The Industry “Tail” is trying to “Wag” the Market “Dog”

The next time you hear someone from the “Game Industry” talk, listen to how often he or she talks about the customer.

In fact, they never talk about the customer! Grab a stack of ‘game design’ books, and you’ll be hard pressed to read anything about the customer. Read articles about gaming and you will hear much talk about ‘business models’ and ‘narratology’, but you never hear anything about the customers.

When you hear someone from the Game Industry speak, they talk passionately about art assets, about marketing, and generally about constructing the game. But they never talk about the customers. It was as if they were excitedly chattering about how efficient their sausage factory is. But no one is asking about whether the customers even want sausage in the first place. What if they want chocolate instead? One’s knowledge in the sausage factory becomes worthless if the customer wants to eat chocolate instead of sausage.

The ultimate problem of gaming is that people do not realize what is the center of the Universe that gaming revolves around.

It is not the developers and their crackpot theories or their ramblings on narratology.

It is not publishers and their new business model of the week.

It is not game reviewers and their nonsensical standards.

The center of the gaming universe are the customers. The Game Industry depends entirely on the customers’ pleasure. Since the Game Industry is contracting, the customers must be getting unhappy about the games coming out.

I have watched the newspaper industry implode before my eyes. The reason why it imploded is for various reasons, but it is the same as to why, say, TV news is imploding now. The ultimate reason is content. Mediocre content led to decreased viewing or readership which accelerated their problems. No one considers the New York Times to be of the same quality it was thirty years ago.

People in the newspaper business sounded much like those in the games industry. They said the problem was people stealing their content (due to the Internet), that it was the recession, that newspapers were in a state of transition… and so on. But what was fascinating was what happened if you said, “The problem is their content.” They would shriek and rage at you! It was as if you hit an emotional button.

I’m noticing this occur with the “Industry men” as well. If a company’s game doesn’t sell, if someone says, “Maybe it was a bad game,” they begin screaming at you! Then they say, “But it got a high metacritic score!” and “it had lots of marketing.” What does that matter?

People have wondered how could the newspaper industry end up going to war with its readers. How does an industry declare war on its customers? It is absurd, but yet it happened. We can see the answer due to current events within the “Game Industry”.

Like newspapers, the “Game Industry” is blaming everything else but the content of their products. It is becoming clearer that the “Game Industry” has begun openly attacking customers.

“Don’t be crazy, Malstrom!” Remember the PC gamers and their uproar over the lack of dedicated servers? Instead of listening to them and all, there were intense efforts to shut these people up and to attempt to humiliate them. From the Industry’s perspective, these people were increasingly becoming a monkey wrench into their Machine.

There is no more “Game Industry”. It is nothing but a “Game Machine”. There is no talk of customers. All there is talk is how to crank up the machine to work more efficiently. So when a customer complains, the Industry perceives the person to be ‘messing up the machine’.

As the battle occurs between Game Industry and the Customers, who do you think is going to be the victor? Well, it is going to be the customers of course.

The “Game Industry” is Machine-Centric, not Customer-Centric. If this industry is going to survive in any way, it is going to have to be customer centric.

“This sounds so simple! Why would they resist being customer centric?”

It is because these people went into the entertainment business thinking they were in the business of entertaining themselves. But that is not how entertainment business works. It is the audience who is entertained, not the people on the stage. The people on the stage actually do work.

The “Game Industry” is on a crash course with a freight train called reality. All this talk is as if the tail wags the dog. And the Industry is the tail. The customers are the dog.

Above: The “Game Industry” hilariously believes the tail wags the dog.

Business can be very pleasant or a very torturous affair depending on this belief: whether you think the customer is the rider and you the horse or the other way around.

Misery and bankruptcy is believing the customer is the horse that you ride on. Wealth and happiness is believing the customer is the rider on you, the horse. You carry the customer wherever he or she wishes to go. How absurd it is to hear of horses choose which way they want the rider to go! They don’t get to choose.

The “Game Industry” does not get to choose which games it wishes to makes. The customers do. The true game designers are not the publishers, not the developers, not badly written “narratology” articles that run in circles, but the customers.

Customers decide the future of gaming. If the “Game Industry” revolts against that, well it will not be an industry much longer.