Blog Post #4
Kerry McGlynn
Blog Post #4
The way people understand the video game industry and perceive the people who play video games has changed over the duration of the industry drastically. People now understand that video games have many positive aspects that come with playing that recent studies have enlightened. Also some may agree that the “gamer” profile has also changed considerably. When video games originally came into play the stereotypical thought of a gamer was thought to be someone that is considered to be a nerd and predominantly a male. Today we know this to be different with recent surveys and studies coming out. In the reading it talks about how much gender in video games has changed. “Recent statistics illustrate about half of all video game players are women.” (Jayanath) Personally this is very surprising to think that just a little over half of the video game community is women because I know this was not true from the beginning of the video game industry. If you look at ads in the early stages of the industry they seem to be targeting an audience of dads because they were typically the ones who could afford the machines for their kids because the systems were so much more expensive when put into prospective. The marketing that the video game industry had was forced to change due to the change in demographics of their audience.
With new information about the increase of women video game players the advertising was forced to change right around the time of the new Nintendo systems coming to market. “Video games have long been advertised in magazines, television, and online. Early video game advertising rarely featured women or nonwhite players.” (Chess) With the demographics of gamers known to have changed, soon followed the target audience of the ads coming from the video game industry. A video game ad that comes to mind that jumps out at me with the changes of the audience being demonstrated is the Call of Duty ads. The ad was real life people envisioning themselves actually being in battle. The people in the ad were of all different ethnicities and genders. They realize that the stereotypical white male is no longer the demographics of a video game player. This ad resonated with me in knowing how when you play video games you can in a sense experience something, or at least feel as if you are experiencing something in which you would normally not find yourself trying. This may be one reason why the demographics of video games are changing so drastically with the increase in technology making video games increasingly more realistic. More people want to experience something they normally wouldn’t maybe see themselves doing.
From the panel presentation they talked about how the video game covers have changed for the better and how they started using better designs and tactics to intrigue different consumers by grabbing them with the strategic placing of color or not depending on what they are trying to highlight to the potential buyer. With the example they showed of the old video game covers and how unorganized and mediocre graphics it shows how much more the designers put into the covers knowing that they have a broad audience now to grab attention from rather than just one demographic like in the past.
References
Chess, S., Evans, N. J., & Baines, J. J. (n.d.). Chess_What does a gamer look like.pdf. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4ImnoswzjW0NjM3emZMS09kaEU/view
Chess, S., Evans, N. J., & Baines, J. J. (n.d.). Chess_What does a gamer look like.pdf. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4ImnoswzjW0NjM3emZMS09kaEU/view
