[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN} Who to design for?

[Sean Howard]

"Raph Koster" <raph at areae.net> wrote:

> Research from within EA showed that in fact hardcore gamers bought the
> Sims, on the strength of Will's past work. They mostly disliked it, but
> showed it to their girlfriends, and that was how it spread. It did not
> jump to the casual market: it went through the hardcore, which is
> classic adoption mechanics.

"Showed it to their girlfriends"? Seriously? I should write a report about
how hardcore gamers "don't bathe". That assessment seems amazingly
anecdotal. Was this research based on case studies, questionaires, or
statistical interpolation? I'd be interested in knowing what manner EA's
marketing department went about getting that kind of information. Because
it seems to me that many of the people that I know that play the Sims
would be invisible to traditional means of data collection like that.

I don't think the average teenage girl is going to register their software
and the average adult isn't going to bother taking a questionaire. The
non-tech-savy non-gamer isn't the type of person you'll be able to easily
identify and get information from. I think that you are more likely to get
results back from hardcore gamers (even their girlfriends) than some 45
year old woman who heard about the Sims from an article in Parenting
Magazine.

Also, "Will's past work" is SimCity (I think we can safely ignore SimAnt).
People who don't play games know what SimCity is. It was edutainment
before reading rabbits decided to coin the phrase. Even the most
anti-gaming hard assed parent would let their daughter play SimCity. Math
classes would use SimCity to teach economics to kids. EVERYBODY has played
SimCity.

When a hardcore gamer boyfriend tries to sell the game to his girlfriend,
he will say, "It's by the guy who made SimCity... and you can make them
pee themselves!" It doesn't matter where they heard it from, the thing
which made them pay attention to it is the whole "by the creator of
SimCity" thing. Most gamer girlfriends have tuned out their boyfriends
after being forced to play Bust-A-Move and Tomb Raider in misguided
attempts to be made into a gamer.

-- 
Sean Howard