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.
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!!
2 comments:
Hey Whoosh. Nice topic. A was a gamer during my engineering days (though wasnt very good at it). Waiting to see your concluding post. Have some frnds in the gaming industry and they had some interesting things to say about Gaming in India
"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."
Hehe.... 300 meters is as far as the moon.... well for tau ofcourse.. when he is in 'TAU MODE'..
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