gamers kan read the weird, wonderful, exciting and quite under-rated world of videogames
TRANSCRIPT
Gamers Kan Read
The weird, wonderful, exciting and quite under-rated
world of videogames
Why you are here
• Don’t cover games and wonder if you should
• Don’t cover games and wonder how to do it
• Do cover games and wonder if you are doing it well
• Do cover games and wonder if I am an ass
What’s Up?
• The Problem
• The Numbers
• The Content
• A Solution
The Problem
Why Not?
Where is the Lester Bangs of game journalism?
Supply or Demand?
The Numbers
Size of the Industry
Games
Comics
Music
Books
Movies
$ in Millions
Size of the Industry
Games
Mongolia Ice
land
Speakers
Lawns
$ in Millions
Mr. Hollywood
Demographics
Average age: 30
43
93
47
Percentage of women gamers:
Percentage of regular gamers who read books and daily newspapers on a regular basis
Percentage of Americans who have purchased, or plan to purchase a game in 2005
Who is playing online?
Table 1Online Gaming Demographics
National adult sample, respondents who answered yes to “ever play a game online?”
All users 37%
Men 37%
Women 38%
Whites 34%
Blacks 48%
Hispanics 54%
18-29 52%
30-49 34%
50-64 28%
65+ 38%
Note. Data were collected by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in June and July, 2002.
Trends
$0
$1,000
$2,000
$3,000
$4,000
$5,000
$6,000
1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001
Home GameRevenues
Arcade GameRevenues
Entertainment spending
8.6
7.1
6.1
5.3
4.3
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995
Perc
en
tag
e o
f to
tal p
ers
on
al con
su
mp
tion
Regulation or Censorship?
"This is a silent epidemic of media desensitization that teaches kids it's okay to dis people because they are a woman, they're a different
color or they're from a different place.”
Censorship
The Content
Nintendogs
Meet Phinn
America’s Army
Dean’s violence piece
New Games Journalism
Reaching Readers
Games or People?
A Solution
Game Journalism
as Arts Criticism
My framework
• What is it?
• Why do I like it?
• What does it mean?
What is it?
• Free roaming
• Gritty urban crime story
• Steal any car
• Find lots of weapons
Why do I Iike it?
• It’s not like other games I’ve played
• You can match your play style and mood to the game
• This game understands being bad is fun and I never get to be all that bad
What does it mean?
• What does it mean to live in a world that has a game like this?
• In a world dominated by conservative “do the right thing” rhetoric, is being bad a healthy transgressive practice?
• Is this what we look like to the rest of the world?
Raph Koster
Manhunt
Matteo Bittanti
So, how do you cover games?
• Just like everything else
• But you need to consider the medium, and open it up for writing about games, not just people who play games.
What to expect
The Future
