Have I mentioned...

...just how out of control my Amazon wish list is?

I mean, I admit I'm using it more as a reference list for the future than to actually buy stuff. You know, the books and records you bump into once, and if you don't write them down or something you never remember them again? It's just that mine's ballooned out to 349 items.

OTOH... well, i do have a birthday coming up on June 28th, if anyone's interested...

Just a little cognitive dissidents

...I'm sure that's how you spell it.

Anyway, from the current issue of PC Gamer, two quotes:

"Somewhere out there, a focus group needs to be spanked. Apparently, they're telling publishers that PC action gamers don't want to play superhero games. At all. Ever... In short, you can't play (such a game) because a 38-year-old Florida homemaker addicted to Minesweeper says you don't want it." ( Chuck Olson, p. 90)

- and -

"It's been a helluva ride for The Sims. Not only has it remained steadily on the top of the retail charts for over two years, but, with 6 million copies sold, it also just knocked 9-year-old Myst off its longstanding perch as the best-selling PC game of all time. Some achievement." (Marc Saltzman, p. 76)

I used to have this argument with my friend in LA, Eric Pobirs. Eric is a hardcore gamer of the stereotype we all now know: male, twitchy, not well groomed, with a propensity for First Person Shooters.

He used to complain all the time about how Myst had no game play, was a big ripoff, and was only "selling" well because free copies were being bundled in with CD-ROM drives. This was back in the day when hardware manufacturers felt compelled to do such bundling.

My argument was, No, Myst was a game for Mom, or the secretary. That no one in their right mind would give, say, Doom or Quake, or whatever to Mom. That, basically, shoot-'em-ups skew towards guys like Eric -- who represent the pool from whom the programmers come -- and Myst and its ilk skewed towards people who actually bought games off the shelf instead of downloading ISOs from USENET and burning the CDs -- newbies of all genders, women, people relatively well socialized.

Now along comes The Sims. Gosh, do you think your teenager-of-all-ages male, who plays Deus Ex, or Half Life, or Halo is the core consumer for this?

No?

Yet, damnably, the sales figures just mutely stand there, pointing fingers.

So, with all due respect, if I'm a game publisher, I want -- desperately -- a 38-year-old Florida homemaker addicted to Minesweeper to be in my focus group. Because that's where the money is, dim wit!

Like I say, I think the main reason PC games are fairly stagnant design-wise (even if ever-more-stunning visual-wise) is because these guys are writing the games for themselves, and don't really give a damn about whether they could make vastly more money by designing games that appeal to, oh, say, the 97% of the population who aren't programmers.

Hmm... Doesn't sound at all like the Linux/Windows debate, does it? Or whether Windows is "good"? Or whether user interfaces trump feature set, every damn time in the marketplace?

Nahhhhhh...

{and before mac users start flaming me... i've used macs. and my experience (which is mine) is that macs are less intuitive than windows. and less stable. the mac was aborne in the contempt of jobs for markkula, and it shows. now you have a reason to flame me. :) }