Gamer categories, strategy guides, etc.

according to parks associates, gamers fall into certain categories, at least in a business sense. the article states --

" -- Power gamers represent 11 percent of the gamer market but account for 30 cents of every dollar spent on retail and online games.

-- Social gamers enjoy gaming as a way to interact with friends.

-- Leisure gamers spend 58 hours per month playing games but mainly on casual titles. Nevertheless they prefer challenging titles and show high interest in new gaming services.

-- Dormant gamers love gaming but spend little time because of family, work, or school. They like to play with friends and family and prefer complex and challenging games.

-- Incidental gamers lack motivation and play games mainly out of boredom. However, they spend more than 20 hours a month playing online games.

-- Occasional gamers play puzzle, word, and board games almost exclusively."

i understand that it's important to break down the market to better capitalize financially, but in agreement with joystiq, you can't really exclusively put most people in these categories. there's a lot of overlap for sure.

according to these figures, i'd definitely have to label myself a really casual gamer. there's no way i average even an hour a day usually, and i've even been proud of myself for playing a wider array of games lately. so i guess i'm a cross between leisure and dormant cuz i like to really get into the games i play, but i also don't have ridiculous amounts of time to play them. not like i'm out coaching little league baseball with all my free time or something, but shit i do have other hobbies.

another heavily blogged item lately was the notion that strategy guides yield increasingly difficult games. i could see that as being true, although i don't think it's some giant industry secret that should keep us up at night. personally, i used to be more of a purist and think any guides to help you through a game were a cop-out, not necessarily cheating, but taking some of the fun out of it. i've certainly changed my tune on that now. in fact, most adventure-type games i play, i end up consulting either a purchased guide or GameFAQs at least to get me through ridiculously obtuse parts quicker.

it comes back to my argument above. when you're an adult, you've got, y'know a "real job" and "a wife" and "bills to pay" and "things to clean." you don't have time to run around in circles to figure something entirely unobvious out just to advance further in a game. call me lazy, i just don't have time to essentially "hump every wall" or read through ridiculously general clues to have a good time. based on what i've read online, many others seem to agree.

The Office wins best comedy, but...

hmm, well the office won best comedy series tonight at the emmys, but haven't we seen this before?

you can't help but notice the parallels between the two offbeat comedies. i'm a huge fan of both, but part of me worries the office looks almost entirely like arrested development did two years ago. i'd say that they each appeal a lot more to the younger demographic rather than the baby boomers for sure, which typically seems to mean trouble somewhere down the line. that's pretty clear to me just in watching my parents' reaction to an episode sampling of each, heh.

i'm hoping NBC will do right with the office where fox did wrong with arrested development, as well as ABC dropping the bomb with sons & daughters earlier this year. i think it's all about marketing, really. good things are happening surrounding shows being released on iTunes, as well as web-only features and promotion. i think it's important to note that fox's devotion to MLB playoffs often times hurts the network (and its struggling programming) as much as it earns them money from baseball fans. often fox would show a handful of AD episodes, only to go on a 6 week hiatus to allow the MLB postseason to play out, which largely abandoned non-baseball fans long enough to make them forget about coming back.

i see them having enough content with the basic framework of the office to last a solid 5 seasons. i say that because the writers are creative and versatile enough to keep the show fresh long enough to keep us coming back again and again. for me, scrubs is the best example of a quirky offbeat show that has exhausted its ability to be consistently funny. if the office starts to sell out to achieve larger, more mainstream traditional sitcom type crowds, audiences will see through it quickly and change their opinions on the show entirely.

all told, winning the best comedy series emmy at least bought arrested development more time, and i'm sure the office's win will do the same for it. huzzah.

--justin

Used Games

i found this post at joystiq interesting. gamers discussed in the comments section whether they prefer to buy games used or new, and what their reasoning behind each was.

personally, i probably buy more new games than used, but that trend might change a bit. growing up i don't think i ever would have considered buying used games, but back then mom & dad were typically the ones paying for occasional games. now that each $50 game hits closer to home, i certainly think twice before mindlessly shelling out cash.

whether you buy used games through amazon, ebay, half.com, etc i've found that most of the time the games' condition meets my quality standards just fine. granted, i don't think it's a great idea to buy a typical $50-new game for $45-used. when i've bought used in the past, i'm typically saving a good 50-75% off the MSRP.

there's such a huge bulk of games on so many platforms these days that you're bound to miss out on all kinds of great games in virtually every genre. i'm 24 years old with a steady job and plenty of other hobbies, so i don't exactly feel the pressure to get the latest coolest game on the street, so being a few years behind actually saves me a ton of money. when a game came out 2 years ago, you're almost guaranteed that you can find it either new (greatest hits, heavily discounted, etc) or used (just from sheer volume used shops have) for a much cheaper price.

