Video game industry tries to broaden its appeal

A tough little blob must splash color over a town wallowing in gray.
Bug-eyed rabbits do a dance routine. And then there's the "perfect
equine farm" of wild horses for little girls to tame and train.
These video games don't sound like anything that would grab a
teenage boy's attention, and that's the point. They are part of an
important expansion of the video game industry as it works to pull in
women, girls and other demographics and cement its place as mainstream
entertainment.
A year ago at the E3 Media and Business Summit here in Los
Angeles, Nintendo Co. declared that anyone can be a gamer, and that the
company would break down the divide between hardcore players and those
just beginning to dabble in interactive entertainment. While the divide
still exists, games for people who don't fit into the stalwart category
of 18-to-34-year-old men are a fast-growing segment of the $18 billion
U.S. video game market.
Analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan estimates that five
years ago, up to 90 percent of gamers were the core audience of young
men. Today, it's more like 60 to 70 percent.
To be sure, much of the focus in the video game industry is
still on games like the upcoming "Fallout 3," set in a post-apocalyptic
Washington, D.C., where players can kill the enemy in "ridiculously
violent ways," as its executive producer, Todd Howard of Bethesda
Softworks, put it.
But big companies like Nintendo, Microsoft Corp., Electronic
Arts Inc. and Ubisoft Entertainment SA have realized the enormous growth
potential of mass-market games. A quarter of Ubisoft's worldwide sales
of $1.5 billion came from its "casual games" business in the most recent
fiscal year -- casual games often being the industry's extremely broad
term for everything other than what the young male demographic wants.
This was the first year the company measured casual games as a separate
division, said Tony Key, senior vice president of sales and marketing.
To try to reach more girls, Ubisoft offers its "Imagine"
series, which lets 6- to 14-year-old girls play fashion designer, rock
star or figure skater. Ubisoft also has "Horse Riders," in which players
can create a farm of wild horses.
It's unlikely to get any love from gaming blogs and reviewers,
but if Ubisoft's past games for girls are any indication, it will at
least make the company some money.
Game companies that have long been selling to teenage boys now
want to rope in not only their sisters but also their kid brothers and
parents. No company has been as successful in this as Nintendo, which
has sold more than 10 million of its $250 Wii consoles in the U.S. since
its late 2006 launch, despite widespread supply constraints.
Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata, says he hopes to
eventually blur the lines between games and other forms of
entertainment. "We should expand the (games) business to music and
movies," he said through an interpreter.
As an example, Nintendo has "Wii Music." The game turns the
Wii's wireless controller and "Nunchuk" attachment into more than 60
musical instruments. Players mimic the way musicians play those
instruments -- and that's it, they are making music even if they don't
know a thing about pitch or rhythm. It's a long way from involved games
like "Halo 3," where a novice would be hard-pressed to survive more than
a few minutes.
Over the past few years, Pachter said, console makers have
alienated gamers as they got older. With jobs and families and new
responsibilities, people who grew up with video games in the 1980s now
have less time to immerse themselves in complicated first-person
shooters and adventures.
"Nintendo is bringing those people back," he said.
But the trick is to figure out which specific demographics to
aim for.
"To succeed you need to target your product in a more focused
way," said Kathy Vrabeck, the head of EA's Casual Entertainment
division, which was formed a year ago as the company realized there was
gold in accessible, mass-market games. "It's a rare, rare product that
appeals to any gender, demographic, age."
The exceptions might be the music simulations, including "Wii
Music," Activision Inc.'s "Guitar Hero" and EA's "Rock Band." And then
there's EA's "Spore."
Designed by "Sims" creator Will Wright, "Spore" gives players
simple tools to design creatures of their own imagination, with no rules
other than that they have a mouth.
People have uploaded 1.9 million thorny monsters, lumpy
hobbits, psychedelic bugs and walking household objects that they
designed to the game's Sporepedia Web site since June 17. This, Wright
pointed out, is more than the known number of existing species on Earth.
The full version of "Spore," which will feature the characters
that players are making now, goes on sale in September. EA hopes it will
become a franchise at least as successful as the "Sims."
With "De Blob," designed by a group of college students, THQ
Inc. wants to offer a game that "succeeds in a mix of accessibility and
challenge" and attract both a casual and core gamer audience, said Brad
Carraway, vice president of global brand management.
Anyone can pick up a Wii controller and play the game, in
which the main blob character has to give a town some color. But the
further you go, the more challenging it is. As players advance through
levels, they have to fulfill missions such as painting buildings
specific colors (which they must mix themselves) and fighting the evil
I.N.K.T. Corp. honchos who have rid the town of its hues.
-xinhu