(5/12/07) What is "the Lapsed Console Gamer"? It is a term that describes an alarming exodus by consumer game players beyond conventional game content. The home video game industry is now moving to try and regain this "lost" market, creating methodologies and products that attract what has been called the Casual Player. This effort mirrors what the amusement sector will have to undertake, in order to regain its own "lost" audience. The report looks at the player base's changing attitudes toward formulaic title development and how video arcade game makers could copy the consumer strategies. Meanwhile, the first major cracks in the consumer games scene are revealed in financial difficulties at a major name.
For many in the amusement sector, concerns over changeable cashbox, external competition and ever-increasing encroachment from other sectors focuses the mind. But unbeknownst to a large percentage of the sector is a major battle beginning for the hearts, minds and wallets of disheartened gamers – gamers who could hold the future profits of console gaming in the balance.
An Internet based survey has collected data on a growing number of ex-gamers who have abandoned playing console games, and whose revenue stream is now up for grabs by the publishers – but their dollars and loyalty are also being sought by the Out-of-Home interactive sector (even if most in this scene are not familiar with the ongoing battle).
Known as 'Lapsed Console Gamers' – it has been calculated that just over 31 per cent of the North American population falls into this demographic (27 per cent of this represented by women). This information was compiled by Frank N. Magid Associates; who reported that 65 per cent of those polled became lapsed gamers at the age of 34 or younger.
The terminology refers to players who were once active players and consumers of console game material, but at a point, stopped their involvement completely, linked to apathy towards the experience offered. These lapsed gamers also proved to be previous 'High Spend' – frequent (daily) players and impulsive buyers who then totally remove themselves from the revenue stream of the consumer manufacturers and software publishers.
Of those polled, 54 per cent left the gaming environment due to becoming too busy in other things, or disheartened in the game experience that the software publishers were selling – feeling that there were too many sequels and formulaic game play. It is to reconcile this lapse of a major component of the financial wealth of the future of the consumer games scene that publishers and developers have started to throw millions of Dollars at encouraging back players. The explosion in 'Casual Gaming' (see Stinger #591) has been used to try and redress the balance.
It has been calculated that if this hemorrhaging of "lapsed gaming" continues, that by 2009 the consumer games sector could be impacted by a 12 per cent down turn, with the peripheral game publishers removed and replaced by a central hierarchy represented by the largest game publishers (emulating what has been seen in the Music and Film industry).
When reporting 'Lapsed Console Gamers', many of the finding avoided the obvious perception that these lapsed console gamers in a 29 to 34 age demographics were previous to this 'Lapsed Arcade Gamers'!
While the casual gaming philosophy takes hold of the bottom line of a number of the leading consumer publishers, new thinking from the leading Japanese amusement factories looks towards the social / casual gaming elements that their unique attractions offer their playing base. Companies such as SEGA and Namco Bandai are developing attractive Mid-Size entertainment systems that offer a casual element to entice a maturing game audience.
Repeating much of what The Stinger Report owners KWP has defined (as far back as 2000), as 'Unachievable @ Home'™ – the amusement scene has to offer thrills and spills that can not be emulated by consumer products. As reported in the 'MeetSpace' and 'Living Surface' commentary (Stinger #591 - #596), new technology is being applied to pull in the new audience. However the realization from the recent research is that rather than being a 'new' virginal audience, the battle is to attract 'lapsed' and disenfranchised players.
The availability of amusement in the locations where this lapsed audience has migrated is a benefit in amusement's favor. Casual console gaming suffers the difficulty of actually encouraging impulse purchase -- where amusement by its very nature can catch the eye and offer an instantaneous casual gaming experience fuelled by impulse just by being attractive and available at the right location.
Placement in the EaterTainment scene (bars, clubs, restaurants and hotels) as well as the Mixed-Entertainment scene (FEC, Bowling and Cinema) guarantees some exposure to this estranged audience, while casual consumer content can only hope for the best (to be placed in the check-out line at a Wal-Mart!).
What Could this all Mean:
Some amusement industry trade associations say they hope to encourage and attract new players -- a virginal audience that can be educated towards the delights of coin-operated entertainment. But it's a well known law of marketing that it's several times harder to attract a new customer than it is to retain an old one.
Of course, recapturing a former customer who has simply grown beyond your product may be the toughest of all. Let's face it, you don't see McDonalds trying to sell Happy Meals to adults! Meanwhile, how many of the "lapsed consumer gamers" have migrated over to that more grownup form of game-based amusement known as gambling?
The effort to recapture lost amusement players does have some things going for it, though. First, the concept of coin-op nostalgia is popular through the Interweb and Multi Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME). Retro-ware of arcade receiving a second-life on virtual console, arcade-live and fan sites. The potential ability to build interest in an audience that has already been enthralled by the coin-op experience by using online media has barely been scratched, much less mined. This golden opportunity in gaming has been ignored by the trade, a cursory lip service to the odd retro title.
Second, and perhaps in the long run most promising, coin-op can appeal to moms and dads to bring their kids to arcades and FECs. This nostalgia is a heavy marketing theme, and a quite successful one, for a huge range of popular products from Disneyland to certain brands of candy. Amusement could also exploit this theme quite successfully, if it wanted to.
News Story with thanks to Kevin Williams. Please visit
www.thestingerreport.com for others.
