Until the latter days of the 20th century video games were sandwiched between train spotting and prog rock on the “things adults should never admit to liking” league table. Saying you were partial to a bit of Super Mario Bros. from time to time caused non-gaming friends to stare at you as if you’d just blurted out: “I like to torture cute furry animals.” It was a shameful activity best kept to oneself.
Thankfully we’ve moved on a bit in the last decade. Games consoles have emerged from fusty teenage bedrooms to sit proudly beneath the plasma screen TV and Blu-ray player in the living room, and the generation that grew up with gaming is beginning to take the reigns of cultural power. Nintendo has also played a big part in this gradual move toward the mainstream. The company’s shrewd marketing campaigns for the Wii and DS consoles, featuring a plethora of celebrities and normal looking humans, have made people realise that games are for everyone, not just geeks and teenage boys.
Yet after dipping a toe in the virtual waters, and finding them rather warm and lovely, many people new to gaming seem afraid to dive into online play. The technological element arguably puts them off somewhat; although setting up an online game from a console or PC is pretty straightforward these days, a degree of technological nous is still needed to correctly configure router settings, etc. A lack of awareness of which games work online may also contribute, along with a feeling that online gaming is more for hardcore gamers. And could fear of being labelled a geek or nerd also be putting them off?
True, some online multiplayer games, such as the Call of Duty series, have attained a degree of cool, with celebrities lining up to sing their praises. But tell someone that you’ve started playing World of Warcraft and your guild is planning a raid at the weekend and you’re back in cute furry animal abuser territory. Not that long-time fans of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) give two hoots whether society approves of their pastime or not, and rightly so – they’re too busy enjoying fantastic games like StarCraft 2, released just a few weeks ago after a 12 year wait, to read hyperbolic press stories about online gaming addicts or worry that Aunty Pauline thinks they should get out a bit more.
If you’re intrigued by online gaming and want to see what all the fuss is about it really couldn’t be simpler to get playing. Microsoft’s Live service has different online Gamer Zones to suit all levels of ability, but you will need to fork out for Gold membership, which costs around £40 a year. The PS3, meanwhile, offers a similarly excellent online experience but it doesn’t cost a penny. The Wii is probably the most limited of the three home consoles in terms of its online capabilities, though games like Mario Kart are blast to play online.
If MMOGs sound like your thing, bear in mind that you’ll need to pay a monthly subscription charge to play. However free 1-2 week trials of World of Warcraft and many other popular MMOGs are available to download, so there’s really no excuse not to give online gaming a whirl. Who knows, you might even tell your friends about it.
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Iain Collins
The UK market for Massively Multiplayer Online Games (such as World of Warcraft) is estimated at just under £200 Million and rising. I think this makes it more than just a niche activity – and it’s worth nothing that doesn’t include casual gaming (more on that later) or standard multiplayer games, like the StarCraft series – which are multiplayer and can be played both locally and online, but are not massively multiplayer.
For MMO titles “free to play” titles and “lifetime” subscriptions are increasingly being experimented with, whereby you either pay for items, or pay a one-off up front fee (on the basis you will save money over an on-going subscription for several years), making the number of players harder to judge (as does the fact that subscriptions to more than one title are quite common).
The UK games industry as a whole compares very well with that for DVD’s (£4,600 Million vs £5,000 Million) and it’s unusual to find games for sale today which *don’t* have a multiplayer component, the number of those played online is undoubtedly significant, especially when you consider many if the most well known titles (Halo, Gears of War, Battlefield, Call of Duty) are so enduring specifically because of the online components.
Where the very largest number of online gamers can be found, however, is in online casual gaming – games like Farmville (on the web) and We Rule (on iPhone). Farmville, for example, has a whopping 60 million players, which dwarfs even World of Warcraft’s 12 million.
What’s interesting about the casual gaming market it’s how much the player base varies from the stereotypical “teenage male” demographic – so much so that many players don’t even regard themselves as gamers when asked outright (despite putting in several hours a week!).
Duncan Jefferies
Thanks for your comment Iain – all good points.
I do appreciate that the market for Massively Multiplayer Online Games is worth a large (and rising) amount of money, my point was that in the eyes of wider society (and the mainstream media in particular), it is still classed as something of a niche pastime despite the numbers involved – perhaps I could have made this a little clearer though.
Interesting that ‘lifetime’ subscriptions that are now being experimented with, I was going to mention some of the free to play MMO titles but ran out of room – perhaps a topic for another blog.
I agree that it’s usual to find games today that don’t have a multiplayer component, and that significant numbers of people are playing online – for some of the titles you mention the online aspect is arguably now more important than the single player campaign as far as the game’s sales are concerned.
However, I do feel that many casual gamers avoid online console gaming (particularly with regard to FPS or racing titles) as the level of skill needed to get any real enjoyment can be quite high – being killed seconds after every respawn or coming last in every race ain’t much fun (though I appreciate that different skill segments for online play can go some way to rectifying this). Also, some of the banter from other players can be quite childish / offensive / technical, which isn’t going to be to everyone’s tastes.
That’s not to say casual gamers will never get into online play, and obviously some types of games are more prone to the issues above than others – there’s a wealth of difference between playing Mario Kart online and Call of Duty. But I do think that at present many people new to console gaming feel online play is the preserve of ‘hardcore gamers’ as it were, rather than something they can enjoy as well.
As for the online casual gaming market, that’s a different kettle of fish altogether! I actually wrote about Farmville in a previous blog – the numbers involved (both in terms of players and the money being generated) are absolutely staggering. I found your comment about many Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc. players not regarding themselves as gamers despite putting in X amount of hours a week fascinating, but then I suppose ‘gamer’ is just another tag one can choose to identify with or ignore at will.
Anyway, thanks again for your feedback Iain.
Jane
All I can say is that playing online is a hazard as I have just found out to my cost. I enjoy a game of poker but tonight the connection was intermittent and I have subsequently lost money…. Tonight is the big night for many games and I am not too happy to say the least.