The World of Gaming – Who are the people in it? – Part 2

Well, we have explored the dynamics of the young 14 year old geniuses segment in the previous post, and now it’s time for us to move on to older segments.

Youth – College goers or whatever!!
This is a slightly older segment when compared to the previous one we talked about. Right from fresh out of their senior secondary schools to fresh out of their bachelor degrees (or dropping studies altogether), this segment covers the entire range of these people. Rather than exploring what drives these people towards games, let us have a look at a few of their characteristics. Their lifestyle in general, mode of playing, venue of playing, choices of computer games and the pleasure they obtain in playing are few of the things which we should have a look at. I promise, it’s going to be something we all know but never stopped to think about.

Lifestyle
Now this is not meant to scare people off gaming or anything, but these people literally breathe games day in and day out! I am not talking about the people who are off and on gamers but the ones who are properly hooked on to the online games (and that is the vast majority in my experience). A typical day in the life of those people is waking up, attending as many classes as they wish to (0-50%; never more than that), indulging in small time pass activities, and ending the day with 2-3 sessions of the game of their choice. It could be Age of Empires, Warcraft: Defence of the Ancients, Counter Strike, Need For Speed, Quake, Unreal Tournament, FIFA or any such addictive game.

Mode of playing
What do I mean by Mode of Playing in the first place? It is the state which people generally enter when they start playing computer games. It has to be seen or experienced to know what a state it is. People are oblivious to everything around them and they only have eyes for the game they are playing. I know a few of my friends who could even successfully ignore a full bomb blast happening 300 meters beside them, as long as it does not affect the game. This is useful information in the sense, that these consumers of various products become zonked out toward anything outside the computer game for a period to 6-10 hours every day (Do we see an opportunity here?).

Venue of Playing
As can be guessed, this kind of maniacal gaming is only to be observed in the hostels of all the colleges (primarily guys’ one at that). However, in certain cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Indore etc. it has been observed that there are other students of this age looking at Cyber Cafes to satisfy the gaming need of theirs.

Style of playing
It has been observed that a group of 4-5 people (at least) are always seen playing together. These people call themselves a “clan” and participate in all the competitions happening as a team. This is true for most of the team games and obviously not for the many single playing games we see. This follows the observations from the previous head wherein we saw the concentration of these people in hostels or cyber cafes, both the places an ideal ground for the “getting together of a clan”.

Why do they play?
The reasons could be many, the primary one being they are bored with everything else about them. Undergrad studies do not interest them and there aren’t enough activities happening around them to keep them occupied otherwise.

This sounds to be a lame reason but is true for most of the cases. For a select few people, they were already hooked on to games and just continued in their UG. Most of these people continue playing their entire lives, while a most of the others just stop after their college life.

Concluding entry coming up soon!!

The World of Gaming – Who are the people in it? – Part 1

The world of computer gaming is a weird one; to the people inside it, it’s just a way of their life (or is it? We have to explore that), and to the people outside, they are either uninterested or envious (again a supposition which we have to establish in the future) of this entire world. There are various effects which being a member of this highly exclusive club has on people, and not all of them positive! Some of the things which we should ask ourselves is, who are the members of this community in the first place? Let me remind you that the following analysis is being done purely based on personal experience and has no data to support it whatsoever.

The 14 Year old Geniuses

Well, the title which I have given this segment is totally misleading. What it leads you to believe is that all the youngsters who play any kind of computer games are actually good at it, and I don’t want to give you that impression. These can be newbies, average or expert just like the rest of us. What would really knock your socks off would be some of the reasons which these youngsters sit in front of the idiot box and not spend time playing like the previous generation

Lack of time

Try as we might to ignore it, the children of today (10-16 year olds) have much lesser free time than what the previous generations had. They go to school from morning to late afternoon or evenings, and then proceed to the tuitions (which promise to deliver a lot more than they do) and return home only at the time of dinner. This leaves them very little time to go outside and actually play the games which they are supposed to. Instead, they get computer games (of some genre or the other) and start playing them. As soon as they become decent at it, they leave the weekend outdoor sports and instead go sit in a cyber café/gaming parlor and spend their time.

Lack of Friends

Well, we all know that there are basically two kinds of people, those who have friends and those who don’t. So the ones who don’t, generally find themselves in front of the computer at some point or the other in their childhood. Now this does not mean that the children who have friends do not play on the computer, but then it is highly likely that a lot of the kids who do not socialize in their real life are very active in their virtual life.

Becoming one of the Group

Imagine the life of a young kid in which all his friends are talking incessantly about this new game which they have started playing. Obviously, in such a situation, that kid would at least be tempted to have a look at the game if nothing else. Sometimes, even this is an adequate reason for a kid to start playing games.

A genuine interest in this field

Well, pretty self explanatory. This would be the group of kids who would be inherently interested in computer gaming and would be playing no matter what the constraints or available options are open to them. These are the trend setters who influence the other gamers around them. Even if they had the time on their hands, the skill to be doing something else, these are the kids who would still be playing computer games. As far as I can see, these should be the target segment of any game manufacturing company, should they ever decide to focus on any one particular segment in the future.