Guest Post: New Game Rules For Youth Market @ GDC
Posted by meredith on 03-18-2010Today's Ypulse Guest Post comes from Robin Boyar, Founder of thinktank research and strategy, who reports back on emerging trends she spotted at the Game Developers Conference recently held in San Francisco.
If you work in youth media or marketing and have an idea for a guest post, feel free to email me.
New Game Rules For Youth Market @ GDC
With hundreds of lectures and events, Game Developers Conference (GDC) is the world’s largest video games industry conference. Hosted last week in San Francisco, GDC highlights the current state of interactive entertainment and provides insights into future consumer entertainment habits. The record attendance at GDC underscores the continued strength of the video game industry, now a $40B global market.
How has gaming grown? Interestingly, before the turn of the millennium, video gaming was the province of teenage males—pasty faced boys that spent hours hanging out in their parents’ basement playing all sorts of role playing and "shoot em up" games on their PC and console systems.
However, the advent of casual online PC games and new platforms such as the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, and mobile phones have widened gaming’s appeal. As such, over two thirds of all U.S. adults play some type of video game regularly. Young consumers are the most ardent gamers– almost all male and three quarters of all female tweens and teens play video games weekly.
At GDC, the hottest new platform was social gaming—e.g., games played on social networks such as Facebook or MySpace. These games, such as Zynga’s FarmVille or Playdom’s Sorority Life utilize game mechanics from older video game genres such as role playing (e.g., Pokémon) or life simulation (e.g., SimCity). Players build, collect, and customize environments and characters and interact with their friends and other players via the social graph. With over 80% of all teens visiting social networks, millions of teens are playing these games regularly.
With over 3 billion downloads and gaming the #1 category, the iPhone continues to be a strong gaming platform, and as such, iPhone gaming was also a popular topic at GDC. However, with over 25,000 gaming apps, many of the GDC sessions focused on building awareness and monetizing consumers. In many cases, the consumers that can afford and have access to purchase content online are typically 18+. (thinktank’s internal research confirms that while teens are the most frequent users of services such as video, music and gaming on their cell phones, they are less likely to own smartphones such as the iPhone or BlackBerry compared to those 24-35).
This creates a conundrum for content makers, because while teens have the greatest amount of leisure time, and as such, are the biggest consumers of entertainment, they are often the ones with the least amount of disposable income or ability to pay via credit cards. Thus, strategies to target younger gamers may include game cards, subscriptions, or the old standby, "nudging Mom."
On that note, monetizing consumers through online connectivity was another big theme of the conference. While subscriptions have been around for years for online PC games such as Club Penguin and World of Warcraft, many companies (especially social gaming ones) are utilizing free to play models that rely on sales of virtual goods via small micro-transactions of a few dollars or less. Many gamers, especially females, buy digital goods to customize their online characters or worlds, or to gift these digital items to others.
Lastly, while console gaming is no longer the “main event” at GDC, the Xbox 360 and PS3 were still seen as strong platforms, especially as their online services (Xbox Live and PlayStation Network) facilitate a variety of online and offline play through casual games, virtual worlds and other interactive entertainment. Teens and tweens continue to play these games, especially in social situations with other friends and family members. However, the buzz for Nintendo's Wii and DS was oddly quiet, reflecting that these platforms may be in decline for teens and younger audiences. This may be due to the relative dearth of quality content for these platforms.
As such, moving forward, the greatest opportunities for those interested in building interactive entertainment experiences for young consumers continues to be on the online PC and console platforms. Innovative, fun, and easily accessible content will continue to draw teens and tweens.
Editor's Note: For even more research on youth and gaming, check out the Ypulse Research January Report.
About Robin
Robin Boyar is the founder of thinktank, a San Francisco Bay Area market research and strategy consultancy specializing in the digital consumer. Areas of focus include gaming, online, mobile, entertainment and young people. Robin has over fifteen years market research experience in interactive mediums. Previous to founding thinktank, she led research efforts for Electronic Arts and Pogo.
Categorized under: Gaming
