Gaming News for the Casual Consumer

With all the recent news surrounding King and their attempts to trademark the words "Candy" and "Saga", there were a few remarks in some comments sections that state about how a large portion of King's audience aren't even aware of the storm brewing around that company.

So I was think would having a news program on a local TV channel do a 3 minute segment on gaming news be enough to inform these casual consumers?

Now personally here I am making a distinction between a "casual player" and what I call a "casual consumer".

A casual player is someone who probably doesn't devote as much time to playing the game, doesn't particular care for the more nuanced portions of the game, or prefers a game that has a relatively flat learning curve.

A casual consumer is someone who doesn't have much of a taste for videogames or interest in other aspects of videogame culture beyond the game itself. Such a person probably doesn't read any reviews or follow up on the development of the product or the current business practice of the company that produced the game, and is very likely to only know of only a handful of games.

A casual player can spend little time with a game or plays a relatively easy game but could also be very selective in tastes, knowledgeable of the variety of different games on different platforms, and highly observant of business practices.

The other way around, with a highly devoted player largely ignorant of current events surrounding a game or game company, is somewhat harder to imagine. I would hazard a guess that this would likely describe certain fans of Co D.

Managing to cram the message into an intelligent and thoughtful one within the timespan of 2 minutes would be very difficult for most TV news networks, nor would it warrant much time. It's just not that big of deal to many people aside from the hardcore community.

Also, if they're doing this for the sake of preventing other companies from making cheapo-ripoffs meant to get the attention of casuals and unattentive players into thinking "hey, it's another Candy-Crush game!", then it makes some sense. But if they're trying the same stunt Disney has with copyright laws for their products, then yes, this might warrant a smidgen of attention.

edited 24th Jan '14 6:09:02 AM by SgtRicko

I'm sure there are plenty of other consumer news segments for other products or a mish mash of products.

Why not have video games, at least, be included in a general consumer news segment once in a while?

Surely video games are one of the few mediums still afflicted with ignorant consumerism.

edited 24th Jan '14 12:55:55 PM by Worlder

Well they are starting to post videogame opinion pieces and reviews every now and then. CNN likes to show reviews on the bigger title of the year, like Halo, Call of Duty, Batman Arkham series, etc. So they are definitely out there, but so far only Forbes seems to have a half-way decent section and a clearly knowledgeable writer.

Reviews are different from providing news on the industry. Those can go in the entertainment section like they do with movies or TV shows. Gaming news would be stuff like King's trademark stuff, THQ going out of business, or EA getting the deal to make Star Wars games. I'm not sure where this stuff would fit within the news program, though.

Cramming it into a short 3-5 minute segment is doable though.

"few"?

Ok I'll admit all media are susceptible to having moments of detestable practices that exploit ignorant consumers.

But videogames probably have the one of the most severe cases compared to other media. At least in recent years.

edited 25th Jan '14 9:55:31 AM by Worlder