Socializing Gamers - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 26

of ers fi ve distinct sports experiences, each using the Wii Remote controller
to provide a natural, intuitive and realistic feel . . . If you've played any of
these sports before, you're ready for fun!” 16 This design intent is the fi rst
key element of what makes Wii Sports , and many of the games on the Wii
console, dif erent from games like Uncharted 2 . Instead of building on the
key aspects of socialization from previous games and the player's under-
standing of other pieces of video game culture, Wii Sports actively shifts
the terrain for gaming, seeking a broader audience that is socialized into
how sports work, rather than how video games work. The impact of shift-
ing contexts for socialization plays out in three key ways: changing who is
brought into games as players, altering the ways in which games are played,
and changing the focus of games from graphics and visual design toward
play control and motion.
Nintendo's ef ort to reshape their target audience for games begins with
their marketing. Instead of seeking out the white, male twentysomething in
the Uncharted commercial, Wii Sports seeks to provide “fun for everyone.”
The larger television ad campaign for the console promulgated this idea by
displaying a wide variety of people playing Wii Sports . In the advertise-
ments, two Japanese businessmen arrived at someone's residence and then
viewers were shown the people living in the house playing games on the
Wii. 17 This approach gave Nintendo the opportunity to show young and
old, men and women, urban and rural, as well as a variety of dif erent
ethnicities, playing and enjoying the Wii. Although the commercials did
not show every demographic, they made a clear ef ort to demonstrate how
these games were designed to be played by a much larger audience than
just those who already self-identifi ed as gamers. Nintendo also benefi ted
from how the news coverage that accompanied the Wii's release reshaped
the context for the console. Many stories featured an unlikely group of
players picking up the Wii and integrating elements of Wii Sports into new
rituals of gaming. Coverage of seniors picking up Wii Sports to start Wii
bowling leagues spread throughout major media outlets, 18 supporting the
overarching idea of a broad group of game players enjoying the excitement
of Wii Sports . The ad campaign for the Wii and Wii Sports in particular are
“the result of a company-wide ef ort to win over the elusive non-gamer—
your mom, your dad, and maybe even your grandfather, too.” 19 This move
sought to resituate notions about who played video games by establishing
the Wii as the kind of console that anyone could play by demonstrating
the range of people who could enjoy these games. In doing this, Nintendo
sought to socialize a broader segment of the population into video games,
encouraging those who did not play video games regularly to pick up a
Wiimote and be brought into the fold of Nintendo. Seniors were one of the
strongest targets of this kind of appeal, as many of them grew up in a bowl-
ing boom, but found bowling to be too physically demanding as they aged.
By marketing to this audience with a new way to bowl, Nintendo opened
the door to a dif erent kind of gamer.