Is history repeating itself? (Casual Gamers)

[mancandy]

rocketpig said:

mancandy said:
I don't think there is much of a similarity. Was there such a thing as a "gamer" back in the days of the Atari2600 or even the NES?

Oh yeah there was. As the younger brother of a Pac-Man fiend, I can testify that "gamers" existed back then.

Some of those bastards would spend an incredible amount of time playing Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Centipede, and others. My brother was ridiculously good at Pac-Man. Back then you were a god if you could "flip" the Pacman score.

I understand what you're saying, there were "gamers",  but did companies know who these people were? Did they know their gender, age, race, income level, education, etc? Did they know what games they would like?

They didn't know who to market to, they just threw their product out there and hoped for the best.