[casual_games] Tolstoy on casual gamers

[Cole, Vladimir]

I liked this quote from today's WSJ and thought I'd share: 

As Tolstoy might have put it: Hardcore gamers are all alike, but every
casual gamer is casual in his own way. Take two different
first-person-shooter6 titles: The particulars may diverge --
slaughtering aliens or killing Nazis -- but the gameplay tends to be
remarkably consistent from one game to the next.

Publishers bank on this shared videogame vocabulary to attract buyers to
the latest shooters. The same goes for racers, fighters, platformers,
role-playing games, the annual "Madden" football sequels and other
established genres.

But catering to hardcore gamers leaves out the much larger "latent
gamer" population. This demographic includes occasional players looking
for a 10-minute break, senior citizens who've never picked up a
joystick, lapsed gamers who have grown too bored or busy (and,
evidently, Mr. Chen's girlfriend).

Ms. Santiago, the USC classmate and business partner, says that's the
stage of gaming now. "We have a generation of people that grew up
playing games, love games, but just don't have time to play these
hardcore games anymore," she says.

Full article here:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB116460570723333343-HFk3uWoJ
Y_mZYn0cbyAxtKvwRCU_20071127.html

"How a Grad-School Thesis Theory Evolved Into a PlayStation 3 Game"