Pag on Games

The original Doom just got released on Xbox Live Arcade. I tried the demo out and realised just how much demos have changed. The original game was released as shareware: the first third of the game was available for free and you had to pay to play the rest. On Xbox 360, only the first level is available for free, and you must pay for everything else.

I can’t say I’m surprised, but I think the new demo is a bit too limited for its own good. You can’t appreciate what makes Doom good from the first level only… The original game became a mega hit by offering a large fraction of the game for free, you’d think this proven success would lead them to repeat this approach…

Strangely, the demo is also quite a bit larger (in file size) than I remember the original game being. I wonder why that is, considering the game is identical.

An interesting interview with Kathleen Gasperini, a marketer specializing in understanding youth culture. Her expertise makes her understand very well people 13 to 25 years old — still the core market for videogames. From the article:

A 15-year-old today in North America, for example, is much different than a 15-year-old was five years ago. […] They don’t just expect control of their entertainment, they create it themselves. Very DIY culture.

Not about videogames per se, but insightful nevertheless.

Nintendo recently anounced its newest branding effort to reach casual gamers: Touch Generations. The brand will cover games on the DS for people with little or no gaming experience, like Brain Age, Tetris and Nintendogs.
The use of the word “Generation” in this brand baffles me. It would be fine if it aimed at a specific age group, probably a young adult crowd who can relate to being part of the new generation. Yet, this brand is tied to Nintendo’s efforts to reach outside of this group, to reach younger and older gamers alike. Using the word “generation” in a brand that doesn’t target a specific generation is strange indeed.

That’s probably why they use “generations“, plural. But then, if they’re not targetting a specific generation, why use that word? It doesn’t relate to anybody in particular, they could have used the word “everybody” and it would have been just as specific (although I can see why they didn’t go with “Touch Everybody”…)

Nintendo makes cool hardware and games, but they need a new branding team…