[MUD-Dev] Movies bigger than games?

[Matt Mihaly]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2001, Greg Underwood wrote:
> Matt Mihaley wrote:

> That's an interesting statement.  I'd actually heard quite the
> opposite; that a lot of movies are aimed specifically at younger
> audiences, because those were the people most likely to go see a
> movie over and over.  IE: all those movies with "youth appeal" were
> designed to hit that target audience of late-teens, those with the
> money to spend on the movie, and the likelyhood of them seeing it 5
> or 6 times.  IE: the movie industry is specifically aiming to get
> people to come back again and again.  There's been a lot of "youth
> appeal" movies of late too.  Adam Sandler, anyone? ;)

I have no statistics demonstrating my point, and I doubt any reliable
ones exist, but I'd be willing to bet that most movie revenue is
generated from one-time viewers. You've got the occasional movie that
brings out the fanatics (like Titanic or Star Wars. Even though I
didn't like it, I felt obligated to see Episode I six times just to
make SURE I did not, in fact, like it. Felt as if I had to give it the
benefit of the doubt.) but most movies are not in this category, and
really, I think it's only a few movies that get any significant amount
of repeat-viewership. That statement is, as I said, based entirely on
conjecture derived from just watching how people see movies. Again, I
can't back it up.

>>  So with > the same revenue, you're talking about a customer base
>>  for movies 6x > that of games.
 
> I don't disagree with your basic thought, though.  I agree that
> movies do appeal to a wider audience, but with games like Deer
> Hunter and The Sims, well, that's changing.  These are games that
> are appealing to a much wider audience, and nothing attracts
> copycats like a fresh market and novice consumers.  ;) I expect
> we'll be seeing a lot more games along those lines, with much wider
> audience appeal, over the next several years.  We can also expect
> that, as the audience gets bigger, more main stream, well, we'll be
> seeing more main stream marketing tactics.

Yep. The Sims generated what, 300 million in revenue? More than any
movie last year if you don't count things that I think should be
counted (such as in-theatre refreshments and merchandising) Very
popular game clearly. Going to be awfully difficult to successfully
copycat though I think.

I suspect that, generally, it'll be awhile before games can really
compare to movies in terms of userbase. It takes too long to play most
boxed games. I can go see a movie in 2 hours and feel completely
satisfied about the experience (assuming it's not dreck of course).

--matt

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