Video Games - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 38

The main assumption of casual gaming is based on the following tenet:
“if game developers make it easier to play games—the masses will come”.
This is a correct assumption in terms of convenience and marginal costs—a
smartphone, a powerful computing device, is in the pockets of millions of
users and the consumer cost of adding video gaming capabilities is very low
(most games cost less than US$1) or nothing (free games with advertising,
or “freemium”). The smartphone touchscreen also provides an input device
with a lower learning curve compared to most console controllers (e.g. the
Dualshock 3 has sixteen buttons/sticks). Furthermore, the “app-ization”
of all types of digital content on smartphones, by packaging it as iPhone/
Android/etc. applications and distributed through simple smartphone-
based interfaces, has created a tremendously powerful yet simple metaphor
for digital distribution and transactions that consumers can understand.
Increased convenience, low costs and a social network/word-of-mouth-
based marketing have also driven the explosive growth of the social gaming
trend that has within a few years gathered hundreds of millions of players.
However, are these two trends really enough to transform the video
game medium into a majority culture phenomenon? Has the medium really
evolved? The majority of the top ten sales list of smartphone games are
dominated by two genres: puzzle games and platform. Both are tradi-
tional two-dimensional genres, which is mainly due to the limitations of
the computing power and touchscreen interfaces of smartphones. Three-
dimensional games have, however, already appeared—bringing along the
well-known genres of racing, sport, FPS, action, i.e. the hardcore genres.
Is this development really the promised “reinterpretation of the game
medium”? Is this in fact an innovative way to target the mass-cultural
target groups? Has the game industry really left the hardcore subculture
behind? The answer to all these questions is clearly, no. An FPS is an FPS
regardless of whether it is played on Xbox 360 or on an Android smart-
phone. Furthermore, we are also seeing the very same path-dependent “cre-
ative conservatism” Simon says -type content strategies as in the traditional
hardcore subculture industry, where every successful bird, worm or farm-
ing game is followed by numerous look-alikes and a desperate rat race to
the bottom with falling prices, margins and advertising-based titles. What
happens to the revenues? Will the purportedly new casual gamers continue
purchasing US$1 games in such large quantities that it will surpass the
average revenue generated by the typical hardcore gamer? With the current
shape of the casual and social gaming trends this is highly unlikely.
This clearly illustrates that the main obstacle between gamer subcul-
ture and a truly universal majority mass-culture medium is not consti-
tuted solely by new marketing strategies, distribution mechanisms or new
platforms—it is predominantly about transforming the hardcore subcul-
ture that encompasses the industry, medium and gamers. If, and when, the
hardcore subculture evolves we might fi nally on a global scale see some of
the revolutionary potential of the video game medium—a medium which