Ah, remember the days of Flash games? How about those inexpensive games that you got in Target? No? Well, some people do, and some people are still playing them.
I love articles like this, because they poke holes in reality bubbles. The reality bubble in this case is the assumption that people exclusively play AAA and indie titles on consoles and PC. Because by and large, people do. But it turns out, there is a small – small but profitable niche out there that doesn’t map well to preconceived notions of gamers:
So yep, this isn’t a slam dunk market, but rather a ‘vestigial’ one – a lopped-off tail of beguiling oddness.
When I read this, I imagine the person who plays these games. For some reason, the various advancements in games didn’t grab their interest, and they decided not to keep up. And then I extrapolate to everything as there are people like this in so many categories: People who do what they do, and aren’t neatly represented by the media industry, which after all cater only to a specific market and there are always people who don’t map neatly to average boxes – and then that of course is a reminder that if we are all in many ways, average even if we don’t think about it that way. You might be super interesting, but if you’re out there playing the latest AAA game, well so is everyone else….
So what’s going on? It appears that a small subset of the older (often female-centric) demographic of the original casual games boom 20 years ago just… kept buying PC games, and never transitioned to mobile gaming.
More here.
Basement Whatever 