Cnet has an article, actually a column, saying that smartphone gaming is a threat to dedicated gaming not because of anything substance like facts but because it is ‘good enough’.
The term ‘good enough’ is a term popularized by Clayton Christenson in his disruption literature.
Disruptive technology is ‘crappy products for crappy customers’. The ‘crappy product’ is ‘good enough’ for that consumer. The industry of that market laughs at the crappy product and ignores it. But the crappy product gains a foothold and increases its quality as more and more quality customers begin going to it. The disruptive product rises higher and higher until squeezing out the top marginal companies.
The author is alluding to disruptive technology with the references to the music industry and photography industry.
Instead of the author taking the bull by the horns (by addressing disruption), he keeps using a cliche instead: ‘good enough’. Good enough is only good enough when used appropriately in the disruption context.
And what makes a product ‘good enough’? It is fulfilling the job of the customer. The reason why a disruptive product is good enough is because it satisfies the job for the crappy customer (but not the quality customer).
What is the job of gaming? This question, alone, could give rise to many books. The author doesn’t really address the job of gaming. The author also doesn’t address what job smartphone gaming is doing versus the job of console gaming.
Since business analysis on the gaming industry is famously and spectacularly wrong over the decades, a question we must ask with everyone writing about the gaming industry is: “Does this person know what gaming is?”
Fun is not found in resolution, sound or buttons. Fun is in the gut. The physical reaction is a feeling, a pleasure-centre brain response. It’s either there, or it is not.
Anyone involved in the successful games of the decades, both consumers and developers, will tell you that sound and controls are extraordinarily important. Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, said that a main reason why Atari found success was due to its emphasis on the audio. One of the most successful game companies out there, Blizzard, has the industry’s finest sound studio. It didn’t come after their success but before. The audio of games like Warcraft 2 or Starcraft is still classic to this day, of both music and sound effects. As for controls, this is obvious. Controls make up the gaming experience or else third party peripheral companies could not find a market. Consumers spend extensive money on steering wheels and things. The arcades were about these controls (holding a gun for a shooting game, using a steering wheel for a racing game). Nintendo is also a big believer about these controls. The Wii success had much to do with the controls.
Instead of honestly examining the gaming history and using that to shape his argument, the author ignores it or doesn’t see it because it doesn’t fit his template. There is no intellectual merit at all in this column. Facts are stubborn things. In fact, the author doesn’t back up statements such as ‘Smartphone gaming is growing wildly’. Is it? Based on what? No answer. He just goes on.
As for a raw, “good enough” sensation, smartphone gaming already delivers fun in ways equal to and arguably beyond the best gaming experiences of the ’80s. There was no question that these were enough for many to devote all of their leisure time pursuing. They were all we had, but they were unquestionably good enough to fall in love with.
80s gaming was defined by constant gloom and doom prognosis from business analysts who said that video game consoles would be erased from the face of the earth to be replaced by PC gaming. Then came Nintendo which established the modern console market we see today.
Back in the 80s, gaming was clearly defined as arcade gaming and computer gaming. Gaming, back then, was just assumed to be arcade gaming because arcades were the mainstream. Computer gaming was the niche back then. The game console was nothing more than arcade games at home. The reason why the NES was able to sell in the 80s despite the crash and the growth of PC gaming was due to the health of the arcades. The health of the arcades was the reason that gave Arakawa, founder and president of NOA, to push to release the NES in the United States. The NES was successful because it wasn’t a PC game machine.
It is a mistake to place gaming into one box. Gaming has multiple origins from different places. In most simplest terms, it would be arcade gaming and computer gaming which have different origins but have co-existed together for decades. The two do not cannibalize one another. Part of Wii’s shocking success was due to how game consoles were slouching more and more to the computer gaming side and the Wii embraced arcade gaming. It is why the success of the Wii cannibalized arcade gaming in places like Japan.
