After reading a few recent threads here and this month's "Final Word" in EGM, I find it fascinating that the prevailing assumption among most gamers (or at least gamers who discuss gaming) is that games aren't mainstream. The debate appears to still be fixated on how to facilitate games' entry into the mainstream (e.g., Revolution controller, games aimed at women, etc.), but I'd like to shift the discussion a step past that and argue that games are very clearly in the mainstream, and an increasingly prevalent (and dominant) form of entertainment in our society on the same level as sports, Hollywood movies, pop music etc. (I'd also argue that the fact that the ways in which each of these are mainstream differ does not mean that they aren't mainstream). I feel like I'm still in 1992 reading about how the new Barbie titles are going to make games burst into the mainstream.
Some basic facts and their significance (I'm focusing on the U.S. since it's easiest for me to pull that data, but suffice it to say most of my points would apply to nearly any developed country):
- The average age of gamers is 29, and even traditional media sources are recognizing not only that games "aren't just for kids anymore!" but that the primary audience for games is now people in their 20's and 30's. I'm 25 and that may inform my intuition that a big reason for the increasing average age of gamers is that those of us who grew up with the NES, SNES, and Genesis as part of our everyday lives have taken our entertainment preferences into adulthood and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Simply put, games have always been "mainstream" for us in the sense that they've always been a major influence in our environments (school, etc.).
- 248 million games were sold in 2004. Clearly, numbers-wise, the games industry is gargantuan. But the numbers really just support the notion that games are a big part of the majority of households in the U.S. According to the ESA, 75%(!) of American heads of households play computer and video games. That number seems a bit high to me, but not exorbitantly so. For literally millions of people, the release of Madden is almost a national holiday. Relating back to the first point, as the NES Generation starts raising more and more children, those kids will be exposed to games and games will likely increase in influence even more. Most of us just played games of our own volition and bugged our parents to get us a couple for our birthdays, etc., which they grudgingly did, but that won't be the case (or at least the rule) for long, if it even still is.
-43% of gamers are women. Now that figure does seem exorbitant. I would put the figure at least twenty points lower. In fact, I'm even willing to admit that the vast majority of gamers are men, but still argue that that mere fact is not dispositive on the issue of whether games are mainstream. This argument is probably the most common one brought up in the "games aren't mainstream" discussions. NFL statistics say that around 40% of the leagues fans are women, and I will take that similarly as bullshit, but even assuming, say, 5% of NFL fans are women (probably low), does that mean that the NFL isn't mainstream? You'd be hard-pressed to find three or four more "mainstream" areas of culture than professional sports. That doesn't mean that game publishers or industry critics should just pack it up and concede that games are for the boys. Unlike the NFL and most professional sports which have more inherent appeal to men, games, like books, music, and movies, have the ability to appeal to men and women alike and I hope that publishers make increased efforts to reach out to that audience (caveat: in non-patronizing/lame ways). Still, even conceding that games are as male-centered as pro football (they're not), they're still mainstream.
-Yes, there are "hardcore" gamers. It seems that most people assuming that games fall outside of the mainstream fixate on the notion that there are so many people (like most people on GA) who are hardcore gamers and that the "mainstream" will never be able to accept such hardcore nerdish lunacy. But the fact that there are hardcore gamers doesn't mean that games aren't mainstream. For every person who knows every combo in every SNK/Capcom fighting game released, there are a hundred others who buy Burnout, Halo, or whatever looks cool on the shelf and play it maybe a few hours a month. There are also "hardcore" music fans who only listen to music most people have never even heard of in their lives, and "harcore" film buffs who have memorized the scripts of hundreds of movies, but no one would argue that either industry falls outside of the mainstream as a result; the argument seems preposterous.
Can games become more mainstream? Of course, but so can every other industry everyone presumes to already be mainstream. Particularly in the case of appealing to women, there is a lot of ground still to be made up, but let's stop pretending that games are still niche as that was a good discussion 15 years ago, but now we're well past that point.
Some basic facts and their significance (I'm focusing on the U.S. since it's easiest for me to pull that data, but suffice it to say most of my points would apply to nearly any developed country):
- The average age of gamers is 29, and even traditional media sources are recognizing not only that games "aren't just for kids anymore!" but that the primary audience for games is now people in their 20's and 30's. I'm 25 and that may inform my intuition that a big reason for the increasing average age of gamers is that those of us who grew up with the NES, SNES, and Genesis as part of our everyday lives have taken our entertainment preferences into adulthood and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Simply put, games have always been "mainstream" for us in the sense that they've always been a major influence in our environments (school, etc.).
- 248 million games were sold in 2004. Clearly, numbers-wise, the games industry is gargantuan. But the numbers really just support the notion that games are a big part of the majority of households in the U.S. According to the ESA, 75%(!) of American heads of households play computer and video games. That number seems a bit high to me, but not exorbitantly so. For literally millions of people, the release of Madden is almost a national holiday. Relating back to the first point, as the NES Generation starts raising more and more children, those kids will be exposed to games and games will likely increase in influence even more. Most of us just played games of our own volition and bugged our parents to get us a couple for our birthdays, etc., which they grudgingly did, but that won't be the case (or at least the rule) for long, if it even still is.
-43% of gamers are women. Now that figure does seem exorbitant. I would put the figure at least twenty points lower. In fact, I'm even willing to admit that the vast majority of gamers are men, but still argue that that mere fact is not dispositive on the issue of whether games are mainstream. This argument is probably the most common one brought up in the "games aren't mainstream" discussions. NFL statistics say that around 40% of the leagues fans are women, and I will take that similarly as bullshit, but even assuming, say, 5% of NFL fans are women (probably low), does that mean that the NFL isn't mainstream? You'd be hard-pressed to find three or four more "mainstream" areas of culture than professional sports. That doesn't mean that game publishers or industry critics should just pack it up and concede that games are for the boys. Unlike the NFL and most professional sports which have more inherent appeal to men, games, like books, music, and movies, have the ability to appeal to men and women alike and I hope that publishers make increased efforts to reach out to that audience (caveat: in non-patronizing/lame ways). Still, even conceding that games are as male-centered as pro football (they're not), they're still mainstream.
-Yes, there are "hardcore" gamers. It seems that most people assuming that games fall outside of the mainstream fixate on the notion that there are so many people (like most people on GA) who are hardcore gamers and that the "mainstream" will never be able to accept such hardcore nerdish lunacy. But the fact that there are hardcore gamers doesn't mean that games aren't mainstream. For every person who knows every combo in every SNK/Capcom fighting game released, there are a hundred others who buy Burnout, Halo, or whatever looks cool on the shelf and play it maybe a few hours a month. There are also "hardcore" music fans who only listen to music most people have never even heard of in their lives, and "harcore" film buffs who have memorized the scripts of hundreds of movies, but no one would argue that either industry falls outside of the mainstream as a result; the argument seems preposterous.
Can games become more mainstream? Of course, but so can every other industry everyone presumes to already be mainstream. Particularly in the case of appealing to women, there is a lot of ground still to be made up, but let's stop pretending that games are still niche as that was a good discussion 15 years ago, but now we're well past that point.
