The IEAA (Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia) recently held a press event to launch the results of their survey entitled Interactive Australia 2007. Covering 1,606 households and 3,386 individuals, it is a follow-up to the Game Play Australia report published by the IEAA in mid 2005. Along with Jeff Brand, Associate Professor of Communication and Media at Bond University and radio personality Wendy Harmer, the IEAA asked 85 year old Irene Hunt to talk about her experience as a self proclaimed “games fanatic”. Clearly nervous about having to follow on from Wendy’s well-received lead in front of an assortment of 60 journalists and industry professionals, Irene steps up to the mike and says;
“I still find it very amusing, the horrified looks that my so called peers, friends and relatives sort of give me when I say I play computer games. They think I’m mad… I just say they don’t know what they’re missing out on. Just go back to reading your recipe books girls.”
World of Warcraft: better than recipe books.
Quiet laughter fills the room. Several high level executives from various Australian games companies are seated near the front of the audience. The look across all their faces is the same. Is it pride, awe or embarrassment? Maybe a little of all three.
It’s no secret that Australia is somewhat culturally behind when it comes to video games. While there’s a reasonably high penetration of video game systems in Australia, gaming is not as publicly acceptable as it is in other western countries – particularly the United States. According to a report by the American Entertainment Software Association (or ESA as it’s affectionately known), the average age of a gamer in the US during 2005 was 33. In Australia it was 24 – a 9-year gap. Australia still astoundingly lacks an R18+ rating for video games. There is also no “video game violence debate” in the mainstream press – it’s pretty well unanimously negative.
While there are many people we could point fingers at if we wanted to find someone to blame for this (particularly in politics and mainstream press), what’s more interesting is to examine is how the industry is coping with not just the current state of affairs, but its rapid rate of change. It is the age statistic in the Interactive Australia report that is the most telling indicator of change. Just 18 months ago the average of a gamer was 24 years old. They’re now 28. As the report is quick to point out, by 2014 the average of a gamer will be the same as non-gamers (42). It’s a possibly scary thought, but there will come a time when the word gamer is as archaic as moviegoer. It won’t be a case of if you play, but what you play.
Those affected most by this flux are the console manufacturers; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. Of the three, Microsoft certainly appears to be the most avant-garde in dealing with its increasingly mainstream market in Australia. This is led by Regional Director, David McLean. At last year’s THQ Loaded event, David gave the most memorable speech I’ve heard in the industry. While I’ve regretted not having my voice recorder to be able to make quotes ever since, the general gist of the talk was; the games industry deserves the same respect as any other form of entertainment. While video game developers and publishers might not have celebrity status yet, a time will come when they are recognised on an equal footing with other producers of entertainment.
Microsoft has also performed a rather impressive job of marketing the Xbox 360 in Australia. From spectacular launch events to the world’s largest water balloon fight, it has had many memorable moments during the past 10 months. Their ability to put their brand into so many sponsorship deals and competition prizes has not gone unnoticed.
Mainstream marketing done right.
Nintendo Australia, on the other hand, is a difficult company to comment on. Historically plagued by poor budgets and flawed marketing strategies, in the past it was easy to walk away with a sense that they were certainly out of touch and possibly even condescending towards their audience. Back in the days when forum debates raged over the topic of “how kiddie is Nintendo”, one couldn’t help but feel that in Australia, Nintendo was quite happy to perpetuate the notion that the GameCube was a children’s console. Then again, if you’re tasked with selling a purple cube, it is somewhat understandable.
Fortunately, the Wii is nothing short of the miracle NAL (Nintendo Australia Limited) has so desperately needed. The console is obviously packed with mass-market appeal that it’s nearly impossible to target the wrong audience (but, God bless them, they’re still trying with the DS). The public hype generated during the Wii launch was stupendous. The console is already something of a household name, even among non-gaming families. Despite this I still feel that Nintendo failed to capitalise on the launch as strongly as they might have. While the console’s slogan is “playing is believing” I’m still not totally convinced it makes for a good marketing strategy. After mixing in the crowds during several of the pre-launch public showings, the general feeling towards the console was fairly ambivalent. A few less events and a few more TV adverts would not have gone amiss.
Finally (and fittingly) we come to Sony. Last to the table, the company is yet to show its hand for marketing the PS3 in Australia. Sony really has a difficult position in this country. With a younger skew than the US and a lower penetration of high definition televisions, Australian gamers don’t mesh well with the demographic appeal of the console.
PlayStation 3 - too advanced for Australia?
Personally I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a relatively quiet launch for the PS3. Much of the strength of the console will come at least one or two years down the track when technology and demographics begin to catch up. In the meantime the PS2 party-starter packs will no doubt continue to sell strongly to a very broad range of gamers.
Predicting how successful each company will be is a little difficult at this stage. The PS2 was the clear winner of the last generation in Australia (its 2.2 million install base at the end of 2006 more than doubling that of the Xbox). The GameCube, on the other hand, failed dismally – based on available information its install base would be less than 200,000. The next gen race is going to be much tighter. While the Wii broke sales records at launch, it’s too early to see if this momentum will continue. I’m going to go out on a limb here and quote some statistics from PALGN’s currently in progress reader survey. Even though (at the time of writing) it has only been active for the past 48 hours, it’s already had just under one thousand Australian respondents. The demographics of the survey match up surprisingly closely with that found by Interactive Australia. Our average age is 28.2 (compared with 28), although our percentage of females is 28.86% (compared with 41%). Obviously the PALGN Reader survey is still biased (you’d have to be somewhat crazy to read PALGN after all), but it should give an indication of gamer opinion in Australia. If we add together the number of people who own a next gen console or plan to buy one in the next 12 months, then the results are (as a percentage of total respondents);
Wii: 60.2%
Xbox 360: 49.2%
PS3: 31.4%
Obviously you should take this with a grain of salt, but the order of percentages does predict that (at least early on), we’ll see a complete reversal of market dominance in Australia. A year or two down the track might be another matter – particularly with doubts over the Wii’s game line-up and the increasing value of PS3 hardware when 2nd generation games start to be released for the system.
Throughout all this I’ve neglected to talk about PC gaming. This is somewhat deliberate as I feel that the PC is going to foster a whole new brand of gaming particularly important to a country as geographically isolated as Australia. The success of World of Warcraft is no accident. As deep as the game is, it’s the social aspects that keep gamers coming back.
World of Warcraft: a social revolution?
At the end of her speech during the IEAA event, Irene recounted a story of how she would meet her friends inside World of Warcraft. Three of them will go to a bar inside the game world, order drinks and then use voice chat to have a gossip with each other. While Irene’s friends are people from her guild inside the game, it’s easy to imagine a world where using video games as a communication medium could become commonplace. Imagine going on a raid with your aunty who lives in America, or cousins who from the other side of Australia. Imagine family reunions inside a virtual space. Maybe for some of you this is already a reality.
If nothing else, this article should make it clear that attitudes towards gaming are changing fast – particularly in Australia. The surveys show a closing gap between what defines a gamer and what doesn’t. Next time you’re at a party don’t be afraid to start talking about your gaming – you might be surprised at the response you get. Either way you can be safe in the knowledge that you’ll still be able to enjoy your favourite MMO when you reach 85.
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