“To say that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are into live-service games is only half the story. These games offer a social space for players to hang out and be creative. For them, it’s not about winning in a competitive online shooting match but about expressing themselves and exploring in a virtual sandbox.”
“Plus, just because Gen Z and Gen Alpha not playing those $70 titles now doesn’t mean they won’t in the future. Yguado believes that those players will “graduate” from Roblox and other sandbox titles, although they probably won’t be leaving Roblox forever. Games won’t be going away just because Roblox is around. You just have to meet new players where they are and on their own terms.”
They’d rather spend hundreds of dollars on skins that’ll give them a sense of identity than $70 on a one-time experience.
ugh
The century of the self to its fullest potential
This is the most generic content ever, catering to companies who don’t give a fuck even if it means they’ll crash and burn their company they won’t change a damn thing.
I feel like this message applies to pretty much anything you can make and for any generation.
To make, be authentic
You don’t hate MBAs enough
To make video games for people, be authentic. Children and people early in their careers usually don’t have a lot of money, so it should come as no surprise that they’re primarily playing games that cost nothing or under $10. We can talk ourselves out of a lot of logical decisions by insisting on grouping people into these arbitrary generational buckets.
Blame marketing research, CEO Sharon Tal Yguado thinks Gen-Z + sandbox + live service = authentic.
The headline and even the content of the article don’t make much sense and I don’t get why they are so focused on the term authentic (and what do they mean by it).
Surely a viral coop game, $70 AAA and a $20 indie game can all be authentic (or not). So what does authenticity mean in this context?
And some “clones” are actually pretty fucking good.
How big is traditional marketing for games in the US or Western Europe? I remember seeing billboard for TheSims, COD and a few other games when I lived/travelled in the US, but this was a while ago.
In Ukraine, the only time I’ve seen traditional marketing for video games was with new Stalker game.
I would almost be inclined to say digital hobby news/discussion (doesn’t matter which platform/type) has de facto become traditional marketing in context of video games.
In France, I rarely see “real world” ads for video games. Except a couple huge releases from EA or Ubisoft occasionally plastered on train station walls, but doesn’t happen a lot and it’s just like release week and nothing beyond that.
On traditional TV channels, Nintendo is still the one buying the most screen time, by far. Mostly the very mainstream stuff, lots of Mario (platformers/kart/party), Pokémon and Animal Crossing (shit, if you’d told me before 2020 that Animal Crossing would be mainstream one day, I’d have a hard time believing that, but it sure became so).
I see occasional Sony TV ads, but nowhere near as many.
I agree that “authentic” isn’t really the word for this. They seem fixated on the term when it’s really just non-traditional media/marketing but even that is nothing new nowadays.
I believe she refers to the concept of her new game, authenticity = social media/word of mouth from influencers that people trust. Viralbility, memebility, social media and coop are the heart of it, leveraging social media as the central marketing force through the players has been a thing for sandbox games for quite a while.
This article feels like a sign that devs are finally acknowledging that market potential; it has nothing to do with authenticity, it’s just that social media “feels” more authentic than game journalism, though.
The amount of indie games that pay a company to market for them to create pure marketing garbage is too high.
Yguado believes that those players will “graduate” from Roblox and other sandbox titles, although they probably won’t be leaving Roblox forever.
So they’ll simultaneously “graduate” and also not graduate? Okay.
