Why Don't People Play Games - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 55

who are not currently considered game players in any sense of the term but
who either do, or might well, adopt other forms of interactive entertainment. A
sobering fact for the games industry is that people who don't play probably still
outnumber those that do. This is in stark contrast to the fi lm industry whose audi-
ence knows almost no demographic limitations, no cultural or geographical bound-
aries. We will see that some of the theories we have already studied concerning
the pleasures people gain from playing games already potentially include nontra-
ditional games and nonplayers.
One conclusion seems obvious from the very start, however: adopting the more
fl exible view of what constitutes a game means we have to accept that the game
industry is so diverse and fragmented that it does not seem to constitute a single
industry at all. At a rough count we could list the following distinct industries as
catering to the interactive digital entertainment (IDE) market:
• Big games
• Casual games —a number of distinct varieties and platforms
• Gambling games
• Virtual worlds
• Social networking
• Reality TV and other interactive forms of TV
Each of these industries has millions of users all around the world. It is an
understatement to say that this is big business. So let us see if we can begin to answer
the question “Why do people play games?” particularly in terms of the fi rst four
items on the list above.
RESIDENT EVIL
But before we go any further let's set up a working example to help us in our attempts
to answer the question that is the title of this chapter. We will quickly discuss Resi-
dent Evil in terms of genre, activity profi le, and aesthetics and use these as a focus
for the discussions follow.
Its genre is usually given as s urvival horror , which is actually a subgenre of
action adventure , for the reason that while both have similar activity profi les the
particular back-story and the horror fi lm style manifestation of the gameplay clearly
identifi es games, such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill, as belonging to the former.
To reinforce our comments on genre, check out the activity profi le for three
games from the series, shown in Figure 6.1. There are fi fteen AGs scoring 2 or
more which means the gameplay is quite varied. By far and away the highest
scoring activity is use of weapons. There are then a closely grouped set of activities
scoring between 7 and 4, in descending order: mission based, confronting, story,
investigating, and unlocking items. Finally we have eight AGs scoring between 4
and 2: cut scenes, on foot, physical contact, power-ups, producing, puzzling, skill