Of course they are. Everything is vulnerable to disruption. There is no such thing as ‘job security’.
Nintendo has changed how it announces new games. Instead of putting it out many months, if not years in advance, they now announce new games within a few months before they are released. This raises the ‘surprise’ level among the market. It also contrasts to competitors in that their games are hyped for literally years before they come out where they lose that ‘surprise’ value. Entertainment revolves around surprise.
Aeropause has a write-up asking an interesting question about whether this change in Nintendo has unwittingly destroyed the magazines. After all, magazines require plenty of advance for news or game reviews in order to be relevant when they go to print. If Nintendo announces games when they practically come out, that doesn’t give the magazines much chance to respond.
It is not simply technology reasons why game magazines will likely go the way of the dodo. Did you know that newspapers and magazines can disrupt Internet sites? It’s true! There is a video (3rd part I believe) on the Disruption Chronicles page where a disruption analyst shows an example of a newspaper being a disruptive product. This newspaper increased its viewership and advertising rates by being place in the subway. Since many people don’t bring diversionary material on the subway, they pick up the ‘free’ newspaper. It is disruptive in that it is going after consumers in a certain context, in this case riding the subway, which was filling a job the consumer needed and the Internet really couldn’t do.
The big problem to newspapers and magazines is not the Internet but really content. Magazines used to have a certain monopoly; the game reviewers’ bad habits had to be tolerated. The competition was only other magazines. These bad habits could be anything from juvenile ‘macho behavior’ to a condescending attitude (especially strangely to Nintendo and its games).
As everyone knows, much of the ‘game reviewing’ business is not consumer based. It is publisher based. The product is not the game reviews as it is for the game reviewer to deliver the consumer to the publisher. This is where the ‘hype’ and exclusives and ‘constant praise’ for the game comes from. Does anyone really think GTA IV is worth a perfect 10? Read the IGN reviewand you can see, for yourself, the gushing attitude and glittering generalities which are signs the review was paid from the publisher. Gamespot’s GTA IV review went from a lower 9 something score when it was first put up to mysteriously disappearing and reappearing as a 9.8 (or whatever it was).
A disruption to game reviewers would not be a change of medium (magazines to Internet sites to blogging). It would be a change in a focus on the consumers and their needs rather than what the game reviewer thinks or the publisher thinks. A good example of this would be message forums where gamers tend to suggest games for other gamers based on what they are looking for. Most gamers appears willing to trust ten random people at a game forum over the ten most ‘acclaimed’ and ‘professional’ game reviewers. This should be seen as a warning sign to the established business.
With the Wii and DS phenomonon clearly evident in the sales and in pop culture, it is scary that none of the gaming sites have adjusted their sails to ride the storms and join the Blue Ocean success. Some of the sites, I think, know they have to do something. IGN was even talking about making an ‘IGN Casual Site’ not too long ago. Still, the game sites have revolved around the core. So where on earth are these new audiences going?
Word of Mouth is what is the main thing propelling the Wii. It isn’t surprising that it is propelling how these new consumers choose their games. Nintendo has adapted to this with their “Mom parties” where they get a Mom that games, take the Wii to a house party with other Moms, the other Moms play it, and Wii spreads. It is like ‘tupperware parties’ but with a Wii. And this Alpha Mom spreads out the message about Wii not unlike how gamers spread word among message forums or personal blogs. Do not dispute the power of the word of mouth.
Family magazines have begun reviewing Wii and DS games. When was the last time you saw a game website appeal to the family? You don’t. To them, families are ‘crummy customers’ and the hardcore game reviewer despises games like Wii Sports and Mario Kart Wii since he views them as ‘crummy products’. What is interesting about these reviews in the Family Magazine is that, while they might have injected in there as part of Nintendo’s marketing campaign, it is likely they are reviewing the games based on how it does the job for their customers. Obviously, a family magazine would review games based on what their audience is looking for.
The last console that prided itself as the ‘family machine’ was the NES (and its Japanese equivalent, the Famicom, which means ‘Family Computer’). Wii could best be described as a ‘family computer’ and, as such, the true successor to the NES.
This is a tip to game reviewers from a reader named Ginny. Poor Ginny! I was so far behind in my email that hers was at the end of that queue. But she makes good points. Excuse her spelling as she is not a native English speaker:
I just find out the next thing will need a Blue Ocean Treatement:
Gaming Press. No, seriously!Here’s the guidelines ^^!
1- The Game is about how fun it is; looks like a movie, for example,
it is not a plus!
2- Casual and Hardcore blabbing is forbiden!
3- Read Gaming Forums is out of the rules. Period.
4- Techno Bla bla inside of a game review is forbiden too (Geez, that
must be a rule since the 80ties. I’m fighting about this no-sense
since I’m 12 years old!)
5- Business related articles must come with at least 5 or 10 resources
from Business World. Like a real paper people.
6- Graphics and Sound aren’t a game, they are just complementary. If
the graphics are awesome and the sound is incredible, but the game is
just boring, forget it.
7- No, seriously, Graphics and sound do not make a game… (If you
wanna know my top-ten of graphic in gaming, well, are almost all
Nintendo, but they have a pattern: Yoshi’s Island, Paper Mario, Super
Paper Mario (That’s different :P) and World of Goo. Yep, that aren’t
ten anyway.)
8- Demographic talk (Ages people, ages)(And gender!) about any game
you don’t like is forbidden (Except when is blatanly obvious. Like the
“Z” line of Ubisoft)I need to add two more for complete ten, but everything can be resumed
in the following way:If the game does its work, is a good one, live with this.
There are some great guidelines here. Some are common sense. When people read a review about the game, they don’t care about the ‘technology’ of it. Pixels and polygons as well as the game engine are not the ‘game experience’. I can have a better ‘game experience’ with Mega Man 2 than, say, Mega Man 7 despite the latter having better ‘technology’ behind it.
I’ll add two:
-Review games numerous times, especially the hyped ones, so a more accurate review can appear. Hype distorts reviews, of course, and when people buy games, they want the quality to be there for a long time (or else it isn’t quality). Reviewing launch games may be tricky but why not re-review them later on to determine their true value? Many launch games, we discover in retrospect, were not what they were cracked up to be. And some launch games ended up being better than the hive mind view was at the time. Games are reviewed just as they come out and then are seemingly shelved forever by the game reviewer. These days that will no longer work. Some games may not seem that good at first but show incredible playtime over a longer period of time (such as Smash Brothers, Mario Kart, and Wii Sports). With games becoming more social, it is clear they cannot be reviewed like a cinematic experience.
-Focus on how non-gamers respond to the game. IGN should be given some credit in their Wii Sports review by pulling the girls from the advertising department (non-gamers) to play the game and record their reactions. There should be a category in game reviews for the ‘person who doesn’t play video games’ next to the ‘graphics’, ‘sound’, and so on. If this category was put in, game reviews for Wii games would shoot up exponentially while game reviews for hardcore games would be crippled by this category (which is why we will never see this category appear, even though Miyamoto originally suggested it). Yet with it, the game reviews would match the sales performance much more closely.
Game reviewers need to make themselves relevant to the New Market. If they don’t, someone else will. Then they become disrupted. It reminds me of Computer magazines in the 80s, of the Commodore 64 and Amiga craze, sneered at the NES and its ‘kid games’. Those computer magazines folded as the NES consumed the game computer audiences. What will happen when the New Market consumes the Hardcore?