Today at midnight will mark the release of “The Beatles Rockband.” In case you’re not familiar with “Rockband,” or it’s predecessor, “Guitar Hero,” I would like to congratulate you on your recovery from the deep coma that you have been in since 2005. Welcome to the future, where a common pastime is pretending to play famous songs with fake instruments in time with little buttons on a computer screen.
Also, Michael Jackson is dead, the Sopranos is no longer on TV, and instead of “blogging” we all do something called “twitter” now. Welcome to Hell.
Kidding aside, the thing about Rockband is the idea of the appeal to the “casual” or “mainstream” gamer. For years, the gaming market more or less catered to the gaming enthusiast, with the biggest franchises in gaming being those relegated to the most difficult gaming genres to pick up – first person shooters, driving games, fighting games, sports games, and the occasional real-time strategy game. Someone new to video gaming isn’t likely to pick up any of the more traditional megahits and be able to dive right in because of a very hard difficulty curve. Even those who do may find that they simply don’t have the time and energy to devote to getting good at the game. In short, many video games tend to be designed for people already in the video game market – not for people to enter the video game market.
But over the past couple of years we’ve seen a trend of video game companies trying to expand the market to the casual gamer. In many ways, this might be due to the success of games such as “Guitar Hero” in 2005 – but certainly, another factor in casual gaming is the ubiquity of handheld computer-based, internet-enabled portable platforms. In other words: Everyone’s got an iPhone, iPhones can run games, so game companies want to sell games to as many iPhone owners as possible.
The interesting thing about The Beatles Rockband, from the network performance perspective, is the idea of casual gamers – read, “Mom & Dad” – downloading additional content for the game. The core set only contains 45 songs; additional songs will be released album by album for $2 per song, only available as a download.
Let’s take pause for a minute here, because I think that this is an evolutionary step in pop culture and the way we use technology. The idea of downloading games can come as a huge shock to casual gamers, used to buying games as cartridges, and later, optical discs. The point is, video games were physical objects to the casual gamer. Even so-called “causal games” released as downloads – PopCap’s “Peggle” or “Plants Vs. Zombies” – catered more to hardcore gamers comfortable with the idea of video games as downloads, and just wanted something light to play. Despite the fact that it very well could be, “Plants vs. Zombies” is probably not anyone’s very first video game.
Now, we’ve had casual gamers before, and we’ve had downloadable content before – but rarely has downloadable content (for major releases, at least) been targeted specifically at the casual gamer. Let’s face it, you don’t make “The Beatles Rockband” for Generation Y – it’s for the boomers, an untapped video game market. So, if the Boomers do learn how to go online and buy additional Beatles songs, they may learn to buy other games as well online.
(Of course, the counter-argument is that making a Beatles Game will introduce Generation Y to the Beatles, but I doubt that a video game would increase exposure of the Beatles to a generation that grew up with being bombarded with classic rock radio growing up and taking rides in their parents’ cars. I’m actually kind of burned out on the Beatles, aren’t you? After a while it just all runs together…)
And thus the shift – if we see that people are comfortable buying games and playing games without anything physical, the method that people will get games will change from little optical discs to digital files. A decade ago, we were worried about MP3 files, as people learned that music didn’t have to come on a little disc anymore. A few years ago, as people became more comfortable with H.264 compression and streaming video, we see new traffic from video on the network. Now even my technophobic mother knows what an “MP3” is, and how to play one, (though YouTube is still a bit beyond her grasp.) This could herald another sea change for technology, and video game traffic might be something to look out for on the network as well – not just little flash games, but major releases that contain huge files.
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