I’ve been curious why people do not see the obvious two different forms/origins of gaming with arcades and PC gaming. It was well known back then. Today, I suspect people ignore it because it doesn’t fit into their pre-established template. Some people don’t like it because they didn’t think of it (and they consider themselves gaming geniuses yet can’t see the obvious). Some game developers don’t like it because most Western game developers are PC game developers orientated and it would be admitting they lack the chops for what an arcade game would entail.
Regardless, the shoe fits our Cinderella riddle.
Beyond the pure, simple arcade experiences of the ’80s, gaming changed. Games that offer “more”, thanks to dedicated hardware, larger memory capacities and more advanced control schemes, also offer fun at a different pace — a pace that doesn’t suit what many mainstream gamers are looking for.
This guy demonstrates he doesn’t know what the arcades were. Today, arcades are seen as ‘pure’ and ‘simple’ and even ‘retro’. This perspective is created by looking at the past from the future. It is also created by looking at gaming from a PC gaming perspective. Even back in the 80s, PC gamers looked down at the ‘unsophisticated’ arcades.
In the 80s, arcades were the prestige form of gaming. Arcades were also where the BEST GRAPHICS and BEST NEW TECHNOLOGY were at. If you wanted to see the future of game consoles, you just went to an arcade. The only reason why people bought game consoles were to play arcade games like Space Invaders or Donkey Kong or Street Fighter 2 at home.
Arcades were not ‘casual gaming’ in the sense as we think of it today. Defender was NOT a ‘casual’ game. It was extremely hardcore. Yet, it was also very successful. Games like Donkey Kong and Pac Man were successful not because they were ‘casual’ but because they were able to sell to women. Before them, the arcades were dominated by males because space ship games do not sell to women. As the company behind Eve MMORPG says, “Women do not want to be a spaceship.”
Is Gauntlet a ‘casual game’? No. It can be pretty hardcore. How about Street Fighter 2? Oh no. That was played very intensely.
The myth is that arcade games were ‘casual’ because they didn’t require much time. Yet, the business model of arcade games revolved around ‘put in more coins to continue’. Where did this bullshit about arcade games being ‘less time’ than modern games begin? I put in more time in Pac-Man and Donkey Kong than I ever put into a modern video game. A single game session of Gauntlet could last many hours.
The fact that there are now truly classic smartphone games points to the problem. Games with staying power.
What are these games? He doesn’t mention any. But since he writes from a pre-established template, he conjures these games up in his fantasy land.
It’s the mainstream Nintendo won with the Wii’s fun-before-fidelity approach. But now it’s an audience they’re all losing to the world of phones and tablets.
The fun-before-fidelity approach was also done with the NES back in 1985. The myth is that Nintendo is being consistent with their products toward gaming. This is not the case. Nintendo developers have a sick, sick obsession with 3d which led to the decline of Nintendo with the N64, Gamecube, and the Virtual Boy. Recoiling from the market’s sting, Nintendo cooled the 3d obsession and made the DS (along with more 2d Mario not seen in decades) as well as the Wii. Those two were very successful products. Then Nintendo’s sick, sick 3d obsession came back in a fury with both the 3DS and Wii U. Nintendo’s biggest problem is itself.
And despite these mistakes, Nintendo’s 3DS sales are still there. The Wii is still selling. What is this guy talking about? If any market is being cannibalized, it would be the casual PC gaming market. The people who played solitaire or other simple games on the PC are now playing them on a tablet. But this fact would bolster the reality that smartphones are just mobile pcs and will compete and live only in the pc gaming universe. Smartphones will be unable to devour dedicated game consoles for the same reason PC gaming has been unable to devour dedicated game consoles for the past three decades.
There is no intellectual curiosity with this writer. There is no interest in the history of gaming business. There is no interest in the Wii’s success. There is no interest in Christensen’s disruption. There is only cliches. ‘Good Enough’. ‘Casual Gamers’. ‘Arcades are casual’.
I don’t read CNET. With garbage columns like this, there is no reason for people to do so.