Games...children's toys or all-age entertainment?

12 Comments

Comment by Burtimus on January 5, 2009 at 10:55pm

Well, I can speak with a small amount of peripheral experience with this subject. The Dungeons& Dragons game was released at the end of my high school sentence, and I was one of the early Unwashed Masses. A proto-gamer, if you will. Paleo-slacker.

At any rate, back in the day admitting to being a gamer was tantamount to social suicide. As time has gone on much of the stigma has passed. Gaming is spoken about far more today than ever in my life. In many ways it has already become part of the social fabric.

Granted, not everyone "gets it," but how many of us understand quantum physics, Hegelian philosophy or the current season of Heroes? Some do, some don't.

But we're gaining on them.

Comment by Fluffy Ninja 89 on January 6, 2009 at 1:10am

I'm not picking on The Wii, I'm picking on casual gaming and how it's affecting hardcore gaming. The wii just happens to be the most casual. I mean look at the 360 and the New experience, they're aiming for the mare casual audience with that.

Comment by Googleman81 on January 6, 2009 at 5:33am

i dunno where you get the information that games are always perceived as toys. backgammon i think is a very old game and quite adult indeed, also nobody would think of gta 4 as a toy when they see coverage about it on the media i think. what you seem to want is to get recognized and acknowledged for being a gamer, like upping your social status, but as a matter of fact any type of game does bring out the child in us, so there really is no reason to change that, if you were to succeed with this endeavour you'd basically eliminate childhood.

Comment by Q on January 6, 2009 at 7:26am

Games (even video games) are toys. They're something you play with. Yes, they're pretty decent vehicles for story telling; kind of like a movie and a game in one, but they're still toys. There's no need to deny this.

As for the Wii and casual games, if anything, they're making gaming more accessible and understandable to the adults who normally wouldn't touch one at all. It's these games that make gaming as a whole more acceptable to the general population.

Where the politicians of the world and their views are concerned... Every major form of media has gone through a stage where it was scrutinized and called out for being inappropriate. Media makes a good scapegoat for all our worldly woes and gives the politicians a good platform to let their constituents think they're doing something to fix the world.

The problem that the game industry has now is getting people to realize that the games are rated just like movies and that while the ratings may be off on a particular game, they're still a good to use as a guideline to figure out if they're right for you and your family. Just like movies.

I've personally been in the store on more than one occasion where a parent was told by the store clerk that the game had a mature rating and you could tell they've never been given that information before.

Perhaps what is required in this case is a campaign much like the ones they used to have for movie and tv show ratings where they put out commercials explaining the rating system, where to look on the box and all of that.

Comment by SquirrelsOfWar on January 6, 2009 at 8:02am

Theres ratings for stuf,, just because there are kids films doesnt mean the entire film genre is kid-based.

Comment by BongDazo on January 6, 2009 at 8:11am

i dont think is so much a question of hardcore gamers vs the casuals. i think the bigger problem here is that next console generation when microsoft and sony put out Wii clones to appeal as the ultimate family entertainment system with last generation graphics..... we will have no one except the consumers to thank for it.

Comment by SquirrelsOfWar on January 6, 2009 at 8:51am

The next generation could be really scary stuff if the Wii users have the hold of the market, we'll have gone back to N64 graphics and every game will cost £40 and go on for 5 hours.

Comment by Burtimus on January 6, 2009 at 1:11pm

A ball is a toy. Does that mean that serious people who play with them are acting like children? Tell that to the NFL or NBA. I think the problem here is semantics and inference.

What's the problem with toys? Most people play games. Most people think of games as enjoyable pastimes. If you infer from the word "toy" as, say, a middle-aged, overweight balding guy playing with his action figures", I guess I could understand the concern. Most of us think of toys as either something designed for recreational purposes, or as tools for playing a game. Either one is accurate in regards to gaming.

Comment by SquirrelsOfWar on January 6, 2009 at 1:57pm

I think a lot of people are going to make a cheap console and appeal it to the Wii market next generation, just you watch. Watch it burn your hardcore life with it's rainbow eyes and baby partiez.

Comment by Burtimus on January 6, 2009 at 11:28pm

With all due respect, Mr. Squirrel, this is an argument I've been hearing for 30 years. As long as there is a hardcore market, there will be hardcore games. I would guess most of us don't have a low-end computer that can only run browser games. I would guess most of us has more than one platform to run the games we like. These things mean that there is a market that is somewhere above the Hello Kitty Online crowd.

That's not to say that casual games will dry up and blow away either. Rather, the two are not mutually exclusive.

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