Nintendo Entertainment System

All this talk on audience has got me thinking – how has the audience in gaming changed?

From the eyes of an outsider, some would say that it hasn’t changed that much at all. I mean back in the days of 8-bit gaming, there was still quite a range of gaming consoles available on the market. This includes the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the Sega Master System, the SG-1000, and the Atari 2600. Nowadays, you have the Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Wii-U, Nintendo 3DS and the personal computer. While the technology has obviously changed drastically, the number of consoles within a generation has not.

But despite this, I think the audience has changed enormously. In the case of the NES, you had to have a license to produce games for the system. This was due to the fact that the Atari 2600 did not have this restriction, and people all over were lazily programming games that did not work as advertised, which was a big reason why the video game crash of 1983 occurred. With an increasing number of restrictions imposed on game producers, it forced them to create games that were good enough to create a profit for them.

Also, there has been a large influx of ‘indie’ game producers. Indie standing for ‘individual’ – this producers are generally built up of small teams or individuals, who create games without the financial backing from large game publishers. They generally aim to create games that innovate, to differentiate their product. But what’s the different between today’s “indie developer”, and the old lazy producers that made games for the Atari 2600. Well, the old lazy producers had no restrictions. They were able to make what they want, and put whatever they wanted in their games. There was no care for the audience, and it was obvious that the developers were in it for a quick buck. Today’s indie developers however, also have to work to strict restrictions. They cannot put offensive or law-breaking material in their games, and there were also costs associated with distributing the game – even on digital platforms such as Steam. Thus, an indie developer had to be innovative and creative, and had to create a game that suited what the audience was looking for.

So what does this mean for the audience? Well, the audience now has a larger quantity of higher quality games at their disposal. This was true for all gaming platforms. Whether one decided to play games on the Wii-U, or the Playstation 4, they were bound to come across a large number of high-quality games. Because of commenting and rating systems on digital platforms such as Steam, the Playstation Store and the Microsoft Store – game developers had to take extra care when creating their games. Once a game gets a bad rating, the number of potential sales that it can make decreases drastically.

The audience has a voice in what games should be played and what games shouldn’t be played. And it is because of this voice, that the audience now has a power that was once unknown, that has changed the gaming industry forever.