Gaming 3.0, Women and the Cultural Coming of Age of the Internet
Gaming 2.0, a term coined a two years ago was about integrating community into console games. A new wave is on the horizon that may also mark a new more diverse era for the internet driven by women. Recently a survey found that contrary to prevailing stereotypes, the average social gamer is a 43-year old woman. The how, why and bottom line of the marketplace is discussed in an article about a new game called Glitch being developed by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield. Before looking at the market perspective it's worth noting that this isn't just about games. Last week, I linked to an article about Ushahidi a "game changing" project started by a Kenyan woman.
“What will happen when we get the greater ecosystem working in conjunction with Ushahidi — more of these microblogging services [such as Twitter] and mobile phone networks?,” he asks. “It becomes even more exciting when you look beyond the digital environment in the U.S. and start plugging into the social networks that are used in other parts of the world.”
“I don’t know what the the future will be,” he adds. “But I think it will be very powerful.”
Indeed.
Butterfield hopes Glitch will “do for online gaming what the Wii did for consoles” — greatly expand the audience for a type of product that has recently sold itself short by settling all too comfortably into a niche.
For more than two decades, designers of online games ranging from the text-based multi-user dungeons (MUDs) of yore to early graphical experiments like Meridian 59, Underlight and Ultima Online imagined amazing social possibilities for online games. They pictured virtual societies run by the users, with political factions and other organizations appearing organically and giving people a way to socialize in a whole new way outside of the rigid establishment of real life.
But that dream never came true, in part because a game called EverQuest introduced a less ambitious and more restrictive model that was arguably the first to comfortably support a business. It did so by appealing narrowly to a niche of hardcore gamers with powerful gaming computers and a lot of time on their hands.
The great majority of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs for short) that have come to market since then have closely mirrored EverQuest’s example, including World of Warcraft, the 11-million player phenomenon that has dominated the genre for just over five years. If you watch the industry closely, though, you can see that the model isn’t working well for everybody, and it restricts the genre to a very small segment of users.
...There’s no doubt that there’s a vast, untapped market of would-be gamers — hundreds of millions of people who’ve never picked up an Xbox 360 controller or played World of Warcraft, but who could become absorbed in an accessible, story-driven experience. If Tiny Speck isn’t doesn’t fully exploit that massive and emerging market, someone else will.
As noted in the above quote, this hasn't happened overnight. Although over the past two decades books by pioneering women such as Brenda Laurel(Computers As Theatre) and Janet Murray(Hamet On The Holodeck) have been largely ignored, their voices haven't been silenced and as the advances make technology more accessible, the business case becomes compelling.
"Why hasn't anybody built any computer games for little girls?" Why is that? It can't just be a giant sexist conspiracy. These people aren't that smart.There's six billion dollars on the table. They would go for it if they could figure out how.
Previously on the MJ
Community Interaction and Culture In Virtual Worlds
