Mass Market Appeal and the Lack of Creative & Innovative Gaming.

                                                                                  Courtesy Gamenesia.com

        Recently there's been clamour for building games as with mass market appeal. Every year gaming grows larger and larger, having since passed all other forms of entertainment in total revenues, yearly. Digital consumption has increased by incredible margins in just the last 3 years, with no sign of slowing. Yet, somehow there's a need to make games “mass-market” appealing – even though they're the biggest market that exists in entertainment.

         At what point do we ask, how long till anyone cares about the quality of games – their narrative, character development, design aesthetics and staying power – in lieu of what can only be described as desire for more money? And, while everyone likes more money, is there really a need to sacrifice the very qualities that made gaming such a lucrative business in the first place?

That is a crap-ton (pun intended) of Brown.       Joystiq.com

         As the years go by, I begin to wonder what happened to the creative minds that brought us products like Heart of Darkness, or the surprisingly fun Medievil – even games like Fear Effect. I understand the need to increase quarterly revenue and profit margins, though the continued increase of lower-quality games isn't necessary. After all, how much of the color Brown can a mass market find appealing? Years later and it's still one of the most common colors of mainstream games. The level of engagement, immersion, and narrative have become scant, but they do appear occasionally, throughout the years. Offerings such as the original Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Batman Arkham Asylum, Psychonauts, The Walking Dead,by TellTale games and some others in the last 5-7 years, keep the heart hopeful. They're fairly far-and-few-between, however. With the ever-growing casual/social and mobile markets making a steady increase, year over year, the sheer number of easily cashable products have become the norm.

         As far as more detailed console and PC offerings, the sheer amount of IP milking, and banking on only the most likely-to-succeed titles means a steady decline in overall rich games. Lets be serious for a moment, for the nay-sayers – What games compromise the top spots for most sales, marketing, and/or overall exposure in the last 5 years, that weren't representative of a bundle? If you said the Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Black Ops, HALO, or Gears of War, for instance, then you'd be in the same conundrum. Yes, they all have great games in their respective series, but for better or worse, they've all become rehashed, over-milked IP's. Ironically, for instance, most FPS games have not only virtually the same marketing art – they often all look and play exactly the same - the most common appeal to mass market.

Apparently, mass-market appeal            Terabass -Wikipedia

         EA's CCO, Richard Hilleman thinks video games should be mass market appealing – though he doesn't think they've reached that pinnacle, yet. What does any of that have to do with the big chunk of yada-yada I gave in the aforementioned paragraphs? It's the core of the issue at hand – to much focus on monetization to court creativity, narrative, and quality user-experience. We have a market that produces over 67 billion a year, yet they want more, even during rounds of layoffs, and poor quarterly performance by some major companies. It's time to improve on the quality of the user experience in every faucet of gameplay. We can always come back to “mass market appeal” later, when there's a reason for people to actually feel the appeal.

  

Cross Platform Personalization & the Spread of Gamification.

        As 2013 makes its way toward summer, we've already seen some major highlights for the year. With the advent of Tegra 4, Project Shield, the Ouya, Unreal 4, and a host of other amazing product and services, it's a year year full of wonder and possibility. There are, however, trends that have continued and shaped into tangible forms over these past few years, as the force of casual and mobile games begin to take a forefront seat. People want content on the go, cross-platform, and all the work in between, they're looking for anything to improve the quality of an experience, that feels less like a chore.

         The two things that stand our in this arena are Gamification, and of course, cross-platform content personalization. While there's certainly a lot more, most trends can be summarized directly in these two arenas. If there's one thing we can all certainly agree on, it's that everyone pretty much loves games. People love achievements, as well as getting something for taking the time to do most anything. How impacting this is on our daily media consumption is surprisingly profound. It's pervasive even – you know it's gone somewhere when it has its own summit revolving around it – especially when there's a dedicated Penny Arcade episode to it. 

        A lot of what we see is focused on turning typical consumer engagement into a meaningful game-like experience, but the application is spreading. For instance, social networking has some of these elements, along with places like Foursquare, Dashlane, and many others, which offer badges for doing menial tasks. After all, lets face, it, we're all more likely to make the effort for things like filling out profiles and whatnot if we start getting leveling bonuses on a site for doing it. A lot of forums have done this kind of thing for years, though the range and detail is something that's increasing, across the board. The researchis staggering for this, according to DriVE by Daniel Pink, insisting autonomy, purpose, and personal improvement are the defining characteristics motivating people – core tenants we see consistently presented in Gamification.

        Of course, there's other things going on – cross-platform personalization – that are the foundation of the digital revolution. At the end of the day, people want content somewhere other than their TV, or just their computer. They tend to want it on any screen, be it phone, tablets, laptops, or their TV – all at their convenience. Anyone who uses Netflix can attest to its ability to keep pace with whatever you're watching or doing, even if you change your platform. It knows – it recognizes the network and produces you have on your account, and can adapt and keep up, accordingly. It even does so with its advertisements. TV show Vegas is an excellent example to use: Tuesday time slot it drew in almost 11 million viewers fairly consistently. The problem of course, is that the average age was 60.7 years – well above the 18-35/49 demographic the marketing slots are directed toward. In the face of the digital wave, however, that's not nearly the problem it may be on TV, where with algorithm's based on what you watch, when, your profiling, etc, such as with Netflix, you can measure the kind of advertisement that would be more relevantly suited to a consumer, rathe

r than at a broad category. It's a lot closer to “shooting fish in a barrel” rather than “aiming in the dark” so-to-speak.

        The data, posted at Digital Trends, is fairly clear – there's a change in the weather concerning net usage. In just 4 years mobile traffic went from 1% to over 13%. It's certain this is a steadily growing trend. With that growth comes certainty that more people are going to expect more synergy between their devices, and the need to market and advertise specifically with detail to a consumer, will grow with it. With micro screens, the amount of marketing you can do in a given space decreases – so the need to be more user-specific will increase, accordingly. Certainly a good thing, as it's market is a growing one up to9%. Consider also, the rising cost of digital marketing, just look at conversion costs for companies like GREE, who pay up to $15 per user acquisition – clearly driving up the market - it become pertinent to be specific, more now than ever.

         At the end of the day, marketing directives have a fairly obvious path. As we continue into a world that's entirely wired, having us transition from device to device, advertising and marketing initiatives need to be just as pliable. With focus on cross-platform personalization of content and advertisements, in addition to Gamification to improve the percentage of invested consumers, ads and commercials probably wont lessen, but at least they'll be more specific and interesting to you, and certainly less bombastic across every page.