Broadening of the Game-Player Base

While I'm sure there are still legions of kids playing Warcraft and Call of Duty MW2 was mindblowing (not to mentioning making something like $400m in one single day)... this year gaming has really moved beyond the console and the PC into the pockets and purses of the world.

With over 21,000 game apps among 85,000 total apps (and more than 2 billion app downloads), the iPhone game market has exploded. The iPhone and iPod Touch are everywhere... and for good reason. These are really great devices.

The advent of the app market in the iTunes Store and its ease of use has exposed us to legions of new gaming fans and potential gamers who just a few months ago would never have dreamed of walking into a game store to buy a game. Thanks to younger kid gamers, casual male players who were never that particularly interested in buying games before, and especially women players of all ages, the audience population has exploded.

This means that the player base is noticeably different than that of past generations. We are not just making games for that niche of teenage male players whose predominance has made PC and console gaming so popular up to now. In fact, one could probably argue that a great majority of app buyers on the iPhone aren't really gamers at all, at least by conventional descriptions.

It's important to pay attention to the attributes and features that attract this broad segment of "non-gamer" gamers. Successful games will be those whose win conditions are extremely tolerant, whose ramping is slow and measured, and which don't severely increase levels of difficulty. Achievements and other recognitions should be awarded frequently. Multiple-user (we used to call it multi-player) and chat and other "socialization" features are as critical as any other element of the game design.

The new gamers care less about high-fidelity features with complex design and more about fun, easily understood ideas that are compelling and immediately accessible.