When is a game not a game?

Aug 14th 2008 at 15:28 by Nick Parker

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In the last couple of years, new genres have sprung up. From Nintendo there have been ‘lifestyle assistants’, ‘touch generations’, ‘training games’, call them what you will.

Everybody else seems to have a music peripheral of some sort. But are they games? If they are, then what a breakthrough for the industry. If they aren’t games, then what?

Should we define an interactive game by the brand name of the platform it is published on? If Braun released interactive software bundled with a peripheral to help you get fitter while tracking your day-to-day progress, called it the Braun-Fit and sold it in Boots, would ChartTrack and NPD track its sales?

If Brain Training was a standalone electronic brain teaser made in China, but with a MENSA licence all over it, would it be ranged in Game stores or WH Smiths? These are on excellent Nintendo platforms, so we consider them ‘games’. You get my drift.

Should we define an interactive game by the demographic of the user? As these titles are mass market, the very definition of which is having no target market at all, then they could sit in any gadget or entertainment market definition.

They sell to everybody, which is something this industry considers as the Holy Grail, but the core gamer – the tribal game immersive player – does not consider them in his (I am being deliberately gender specific) world.

Indeed the players of these mass market ‘games’ would likewise not really like to rub shoulders with the core gamer. Imagine the dinner party conversation, which now includes the words ‘Wii’ and ‘DS’, as well as tales of switching the grocery shop from Waitrose to Tesco, changing the subject to include immigrant anarchists in GTA – doubtful, as most will just mutter “what’s GTA?”.

Should we define interactive games as requiring a need to win or the possibility to lose? Gamers experience their own rewards when playing, such as speed, discovery, violence, hand-eye coordination, ‘oneupmanship’, but the most common thread is to win.

You play against other people, against the machine or yourself but the desire is to beat these opponents. The lifestyle titles I am discussing don’t always need you to win or lose; some rhythm action titles don’t correct bum notes and you don’t compete against anybody when you learn to cook or add a GPS peripheral to a PSP – are these games?

Arguably, fitness peripherals, cooking guides and music instruments therefore belong in a parallel games market data set. For example we don’t see interactive DVD games in the weekly charts and the majority of the trade does not invest in these games – but why not? Lifestyle and music titles do drive hardware, but into homes with a lower propensity to go on and build a catalogue of traditional ‘real’ games.

I’m being deliberately obtuse, of course, for the purpose of generating debate. We should celebrate the enhanced awareness of our industry that these lifestyle titles have driven, but we could also ask whether they should be isolated away from the mainstream gaming market stats.

Each console manufacturer is looking at ways to grow its business, Nintendo with practically its lifestyle software and Microsoft and Sony increasingly with online video and other forms of entertainment media.

As today’s consoles become multi-functional through content, peripherals and online services, it becomes less relevant to compare installed base market share between these advanced platforms in only the games market context.

As consumers are motivated by different factors across all these new console-enabled markets, it becomes a more complex analysis than simply comparing the numbers sold of platform A and B to get a real understanding of which platforms are winning in what we understand as the games market.