The AAA Games Market
I keep hearing about the death of AAA retail videogames thanks to the surge in popularity of “casual” titles found on Facebook, mobile devices, and flash websites. Folks wonder how I can be deaf and dumb to the “shift” towards social/casual experiences. Why would I, an industry engineer with the kind of online dev skills well suited to social online gaming ever consider a move to hardcore AAA development?
I think there’s some confusion over this, since the player base buying $60 retail titles has actually continued to increase, but hasn’t seen the same rapid growth as the social/mobile gaming fad. Sure there’s been a hiccup due to global economic factors, but the group of people buying blockbuster games hasn’t taken as big a hit as say, the group people going out to dinner.
Here’s the thing, the people playing Facebook games now were the same folks that only a few years ago were only playing solitaire and minesweeper. They’ve gone from simple card games to management simulations, action puzzle games, and intricate social interaction models. At the same time, you have a generation of people gaining manual dexterity and spatial reasoning skills playing with tiny handheld devices that have the ergonomic profile of a potato peeler without a handle. They’re going to find it tough to complain when they get their hands on an Xbox 360 or PS3 controller. Sure, people like the freedom of their iPads and their Nintendo DSes, but they still own TVs, if HDTV sales in the last few years are any indicator.
There is no death of the hardcore as far as I can see. Instead we have a whole generation of gamers that are being seduced from their card and board games with flashy online trinkets and social rankings. The causal gamer is a myth, instead you have gamers that are being introduced through the new social/mobile games surface area. This makes me excited, because it’s a whole new way to introduce people to an exciting and cost-effective form of entertainment, and I didn’t have to invest anything. I’ll let the folks building Facebook apps and iPhone games duke this one out.
Inevitably, some of these new people are going to want to trade up to the pure, un-cut Columbian shit. There you will find me, waiting with the hard stuff, $60 a fix.