Video Games - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 24

(online and ol ine) and is interested in the latest information and news
from the video game industry. Occasionally this subculture/segmentation is
also perceived in pejorative terms such as “nerdy”, obsessive, socially inept
and introverted—not necessarily linked by mainstream society with posi-
tive attributes. The hardcore gamer has no objections to belonging to such
a subculture and, on the contrary, considers himself/herself to be a member
of a select group that understands the hidden beauty of the video game
medium. Mainstream society's less favourable opinions only reinforce the
romantic and self-proclaimed rebellious characteristics of this subculture.
This is quite similar to the more general “computer nerd/geek” culture, and
in many cases they overlap because many computer fanatics are almost by
defi nition also interested in the video game culture. General video gam-
ing culture is also more mainstream as it involves game consoles, mobile
games and web games, which are played by a signifi cantly broader audi-
ence. They, on the other hand, cannot be considered part of the hardcore
gaming culture/segment.
Most defi nitions of hardcore gamer generally points towards Western
youth/young adult (white) eighteen- to thirty-four-year-old males (Dillon
2006; Takahashi 2002). They are al uent because they predominantly
hold a job and decide on their own purchases, as opposed to children, who
historically were the primary target audience and had to be targeted via
parents who actually bought the video games. Still, today, many gamer
age statistical surveys are most likely skewed upwards because they mea-
sure the buyer's age and not necessarily the actual player's age (Dillon
2006). Japan constitutes the third biggest market in the world, but their
demographics, genre and entire gaming culture dif ers signifi cantly from
the West, practically constituting a separate market with Japan-only video
games with limited export intentions. The hardcore gamer segment also
applies in Japan, but its dynamics diverge substantially from the North
American and European markets, which have much in common and hence
dominate the marketing strategies of the industry.
Although the hardcore gamer era of the video game industry is purport-
edly dead, proclaimed by industry and academia in connection with the
casual gaming trend (Juul 2009), there are numerous signs that the hard-
core target group remains staunchly the most salient and lucrative game
consumer group.
Video Game Subculture
How about the video games as such? Can they be considered “subcultural”
in their form and expression? Do they belong to an expression form that
“dif ers from the majority culture” as defi ned previously? This question
embodies the very essence of this entire chapter, and the question with most
ramifi cations: does the video game medium constitute a separate type of
culture, not necessarily embraced by the mainstream majority culture?