Malstrom's new articles are up

[Sqrl]

I found this part especially interesting:

 

”In building new games for the EA Casual Entertainment label, Aarons adds, the priority is to focus on making sure the appeal is there amongst specific audiences - a stark difference from the broader marketing campaigns you might find implemented by the likes of sister label EA Games when it comes to the likes of FIFA or Need For Speed.

"Previously when EA has done early launches into casual games we've said 'oh, these games are for everyone'," she says. "But for something like Boom Blox we're clear that the primary target market is eight to 12 years old, and we're not even really approaching the gamer press.”

-Michael French, casualgaming.biz “EA’s Russel Arons on the Casual Entertainment revolution”

Well, marketing to twelve year olds explains ‘Boom Blox’ sales. The Nintendo approach is to say the games are ‘for everyone’ and do their best not to appeal to a specific audience. EA Casual Games is going the opposite way.

I’ll tell you why it won’t work, and why ‘casual games’, which is just another excuse for dumb marketers to pander to specific demographics, is a house of cards ready to fall down.


Parable of the Milkshakes

”People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!"

-Theodore Levitt, Economist Legend of the Harvard Business School, coined the Term 'Globalization'

People do not buy products; rather, they hire them to perform a job in a functional, social or emotional dimension. Our lives face obstacles in and of themselves so by spending our hard won money we ‘hire’ these products to perform these jobs for us and make our lives more enjoyable.

”In other words, the job, not the customer, is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to develop products that customers will buy.”

-Clayton Christensen, “What Customers Want From Your Products”

The key to market analysis is to study the consumers’ behavior, not the consumers themselves. The source (or should I call it hellacious pit?) that generates these birdmen, cocky with the belief that the wind is at their backs, is the context that customers and not the new jobs are what consists of the ‘New’ Market. With the current video game disruptions (first is from online flash gaming and the second is from Nintendo) creating new gamers, the old industry stares at the New Market and literally sees the literal. “Oh, Grandmas.” “Oh, housewives.” “Oh, busy people,” which they sum up as “I get it! Casual gamers!” The ‘casual games’ mantra is generated solely from marketers’ studying the consumers and noting they are ‘casual’; the tail is waging the dog.

The part in red is a quote I hadn't seen before and quite frankly is frighteningly stupid on Aron's part. A game with such obvious universal appeal marketed to small segment of the population simply because a couple of people were too short-sighted to see its true potential is disheartening. Its sad to think that people will miss out on a great game like that because of the ignorance of a handful of people.

Malstrom does a fantastic job of explaining how they arrive at their reasoning as well as why the reasoning is thoroughly flawed...even if it wasn't as obvious for some folks.