On a boring afternoon, after I got sick of being owned on COD4, I spent some time on one a social forum online and decided to ask whether there are any gamers in the crowd. I posted a new thread looking for gamers but the turnout wasn't that great. One of the respondents said that it was a waste of time and I found myself disagreeing with him VERY much. I wondered whether I disagreed with this person just because I am a gamer or something else. So I decided to make a new thread on that website as well as on this one and see if I would get different results. More importantly wanted to see what the reasons behind the answers would be on both sides. So here are the results of this experiment.

Before I discus the results, I think I need to give a description of the two crowds.

1. The gamer crowd

This is pretty straight forward. I posted the question on this website. Most of us are gamers right? Otherwise we wouldn't be here.

2. The non-gamer crowd.

This crowd is very very diverse. I have no idea who the people are but I know that there is no general "average" There are all kinds of people here. Living in different countries, some are students others are working professionals. I think most people are educated though, because many know at least one foreign language. As I mentioned there are a few gamers in the crowd as well but the forum is just for socializing no special interest.

The first thing that struck me is the difference in how much the two crowds cared about the issue. In about 10 days the non-gamer thread got 350 views (I don't know if these are unique or not) but I only got 26 responses. Within about 4 days the gamer crowd gave more than 100 responses. Granted, that gamespot.com is a much much larger website than the other forum, I still think that the non-gamer crowd generally didn't care about the issue. And I can definitely say that the gamer crowd did care – a lot. The responses were very strong very interesting. One of the gamers did say that earthworms, wouldn't care about whether it's a waste or not. True, they probably wouldn't. But I don't care about what earthworms think, so I'm still interested in the results. :D

So the question was. "Do you think PC/Console gaming is a waste of time?" Here are the results.

Non gamers

Yes 69% [18]

No 4% [1]

Can't say/Little bit of both 27% [7]

Gamers

Yes 14% [20]

No 63% [87]

Can't say/Little bit of both 23% [32]

Ok, it's probably not the most reliable statistical analysis, but I think the difference in perception of gaming is pretty clear. In general, gamers agreed that if the person enjoys it, it's just like any other form of entertainment, and hence not a waste of time. There were even some pretty philosophical respondents who suggested that utility of time spent does not have to be tangible. In other words if you are not earning money, or "doing something useful" it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a waste of time.

Most non-gamer respondents on the other hand, saw gaming as clearly a waste of time. Mostly because, of that utilitarian view of time spent. Some were even embarrassed to admit that they were playing even though they are not children any more. And of course there was the usual "gaming-makes-children-violent" argument.

I think there are many reasons for such a difference in perception about gaming. But I wonder if one of these reasons could be the following. I just finished reading this book. It talks about "right brain thinking." Fascinating stuff. But what's more interesting is that one of the exercises that Daniel Pink, the author, prescribes is gaming. I thought it was really cool that gaming, somehow enhances the abilities of your mind and can make you think very differently. Pink gives some offers some pretty good evidence. It's not just about hand-eye coordination, it's about imagination, empathy with the character and creativity. The author suggests, that these aspects help develop the sort "right brain thinking" that can help you see the big picture of things and be very successful and happy. The military and even the doctors started to rely on gaming to nurture those aspects in their audiences. The earthworms would certainly not care about any of this but I think they probably should.

Well, I haven't posted in a long while but all this crap after Jeff's departure was a bit discouraging. At least now there is a compelling development in the industry to talk about. The HD-DVD VS. Blu-ray war is finally over. While I am a Playstation fan, this isn't about how happy I am (I don't really care frankly), but about format wars in general and their meaning in the industry. I've read a bit of economics literature about format wars. Some of it is written alongside what's called "Information Economics" and others are alongside regular game theory. Format wars are actually a pretty interesting to observe and study. After all, there have been quite a few in the last decade.

This one though came so close with the us, gamers that I think it got emotional to an unprecedented level. Did teenagers care about Betamax or VHS back in the 80's. I don't know for sure but, I am inclided to say No. Becuase there weren't as many gamers as there are now.

Anyway, the whole argument about which format is "better" is irrelevant because in the long-run both technologies would have been perfected and probably become same in terms of quality and value. Especially, given that they were both based on the same idea of a blue laser, though I think Blu-ray sounds way cooler than HDDVDVD whatever.

This war was very heavy on strategy. Microsoft, as much as it supported HD-DVD, was strategizing when they didn't put it in X360. I can assure you that if they incorporated HDDVD from the beginning the war would be far from over. And given Xbox's large install base the outcome may have been different. But MS is not a hardware company and there is no reason for it risk more than it should on hardware. Which is precisely what it did. Sony, on other hand IS a hardware manufacturer, which is why it also risked precisely as much as it should, i.e. build it into the PS3. You could see how the preceived stakes got higher and higher towards the end of 2007 as people thought that the war was coming to an end. No faction wanted to bow out. It was so deadlocked that nobody knew what would happen. A classic game theory case of a "Game of Chicken" - two drivers heading on to each other until one person backs away. The moment one player flinches, the game is over. And that is what happened. The preceibved balance between HDDVD and Bluray tipped in favor of Sony and supporters of the other side started dropping like flies.

I heard a lot of people say that this war was pointless beacuse nextgen contnet will be streamed or stored online anyway. I disagree with that simply because I think there will always be a substantial demand for a physical product when it comes to entertainment goods. After all, the whole console gaming market is based on a format war between Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

I always wondered why is it that in this industry product releases can be delayed and the producers can get away with it. And when I say get away, I really don't mean that we need to go and somehow "punish" them, but it's funny how gamers have no power as consumers in discouraging the developers to delay the release date. I'm not going to name games but I it's pretty clear what I mean.

In theory, to maximize their profits, the developers should release the game as early as possible provided so that it sarts generating revenue. There is no doubt that if the developers delayed a product, in the end the decision to do so would maximize their profits (or minimize loss) in the long term.

If the game is delayed because they couldn't finish it on time then of course it makes sense to take time and, well, finish it. If the game is delayed because the holiday season is so packed all of a sudden, and sales prospects aren't so certain any more, then I suppose they'd pick a release date that's less packed and competing for our dollars is a bit easier.

The problem I have is that it seems to be so common in this industry, that i can't help it but think that they are taking advantage of our dedication to games. We don't see movies, DVD's and other entertainment products delayed that often. We do see this happen with software products though. So i guess we're just desinted to wait and wait no matter how long the develpers tease us with their "hotly anticipated" games.

Alright. I thought a lot about starting a blog on GS but never got myself to sit down and actually do it. The purpose of this is not to just log my thoughts but to try and gather an audience interested about the game industry (of course everyone is welcome). I am an economist and I read (and think) a lot about the economics of this little world. So I'll try to center my thoughs and logs around that. But who knows what this blog will turn into. I hope it's a good start.

hwarang