http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3639/what_gamers_want_family_gamers.php?page=1
Andy Robertson wrote an article where he brought a bunch of families into a room, made them play videogames, then extracted 10 important points from it. Biased highlights:
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Sarah voiced a common frustration: "By the time I look down and figure out which button to press, it's already too late and I've crashed." "Why do you need so many buttons? All I want to do is steer the car," chimed in Abi, another of the mums in the group. One of the dads ended up just watching for the majority of the time, stating "I just press the wrong buttons and reset the thing" after managing to quit a game and return to the 360's dashboard with a couple of miss-directed presses.
The parents seemed genuinely impressed and surprised by the level of detail on the PS3 and 360 games. "It looks just like the television. Am I controlling that? That's mad! I can't believe you can even see the driver in the car." Dave, one of our dads, was particularly impressed with the engine sounds, "I can hear the Toyota hum as it approaches, I can tell who is behind me without even looking -- now that is very impressive."
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The values of the consoles squished squished into 2 paragraphs.
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1. Quick Start
The energy in the room took a real dive each time we swapped games. Our parents were surprised by the amount of time before they could actually play the games.
Cars, for instance, insisted on a drawn-out tutorial before we could drive ourselves. This was often exacerbated by long or unskippable cutscenes.
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The worst part of Super Paper Mario? 15-minute intro of DOOOOM.
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4. Safe Controls
Most games took only a few misguided presses to dump the player unceremoniously back to the title screen. Our gamers all seemed able to hit these combinations with surprising regularity.
Before they had twigged what was going on, the game had been quit and they were back at square one. Surprisingly, this was a particular problem with the Wii. Younger players' fingers often seemed to stray to the tempting red and white of the power button at the top left of the Wii-mote, whilst older players' larger digits often hit the home button, unintentionally pausing the action.
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Too many kids I know would delete or overwrite my saves because the "delete" option was so shiny! Also interesting to hear how the home/dashboard/whatever PS3 calls it button is so attractive to gamers.
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5. Play Together
By far the most popular games in our lab were those that sported local multiplayer, particularly if there was a cooperative element. Our class of players found that teaming up together was not only great fun, but also enabled experienced players to guide and protect the novice player.
Local split screen action was notably absent from many of the PS3 and 360 games, with only the Wii consistently sporting this option. Super Mario Galaxy, for example, proved most popular for father-son gaming.
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I wish more games were local multi-player coop. Really, I do.
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8. Episodic Play
Whilst episodic gameplay is all the rage these days, our gamers were looking for episodes of 15 minutes rather than 15 hours. "When the kids ask to play one more level before lunch, I want to know how long it will take -- if I am going to avoid minor explosions in the living room and refusal to eat."
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Our players also attested to generally having less free time to play games. What time they did have was often only available in smaller chunks. They all agreed the quick pick-up-and-play games were a much better fit.
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For me this goes hand-in-hand with point #1. People don't have an entire afternood to spend on this.
PS Does anyone know how I can put stuff in quote boxes?
There is no such thing as a console war. This is the first step to game design.
