The Paradigm Shift of the Gamer and the Rise of the Motion Game

Through the years I have noticed a paradigm shift in the kinds of people that play games. As a child I remember the stigma that was attached to videogame players, that they were all males that stayed inside doing nothing but playing videogames, slowly growing fat in seclusion. Through the years I have noticed that videogames have become more accessible to a wider audience, creating two distinct types of consumers: the hardcore and the casual.

                  Casual gamers have become a target demographic of many software and hardware developers such as Nintendo. Since Nintendo’s emergence as a world player in videogames with consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), its successor the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and the Nintendo 64, Nintendo has tailored its games to a more ‘Hardcore’ demographic. Classics such as The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario World, Final Fantasy IV, Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time were often very difficult to play (Battletoads is probably the hardest game ever!) or incredibly lengthy. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for example, took around 20-30 hours to complete the main quest, but around 40-50 hours to get 100% completion. These games are very inaccessible due to their difficulty or the time investment required to enjoy them.

                   Recently, Nintendo has switched their demographic to the emerging ‘casual’ gamer with new hardware and software. The Nintendo DS, released in 2004 was the first major shift to casual gaming for the company, featuring innovative touch screen technology making it easy for non-gamers to play, eliminating the learning curve of playing with buttons or joysticks.  The Nintendo Wii, released in 2006 featured similar innovation geared towards casual gamers with motion controls that allow players to physically swing, jab and waggle to control their on screen avatars. The software for these systems, like Cooking Mama (Nintendo DS) and Wii sports (Wii) made games attractive to males and females of all ages. This demographic shift is best seen in the advertisements for the Wii game system, often showing a little girl playing virtual bowling with her eccentric grandpa. The Nintendo Wii and DS were a huge success all over the world, the Wii breaking records (and television sets) in its first month of sale.

                  Nintendo’s new mantra of making games easily accessible has slowly seeped into games usually reserved for the hardcore crowd. Examples of this include Mario Galaxy 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward sword. Both games feature help for players in the form of the characters Fi and the cosmic guide. The character guide Fi in Zelda constantly informs the player in the forms of tutorials explaining the use of new items, quests, etc. In Mario Galaxy 2, after a player fails several times in a level, the cosmic guide appears to Mario, which if toggled can give the computer complete control of Mario who passes the level.

The easier accessibility of these newer games shows how casual gaming has affected the videogame market. Hardcore gamers, now a minority amongst hordes of casual gamers, have spoken up against this rise of the waggle generation of videogames, claiming that these games decrease the value of videogames in general. Nevertheless, the paradigm shift has proven successful for videogame developers, who are raking in more profits than ever.