[MUD-Dev] Movies bigger than games?

[Greg Underwood]

At 06:51 PM 3/29/01 +0000, Matt Mihaly wrote:
>On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, A.M.S. Martin wrote:

>> But doesn't it strike you that this is only the beginning of a new
>> period in the gaming industry where merchandising *is* aggressive?

<...>

> If a game generates 100 million, it's sold about 2 million copies
> ($50 each). If a movie generates 100 million, it's sold about 12.5
> million tickets. Some people go see movies more than once, but they
> do not account for a significant percentage of movie tickets sold.

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? ;)

>  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.

This conversation is starting to ring bells... I believe Dr. Cat was
working on things aimed at a wider market a couple years ago.
Unfortuntely, I've not been keeping up on list traffic for some time,
so I'm not sure if he's still up to it.  But, I'd bet if he's still
tuned in, he'll start chiming in soon... ;)

-Greg

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