So I've been busy lately, between Worlds in Motion and helping Gamasutra write up some stuff out of last week's Casual Connect conference in Seattle, along with some recent announcements in that arena. Both the increasing buzz around virtual worlds and the recent flood of casual gaming news and business demonstrate that enterprise has finally realized that there's a broad (and broadening) market for gaming; in other words, that there's more to our industry than hardcore on the console. I know this is the sort of legitimacy a lot of us have been anticipating, so good news, right?The other thing they realized is how much money they can make, primarily through advertising.
Last month, the topic was whether the whole "serious games" thing is going to damage gaming as we know it (consensus: no). And many people point out that the fact that our Moms all now love to play Peggle at work just leads to a greater acceptance of gaming as a more mainstream pastime; after all, just because people wanna play more browser quickies doesn't mean our console offerings are losing their richness.
But the fact is, there's an entire burgeoning industry composed of business folk who have realized that engaging games can be effective packaging for very lucrative advertising, and they're designing gameplay around it-- whether that's creating games designed to generate repeat hits to the ad-supported portal, or designing in a way that forces users to pay attention to ads without disrupting their experience. I'm not referring to "advergaming"-- games that are themselves interactive ads, but to the fact that with so few people actually willing to pay for games online, designing for the advertising has become an essential.
Design that wants players to pay attention, stay engaged and keep returning-- not necessarily a bad thing. But does anyone else worry that with all the ad money that can be made designing relatively simple games with mass appeal, fewer companies will be investing dollars-- or creativity-- in the much riskier (and much more expensive) epic gaming ventures we've all been raised on and love to death?
Gaming, something that once felt like a sort of secret handshake among an enclave of underground nerds, is now the hot device of the year; people are looking at games as their vehicles for doing anything and everything. This sometimes results in embarrassing ventures-- like when your Principal tries to talk in slang. Speaking of advergames, take Toyota's recent "Little Deviants" game, an ad for the Scion, shock for shock's sake and way too formulaic to be as hip as it thinks it is (Slate concurs with me). Mass commercialization is part of any medium's growing-up, and I know it's immature, not to mention irrational, for me to feel a bit violated. Still, I do.
The concern that the evolving business models will change gaming is a legit one, I think. This year's E3 might perhaps be taken as evidence that it's already begun. What do you guys think?
