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But what if this kind of thing was transferred to the games industry? What kind of games would we see being produced?
We’d see games that were intentionally aimed to go straight to number 1 in the charts and only to appeal to casual gamers. What kind of games would these be? Well, Considering that the largest player base for games consoles are males aged from 14 – 21 year olds, it would have to be them.
Obviously research would be done to see exactly what kind of game they like – But I’m pretty sure I can guess what they’d want – Shoot em-ups and beat em-ups. Why? Because these two genres are the two that that age group play most. Consequences? A market flood of Pop Games. Only games that are manufactured to go straight to number 1 in the games charts would be produced. Well, not only, but a huge majority of them would be made, leaving room for only a few titles of a different genre.
So what if this kind of thing started being implemented, what if developers started along this road?
It would mean a domination of casual gamers practically ruling the games market with their Pop Games, while the gamers who AREN’T Pop Games fans would be left out in the wild with only a few games arriving now and again to satisfy their lust.
The nasty part of all this is, it’s beginning to happen. We are beginning to see more games of the Shoot ‘em-up and Beat em-up variety. Most of which are quick re-hashes of previous games stuck together to keep people happy while the companies work on a new one.
Really, Pop Games began to appear a hell of a lot on the PS1. Count up the number of Shoot ‘em-up games compared to any other genre.
I’m not having a dig at Sony or anything because they were only trying to sell their console, but it is very apparent that the PS1 had a lot of games geared solely towards casual gamers.
If we do carry on in this way though, Pop Games will soon dominate the gaming world leaving gamers who want alternative genre’s caught with their trousers down and wearing a dumb expression.
We’ll be frozen out more or less.
It’s not all doom and gloom though, both Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima are seeing to that. But I’m sure things are going to get worse before they get better. Pop Games will soon be common place in the market. Let’s hope Shiggy and Koji can do something about it before it gets too bad. Roll on GameCube and PS3!
RBS
I never imagined myself saying
> this, but Pokemon Stadium is damn addictive.
>GENGAR RULES!!
I've got a Lvl 100 Gengar.
I trained him up on Pokemon red.
Get Pokemon Red or Blue on your GBA Ant. They're top RPG's.
> Cheers Pb. *Get's him in the face with a
> tomatoe* 1 MILLION POINTS TO ME!
hah, but it was a wrongly spelt tomato, so it doesn't have the point scoring abilities of a correct one.
> *smugs at Rasta*
Let's be smug together.
That sounds dodgy.
Heh, quiet!
:-D
Cheers Pb. *Get's him in the face with a tomatoe* 1 MILLION POINTS TO ME!
:-D
{runs as everyone throws rotton tomatoes}
Let's be smug together.
That sounds dodgy.
> Congratulations on the GAD win Rasta.
Cheers.
> Pokemon is a pop game #
I never imagined myself saying this, but Pokemon Stadium is damn addictive.
GENGAR RULES!!
Nice topic RBS, wasn't there a Spiceworld game at one point??
*shivers*
A good post though Rasta.
Most games are 'manuafactured' to gain a certain audience, although some have a more narrow age group in mind than others.