It used to be that games were all about consoles, souped up PCs and graphic accelerators, and while the core market for gaming will always be the tech-savvy male. There are other gaming niches that are appealing to other less obvious audiences and the female middle-aged market is a pivotal target for some.
In Ireland when it comes to hardcore console gaming on the Xbox 360 or the Playstation over broadband, it seems that there are a small bunch of battle-hardened followers who commit themselves to online gaming communities and face to face combat in hotels the length and breadth of the country. Take community site Worldgamerlive.com as an example, it boasts 450 members who have subscribed to using all areas of its slick site. Its face to face gaming parties are attended by on average a 120 to 150 hardcore gamers. Quality of service not withstanding, these are relatively small numbers but the site offers a critical service by drawing together ‘clans’ of Irish console gamers to interact and play off against one another across multiple platforms.
The casual category
Now while a mass market for console gaming over broadband has been well-documented, a new emerging genre is creeping up quietly. This is described as casual gaming and offers a non-competitive, unintimidating alternative and relaxing gaming experience. The entry bar is also relatively low as these games are free to try, cheap to buy and are easy to play and are designed to be scalable as your ability to play the game improves. This market is being pioneered by a US company called Popcap which has just opened the headquarters for its European operation in the Digital Hub in the Liberties in Dublin. In existence since 2000, the company has had over 175,000,000 downloads of its flash-based games both from its own site and through portals such as MSN Gaming Zone, Yahoo, Real Arcade and Shockrave. It has sold 10,000,000 copies its flagship game Bejeweled which includes players linking sequences of rubies together and identifying and eliminating jewel patterns as they lay in a multi-coloured grid. Think Tetris and you will get a feel for the style of these games. Hammer Heads is also popular and it involves hammering gnomes for fun and getting high scores.
The most interesting part of all of this is that Popcap have identified females between the ages of 35 and 55 as a major fan base of these games. Move over Halo, Half-Life and the FIFA franchises, it seems a new star genre in the gaming world has risen and they don’t need 3D graphics and surround sound effects, or even multi-player capabilities to have a stunning effect on their players.
Choose from a selection of deluxe and full casual games at www.Popcap.com
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