As a gamer, we have games and advertisements targeting us. As an older gamer, some of those ads and games miss me as a target. I had the pleasure of attending Boy Scout summer camp as a parent/leader with my son last week and partway through the week, I realized something… I was surrounded by the lower end of the “gamer” demographic.
Find out what else I noticed, after the jump…
Trying not to come off as that “creepy guy” eavesdropping at camp, whenever I heard the boys discussing video games, I would pay attention to what they were discussing. As a writer for a website targeting that very same demographic (to a degree), I almost felt like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Boys, age 11-17 and some adults talked about gaming intermittently throughout the week. Rather than actually engage in these conversations, I started early on resigning myself to just passively listening. My son (and his close friends) know I’m a gamer, but virtually nobody else did. A couple of the other parents surprised me with their gaming habits as well.
One dad was ex-military and ex-SWAT. I can’t say I was terribly surprised to learn he’d played most of the Rainbow Six games (and no, not just the Vegas ones, though he’d beaten both of those as well.) Another self-diagnosed gaming addict forced himself away from the computer after a many-hours-long session with “Online Golf.” That’s as specific of a name as I could gather from the conversation, so who knows what game it really was.
What really surprised me though were the games the kids talked about most of the time. By far, the two most discussed games were Halo and Halo 2. I guess I have to realize that a lot of these kids don’t have jobs and only have the systems their folks buy for them, but I was still pretty surprised that games that have been out for YEARS were still the topic of choice for them. There was a little bit of Halo 3 cross over discussion and a few mentions of Gears of War. This consisted mainly of the Rainbow Six loving dad asking my son “You’ve played Gears of War?!?! Isn’t that a little scary for you?” To which he replied “No, my dad lets me play it…” Thanks son. Thanks for taking my carefully honed, time tested method of weighing a lot of criteria, setting up a lot of ground rules (such as no online play, we play co-op only, human on alien violence is acceptable while human on human isn’t necessarily, the maturity level of the people playing, etc.) and just condensing it into “My dad let’s me play it…” I’m sure a really cool opinion of me was formed right there. Yeah…
Another thing I noticed was how the topic of cheat codes seemed to keep coming up. I’m pretty sure the fishing stories of my youth have become the cheat code stories of today’s youth. As far as I can tell, you can make up any fantastic gaming situation or variation as long as you make sure you describe it starting with “We entered some cheat codes…” and then you’re free to make up whatever in the heck you want. Never mind that most gaming sites with cheat codes offer the exact same codes other sites do and there’s no magic repository for the “really good ones” that allow impossible things to suddenly become possible. I’ve been around long enough to know when something sounds a bit TOO fantastic to be true. I let them have their fun… after all, telling tales is a time honored tradition at summer camp (I’m assuming… for you see this was MY first summer camp as well!
At the end of the week, I tried to think of all the things I’d learned about the boys’ gaming habits, likes, comments, etc. I heard maybe two boys mention they had (access to) an Xbox 360, and nobody mentioned a PS3 or Wii while most mentioned Xboxes and PS2s.
So what does this mean to the industry? Are they doing a terrible job conveying why we should be buying current-gen machines? Did they do too good of a job last gen, bringing the prices lower and building larger libraries of irresistible games? Whatever the reasoning, I was really shocked to see such diverse people basically equate “gaming” to playing Halo. One kid even slipped and told me his favorite potato chip was the Lays BBQ chips with K.C. Masterchief seasoning. Master frickin’ chief… I kid you not. *sigh*
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7 responses so far ↓
1 rrain // Jul 8, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Well I think that where as halo and halo 2 are excellent games. You are right many of my friends just do not have next-gen consoles. Its not so much that they don’t want them. Its just that money isn’t available for them to get them. Myself and my friends who have jobs all have an xbox360 (i’m not going into explanation as to why none of us have PS3’s, biggest reason being price). They are just more expensive than the past consoles and a new next-gen game is 60 where as past games were 50. Getting too expensive.
2 paulmess7 // Jul 8, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I’m in an upper-middle class neighborhood, and most of my gaming friends have 360’s…. but I still have a lot of friends that haven’t made the switch.
3 Kiltman67 // Jul 8, 2008 at 6:09 pm
I don’t know how it is now, but at the beginning of the year when I tried it there still seemed to be a reasonably large number of people playing Halo 2 multiplayer (which is rather scary when you consider Halo 3 itself was the number one game at the time) so it’s perhaps not that surprising that people were still discussing the games.
On a slight philosophical tangent, I’ve always found it interesting when I hear people say Human on Human violence is bad, but Human on Alien is fine. You’re not the first gaming Dad I’ve heard say that when discussing letting their kids play Gears, Halo etc. and I believe it actually influences the ratings games are given by the ESRB and others.
Does make me wonder though what’s going to happen if we ever discover aliens and we have whole generations who were brought up not to equate killing a sentient alien with killing a human
4 funkybuffalo61 // Jul 8, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Wow rothbart 2 in one day
5 Krelith // Jul 9, 2008 at 6:47 am
God I hated Halo… it was just the same 3 rooms over and over again with the odd decoration adjustments. I appreciate the ingenuity of the game’s engine (first console FPS to utilise so many vehicles as I recall), but the level designs ruined the whole experience for me. I can understand why kids would enjoy it though, after all, they get to kill aliens. What more do you want as a kid?
6 Yousty // Jul 9, 2008 at 9:02 am
Good for those kids, Halo 1 is by far the most well balanced and best FPS multiplayer game of any console. If they were smart they’d just stick to that game and never move on.
As for your rant, this doesn’t really surprise me. Having a bunch of early teen and pre-teen nephews I’ve learned that usually only the spoiled children have the current-gen consoles because most parents view them as way too much money.
For example, I have nephews that are 11 and 14 and they just got a PS2 for the first time this past Christmas. That’s over 7 years since it launched! But for average income families it’s much more enticing to buy a $100 system that has almost all $20 games compared to a $300 system with $60 games.
7 Tweepe // Jul 9, 2008 at 10:16 am
If it was a Springfield day camp, with scouts from that area, then the demographics are against next-gen systems. As someone who lived down there for awhile I don’t think the income is on par (generally) with the price of new systems. In Portland, where everything is far more expensive, everyone seems to just roll their eyes and pony up the cash.
If it was from around the state then maybe the demographics of cub scouts in general? Not sure, but a lot of their parents may be spending the big bucks on outdoor activities or tents or what have you? My two cents.
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