Here are my thoughts and comments related to me my research on videogames and culture.
Bryan-Mitchell Young aka jccalhoun


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To continue beating a dead horse. I've been thinking about The Sims and The Sims Online and I have a prediction to make. The Sims 2 will fail.

There. I said it. I'm not ashamed of it either. The Sims 2 will fail.

The reason why I am convinced that The Sims 2 will fail is because of my dad. Now, he doesn't play The Sims, but he is a casual gamer, and as we all know, most of the people who play The Sims are casual gamers. Because of that, I think his gaming habits make a pretty good indicator of the success of sequels. Every weeknight, before he goes to bed he fires up the computer and plays games (as an aside, he probably plays nearly 10 hours a week, does that make him a gamer? I don't think so. Read on for the reason why) The games he plays though aren't anything fancy. They don't require a 3-D accellerator or surround sound. The games he plays are Civilization 2 and Links 2001.

Despite the fact that since Civilization 2 came out there has been more games in the series, he is perfectly content to play the same old game. It fits his entertainment needs and he doesn't appear to want to buy the new games. He likes what he has and this is the reason why I fell that The Sims 2 will fail: causal gamers don't feel the need to upgrade. They are happy with what they have. Casual gamers seem to perceive games in a different manner than they do movies. I think that they perceive them as more like tools or implements.

When a sequel to a film comes out, the casual movie goer will probly go see it if they saw the first one. However, when a better hammer or chair comes out, while some will buy it (the hardcore) most will wait until the tool they have is worn out. For casual game players like my dad, games are a means to an end; they are a tool that allows a person to entertain themselves.

This raises an interesting digression. If, for casual game players, games are a way to entertain one's self, could we then argue that things like films and television are not tools that allow someone to entertain themself but instead are things that entertain. I think this is an important distinction. Because of their active participation, games require work while films and television do not. So because one must work at it (with the implications of the word "work"), a game is a tool, something that let's you do something for yourself, while physically passive entertainments (non-ergodic, if you will and I will...) are things that entertain for you.

To return to The Sims, I argue that The Sims 2 will fail because like a new and improved hammer, casual gamers simply won't see a need for it. But this is not quite as simplistic as I make it out to be. I can just hear the fives of tens of you reading saying, "But the expansion packs sell like crazy!" That brings me to the other game my dad plays, Links 2001. He did buy a couple of extra course add-ons for it. So that shows that the casual gamer will buy extras. Well, what is the difference between an expansion pack and a sequel?

I think that the key difference is that expansion packs do not offer entirely new play experiences. They are not completely new entities. They add to the pleasure one derives from playing the game. They build on what already exists. They expand on it. When a person buys a Sims expansion, they are expanding their play space, not replacing it. Of course this also explains why Asheron's Call 2 seems to be failing. What they have is good, why should they leave it behind?

And in a nutshell, that is why I am convinces that The Sims 2 will fail. Or it could go on to sell really really well and I'll just look silly. Oh well. Time will tell. Anyone want to take a wager?
posted by Bryan-Mitchell at 9:25 PM

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First-Person Shooters Aren't Like Movies and That is a Good Thing --A paper about why Shooters aren't like films and how comparisons to them do a disservice to what Shooters are.

That paper was presented at the 2002 PCA under the title "More Than Moving Pictures: Developing New Criteria For Designing and Critiquing Computer Games. The presentation version can be found here. The handout I distributed can be found here.

Identification in First-Person Shooters

Flow in Multi-player FPS gaming (.rtf file)

my reviews

here are a couple of reviews I wrote for joystick101.org

Mark J. P. Wolf's The Medium of the Video Game.
Arthur Asa Bergers Video Games: A Popular Culture Phenomenon.