas, both with little substance, for mainstream consumption while a smaller film industry continues to produce real movies for true movie-lovers, I believe that the video game industry is settling into a pattern of developing lots of cruddy mainstream games while a few truely great ones slip where somebody with genuine inspiration got involved.

But I am sort of mixing up topics here. It's difficult not to with a subject this interesting. Consider a game like Metal Gear Solid, which is clearly for hardcore gamers. It has the big production values and the complex gameplay, but it also has non-mainstream appeal. The issue of mainstream versus non-mainstream is not the same as the issue of casual versus hardcore gamers. Casual games can be non-mainstream, as can hardcore games be mainstream. In the sense that Pag talks about "hardcore" games, I believe he means to include games like Black or God of War that are huge blockbuster hits, as well as games like Disgaea and Digital Devil Saga that are more underground success stories. Above I'm sort of making the case that the games to satisfy active gamers will be artsy, non-mainstream games, but that is not the case. Certainly some active gamers will be drawn to non-mainstream games and get their fix on them, but there will be mainstream games for active gamers as well. What I'm really trying to say is that I believe that it takes a fairly special kind of game to draw the attention of active games (they are busy with their lives, after all), and so in that sense perhaps the less mainstream, truly inspirational games have a better shot at appealing to them than the more formulaic, blockbuster variety.

In any case, kudoes to Pag for presenting such an interesting idea.

posted by Parappa @ 11:00 AM