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

[Damion Schubert]

On 5/29/07, Sean Howard <squidi at squidi.net> wrote:
>
>
> "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.


EA has spent considerable time, energy and money trying to understand
what they have with the Sims, which you would too if you suddenly found
yourself selling gameboxes like crazy to girls and women who had never
previously set foot in the computer game aisle of Best Buy before.  Raph
is right - many, many of the Sims initial purchases were made by the
technophile crowd who regard Will Wright as a genius.  Early PR for the
game was in places like Wired and Slashdot - places current Sims fans
will never look.

The lesson is significant - how do you sell a game to people who do not
yet think of gaming as a worthwhile pasttime, or at least one that is worth
spending $40 bucks on?  The Sims shows that one option is the Trojan
Horse.

(Note: If you dig further when talking to EA executives, they will also
admit that they aren't that smart - they didn't plan it that way, it just
kinda happened.)

>
> 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.


SimCity was successful, but it was a middling success compared to
the Sims.

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.


If I recall correctly, EA's research did not show that the boyfriends
evangelized
it to their girlfriends, but rather that the girlfriends observed the
menfolk playing
the game.  A lot of the men were actually irritated by the experience, since
the newly addicted Sims fans started monopolizing the computer time.

Also, I'm amused that you think that large companies don't do serious
research in how millions of dollars suddenly appeared in their laps.

--d