Past, Present, and Future in the Videogames Industry

One of the more interesting ideas that I pulled from Digital Play was the idea of media as “rear-view mirrors”, or “relying for content on old social contexts”. This, it is explained, is why Ping–Pong was more successful than Computer Space- because Ping-Pong, as a tabletop game, was a familiar pastime with the general population and the more futuristic space theme was completely new. I think the popularity of these “rear-view mirror” games is still prominent today. The Wii practically banked on it. The system itself came initially packaged with Wii Sports, a hugely popular game in which you played casual sports through the Wii’s interactive interface with the motion sensitive “Wii-mote” and nunchuk. Sticking with the familiarity of these casual sports, the Wii Sports was able to reach a much bigger audience, focusing on families as consumers and not simply the serious gamers. Had they packaged the Wii with another game, say, a new, innovative puzzle game that made similar use of their motion sensitive and infrared technology, it is highly likely that they would have polarized their target consumers. Even if a shooter had been packaged with it, not all “non-gamers” can identify with that. They made an incredibly smart move with that and, coupled with the emergence of casual games on smart phones, have moved the market into casual gaming and greatly expanded their reach in terms of consumers; now anybody can be a gamer. The Xbox Kinect and Playstation Move followed suit, trying to appeal to larger demographics. What does this mean for “serious” platformers, though? Will we see a lull in their production? Will we see more and more casual games, more available and familiar to us, until we get tired of them and usher in a second era of ground-breaking platform games? We’re at a very interesting point in game history right now, and it will be interesting to see how things unfold in the future.