Gaming is mainstream and growing, this is obvious to most video game enthusiasts. Even Jack Thompson has failed in taking down the industry in his efforts on video game violence and general FUD. In order to survive in a mainstream environment publishers and developers are going to target a broad demographic to make them as much money as possible.
The game industry, like other entertainment avenues, is a risky business in which publishers have to pick titles they “predict” will do well in the market while passing on other “risky” propositions. While a the good ol’ shooter title will break sales records, the market cannot rely on one genre to carry the business especially considering many of these titles are forgotten within two months from launch. Publishers are going to be forced in expanding their reach to “family games” in order to finance new blockbuster titles.
Enter family gaming.
The idea of designing a “family” game isn’t new to our industry, as a matter of fact, it’s one of the oldest cornerstones of video game entertainment. Pong, Centipede, Pac-Man, Space Invaders and many other classic titles were no doubt playable by the entire family, but things have changed. We’ve evolved from hit titles like Donkey Kong to hit titles like Halo. We migrated from 2D gaming to full 3D adventures and pixel graphics to pixel shaders, but where do we go next?
Nintendo has the correct vision for the next stage of the video game industry and it involves bringing the entire family into gaming. It’s mainstream, right? Mainstream isn’t your dad playing a video game in the basement after the kids go to bed, it’s replacing Sorry with Spore and bringing out Wii Sports and having little family tournaments. We must respect what the big titles have done for the industry in merchandising, novels, sequels and spin-offs but we should not rely on them to carry us into the next generation of gaming.
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Hi guys.
As always: thanks for the episode, it was fun to listen to it 🙂
Regarding your topics in this episode:
I am very hyped for the new Atari console, but i can´t describe why. Maybe because the Atari 2600 was my first console as a kid, and i am a little bit nostalgic? The new one looks good, but as Jonah mentioned: the console will rise or fall with the games and they did not show anything right now (or i did not see anything).
I never played Ys as a kid, because as far as i know, the are not available in german, and as a kid, i was not able to understand english 🙂 The bumping mechanic seems a little bit awkward, but on the other hand it´s something different to everything else 🙂 I saw some videos about the newer versions of Ys (PS4 releases). Did one of you play them/one of them and can tell me, if one of them is worth playing?
I play Fortnite on PC sometimes with my friends. I did not bought the game, so i only can play the battle royal part and this is fun to me, if i play it with friends. I also played it on my mobile … for 2 minutes … its unplayable in my opinion … as expected 🙂 But if you want to play a round on PC with Discord or TeamSpeak to coordinate, let me know. My ingame Name is the same as here : Jackosis.
I have one question to all 3 of you: are you thinking about streaming some gaming of you or do YouTube Videos? Some kind of Let´s Plays or sth like that? I think it´s more work, so i don´t know if you would have the time for that 🙂
And for the OffTopic: right now i am into the a very old series: SpinCity with Michael J Fox (in germany its called Chaos City … don´t ask me why) and i started watching The Walking Dead.
I wish you a great week and a happy easter weekend and hope to get a new episode very soon 🙂
greetings from germany,
Ralf