Cross-Cultural Blog

My topic is the gap between casual and professional gamers. For the most part, only games that involve some form of multiplayer competition can be played competitively, because competition is by definition a test of skill and a multiplayer activity. Therefore, the biggest professionally played games are FPSes (first person shooters, like CounterStrike) or RTSes (real time strategy games, like Starcraft). However, many other genres of games exist. Clearly, there is some gap between casual games and competitive games. According to an article on PBS entitled “Gen Nexters Take Video Gaming to the Next Level,” there is also a gap between casual gamers and competitive gamers. The average age of a casual gamer was 33, while the average age of a competitive gamer was 21. This obvious disparity in audience means that game designers must have a clear idea of their audience before designing their game. Quake, an online FPS released in 1996, illustrates this idea. Gamers from before 1996 who played single-player adventure games on the NES and Sega Genesis simply could not catch up with the gamers who grew up on Quake. PBS says: “Generation Xers, the early adopters of video games, watched the technology evolve from the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985 to the Sega Genesis in 1989. By the time online gaming first started, and as the ever-popular first-person shooters became the centerpiece of competitive gaming, they were too old.” Another interesting phenomenon with professional gamers is that there are extremely few women: PBS reports that less than 10 percent of competitors are female. Actually, game designers today are attempting to cater more to casual and female gamers by introducing games like Cooking Mama, a Nintendo DS game that allows the player to cook food. Designers believe that they can appeal to women not through competitive games, but through casual games.