The origin of "casual/hardcore gamers" and other industry bullshit.

[KungKras]

 

I'll start this thread by showing you guys this very interesting link.

The article does not talk explicitly of Nintendo. In fact, it is dealing with geek culture from a feminist perspective, but unless you are a total knucklehead, you should be able to see the similarity between this, and how the game industry has treated the Wii.

So basically, the game industry has been stuck in this very toxic pattern of userbase optimization, that involves excluding unprofitable userbases. This while ignoring the real reasons why people from those userbases did not buy games in the first place, thus worsening the problem in exchange for predicatbility and shot-term profits.

First it started with the "Nintendo is only for kids stigma", and then, when the Wii was made to counter the problem of a narrow game demographic, the game industry, that was only interested in optimizing that narrow demographic reacted in a very hostile fashion, dividing up gamers into the cool "hardcore" gamers, and the n00b "casual" gamers, trying to once again make these "casuals" feel alienated from gaming. The worst part is that it seems to have suceeded.

Here are some exempts from the article:

"Let’s say the tracking data now says that 80% of men bought the candy bar after the ads went live. But it also says that only 20% of women bought it. This means from the 50$ you spent on men, 40$ actually increased revenue, only 10$ wasted. When it comes to women, only 10$ made you sell candy bars, while 40$ have been wasted. Overall 50$ of advertising worked, the other 50$ didn’t. What do you do with you next 100$?

Are you going to spend your 100$ equally on men and women again? Are you willingly wasting 50$ again? Or are you spending those dollars exclusively on reaching more men, so that the 80% positive response yields you 80$ of successful advertising, while only 20$ go to waste?"

"Yes, excluding people based on demographic data makes sense to a lot of people in marketing. It’s considered a best practice and it actually is a pretty reliable way of increasing profit margins. And it is the least risky way of doing business. Spend your money where you get the most in return."

"Sure, with each iteration of marketing efforts, we kick more people out who not respond in a satisfying way, but we also need to improve the revenue we get from each of our target group customers individually. And it also would be great if some of the people we kicked out, would feel compelled to join the ingroup and change their behavior in favor of our profit. How do we do that? This is pretty easy, actually. You tell the members of your target group, that they are superior to those who are excluded"

Read the article and see if you come to the same conclusion as me.