when i was a kid, my sister and i devoted several hours after school and on weekends to one game, so if we kept at it, even the longer games we'd be done with in a few short months. present day, i don't have the kind of time where i can just burn 4 hours every night to get through a game. not to mention there feels like such a steady flow of quality content (admittedly, in parallel to a much longer steaming pile of terrible games) that you're rarely left feeling like you have nothing to play until that next great game you're anticipating hits the street.

it's actually gonna create kind of a weird situation when the wii and PS3 come out, cuz i've still got enough to keep me entertained on my gamecube and PS2. luckily, both new consoles (well, all 3 actually) are backwards-compatible and will play my games for the previous console. but even with the gems yet to play in the past, most people (including myself) would prefer to boot up a game where the trademark year on the startup screen matches the current.

i haven't decided yet which console(s) i'd like to purchase for the next generation, but i know i'm not interested in plunking down $50-60 for each game that often. i may have more disposable income now than when i was 16, but it doesn't mean that i feel justified paying full price so often. thus, the entire concept of buying games secondhand benefits me greatly.

--justin

I'm a Switcher?

it's funny, something finally came up that made me wonder if i'm actually a switcher. a "switcher" being one who's gone from using a PC (and typically, some variant of windows) to a Mac with OS X. the truth is, i wouldn't say i'm a bonafide switcher. i envision a switcher to be someone who got sick of their spyware-infested dell, tossed it, and got a Mac instead. i've only kind of done that. i scrapped my old HP box from college (after it had been relegated to a secondary box running some flavor-of-the-month linux) for a mac mini april last year and immediately started using that for everyday tasks instead of my much more powerful XP box. in addition to that, just a few months ago i decided to finally get a laptop for portable usage, so i picked up the brand new MacBook.

i got an oil change over the weekend at my dealership, and given that i knew last time it took a good hour, i brought my MacBook to bide my time. as there didn't seem to be a wireless network to connect to, i went with my backup plan of watching a home movies episode with the commentary on. so i'm sitting in the corner of the room with my sleek white laptop, my matching white earbuds (not my usual choice, but that's what i had with me) and my matching white remote watching my movie. when i'm done and kind of milling around, this guy asks me out of the blue "were you using a mac?" and so i said sure, and he follows with "are you a... creative?" that's what he said, nothing after the normally thought-of-as-an-adjective word "creative," just using the word as its own noun i guess. i hesitated and told him no, but told him i'd made the switch about a year ago. he confirmed that he had as well, and we shared a moment of general yes-things-are-better and nodded in silent agreement. that was the first experience i've had where there was some kind of unspoken between two mac users.

i did find that funny though that it was a real world example where apple users are cast into being the creative types, which i would imagine would include graphic designers, architects, publishers, etc. given that lately i've been daydreaming about my innocent adolescent days of caring about nothing but comic books and video games, i found it an interesting coincidence.

--justin

hmm, i don't even really know what to say after not posting for over 3 months, by far my longest dormancy. it's just one of those things where big things in life happen, bigger than blogging. as anyone who's at all close to me already know, i got married july 22nd and left for the honeymoon shortly after. everything's gone great, luckily, and i look forward to a long life with my beautiful wife.

we were obviously incredibly swamped with events leading up to the wedding, although i had ample time to post here. i feel like i just didn't have anything more to add, and i really admit to this entire concept being increasingly difficult given that i have no idea how many (read: few) people are reading any of these posts.

i don't want to take the blog offline, i've valued using this as a good space to vent life's frustrations, provide updates on life happenings (in lieu of emails) and link to interesting/funny sites since 2003. i don't know if it's just a trend with my small circle of friends lately or more of a widespread phenomenon, but people just don't seem to be blogging as much these days, at least nothing that really holds that much interest consistently. i certainly enjoy reading my friends' blogs, but it's kind of hard not to get discouraged and wonder if any of it's really worth it.

i admit that i don't really ever know what to talk about here. typically i find something i like writing about and post strictly stream-of-consciousness comments about it, although most posts don't really relate to each other. i'd say that's probably the case because there's no one particular topic that i'd like to solely base this site on. maybe some kind of tag system would help that, i dunno.

i'm willing to bet you could look at college students' online habits before and after they graduate and notice that things really fall off post-graduation. i felt like in 2003-04 i had so much to just rant about (sometimes to my own detriment) related to college life and how frustrated and emotional i was at the time. now with the exception of the excitement in getting married, working life gets to be very mundane quickly. at times you have to just create interesting things to bother typing up a post about seemingly nothing, simply to have something to put online in hopes that it keeps some semblance of an audience entertained.

i don't want to draw this post out too long so soon, so stick around for more posts here soon.

--justin