When real time “kills” mobile gaming.
Mobile Me & You Project (Gaming Community)Part II |”New Consumer Trends” — “Mobile Reputations” course | Panteion University
In a world that is constantly changing new trends are taking place. In the frame of our course “Mobile Reputations”, we, as students of the Panteion University, run a qualitative research in order to examine the use of mobile phones by Millennials. More specific we decided to focus on the gaming community and we managed to interview 12 persons, in order to meet the needs of our project.
In this part of project you are going to read about Alexis A. and his perspective and thoughts about mobile use and gaming. To begin with let us introduce you to him. Alexis A. is 32 years old and has graduated from an IEK in Galatsi as a computer operator. Even though he plays games on his mobile and other gadgets, he doesn’t consider himself as a gamer. To check out why, just keep reading…
He spends around 2–3 hours per day on the screen of his phone. The mobile phone for him is a source of unlimited information, a fast and practical way to communicate with his beloved ones and a way to navigate himself around different areas. During the interview, he admitted that he isn’t a huge fun of social media. He doesn’t even have an Instagram account and he only visits Facebook when sitting in front of a PC, or sometimes not even then. He mainly sticks to Viber just for communication and YouTube for entertainment. Furthermore, he told us that when he is using public transportation he really enjoys listening to music or playing games through his mobile phone. He stated that he reads some eBooks via mobile too. He loves organizing his routine through his mobile, as there are some apps that really make his life a lot easier. For example, he can even use Excel just to write down his shopping in supermarket and calculate easily the cost. He generally uses Microsoft Office, just to open files or write down notes. Also, he finds PDF, GPS and Gmail, some of the most useful apps of his phone. His beloved app is Microsoft News. He opens it every day in order to be updated about the latest news, instead of watching tv or reading a newspaper. He doesn’t like sharing content neither in Facebook nor in gaming streaming platforms. At last, he sometimes makes online purchases on Gear, Amazon or Geek by using his paypal, in order to get some new accessories for his PC or motorbike.
He believes that if somebody took his phone, he would feel nervous for losing all his data and paying for a new one, but at the same time he would feel peacefulness that no one would be able to reach him, as most of the phonecalls he receives are from his employers or colleagues. He prefers using his computer rather than his mobile phone. Except for the fact that it is his job and, so he makes many tasks on PC, he claims it is also his cup of tea as far as gaming is concerned.
So, let’s jump to the gaming part. He plays strategic games on mobile, only when he does not have the time to play on computer. The time of his life that he decided to download and play games on his phone was when he had no free time due to many obligations. Therefore, he started playing games when he was on the streets or in public transportation, because he didn’t want to give up one of his favorite hobbies. Since then he only plays a few games on mobile and prefers playing more on his computer. The reasons for that is the bigger screen of the PC and the bigger variety of games. In addition, there are a few strategic games on mobile that grab his attention and none of them is “real time”. This means that it takes hours for him to make steps forward. To be more specific, if an attack to the opponent may need 7 hours to be achieved, the gamer will have to come back to the game in seven hours. Therefore, it is practically impossible for him to spend more than 30 minutes or an hour per day on mobile gaming. In order to avoid this, he should pay for the game, but he is not in the mood of doing that, especially when he can find many online free games on his computer.
He doesn’t deem himself a gamer, because as he says “gamers have no other life than this” and so he doesn’t feel part of the community. Nevertheless, he watches influencers gamers on YouTube in order to learn tactics, like Zok, 2J, InFeRnoBraVeHeart, GRamers and Unboxoholics. In addition, he may buy some games, when he really finds them interesting, but he doesn’t pay for the latest releases like a maniac. For him Gaming comes first and Streaming second. At last he set Social brand as he doesn’t have any professional prospects in the world of gaming.
That was Alexis’ interview. It is nice to discover different aspects of mobile use among millennials, especially concerning the part of social media and the thoughts about gaming, but this is the interesting part of the story. Alexis thank you for your time. The rest of you still reading the article, see you on our next interview with our new gamer.
If you want to learn how this project got started and the methodology that we follow you can have a look at the following articles:
If you are looking for the other parts of the interviews about gaming check the links below:
To learn the results and the insights of our research you can check the links bellow. We also made a comparison with global trends.
Team: Antonis Katsis, Liana Kollia, Korina Simeonidou.
Professor: Betty Tsakarestou.
