MLMarkland said:
My post doesn't really have anything to do with television audience vs. game audience.
When it comes to market saturation into the "mainstream" that TV and other media can be represented as, the video game industry isn't close to done yet. See the point of each decade growing larger, and to have the child-like mentality that this is the pinnacle, the peak, the end of the saturation, is hopelessly naive. The next generation will consider this one "hardcore" and "old", kind of how Final Fantasy VII is called a "Classic".
Games since the 70s have had TV ads, I remember the Sears Super Pong console and others. I remember them being in magazines, as well as having their own publications (if you want to try and quantify it by that measure as well) by 1981 on (and one I looked up was from 1974).
Let me also point out something you decided to ignore:
Until then, the video game audience is still the video game audience, either you shell out $300+ to play video games or you don't. There really is no such thing as "casual".
The industry has grown, and is still growing.
The number of people who drop the kind of cash to play a single title and then never buy more is extremely limited (I've seen original Playstation sales figures back in the 90s when the same ignorant arguments as yours were made).
There really is no "hardcore" anymore, at least by the publisher definition (or ever really was, unless a specific genre was ALL they bought, and then you could be known as a hardcore [Insert Genre Here] player). You buy a console and some titles, and play them, you're a gamer. You buy a PC rig able to play modern games - it is highly doubtful you are going to play just one game for that kind of investment except for some cases, and even THEN you can still be considered "hardcore". Even a WoW player could be considered "hardcore" if they buy more computer kit to play the game, and Blizzard does consider them as much. You don't require much to dink around in the leveling content, but in raids and more you need a certain level of computer specs. One could also argue that buying hardware to play a game would make someone hardcore, as they were spending further income to play a game.
In other words, grow up, kid. Get used to the idea of the industry growing past you and going for the next generation of mass idiots, which have been around each generation since...PONG! (Though I have to say by children's programming differences in the 70s and now...today's kids are fucking STUPID.) Your arguments are hardly any different from those in the 90s.
The CRPGs have always been regarded as the
intellectual genre, and gaming has been part of the mainstream since the 70s - just growing larger. Origin, Sir-Tech, Interplay, and 3DO, among others, were the mainstream of the CRPG developers. CRPGs then regularly drew in new people because of the complexity and depth they offered over other genres, but they were never really "niche". Now, the "CRPG" publishers are trying to subvert what the genre represents, but without actually offering what the genre implies.
Just like their false claims in the 90s about action games being "epic, deep RPGs" which brought about Fallout.
Also, implying something while failing to deliver is technically fraud. So help the publishers if they are ever held to truth in advertising laws. PR departments will be shitting bricks as they wouldn't know how to operate anymore.
Here's some irony:
The Nintendo version of Ultima III is released in Japan, amidst a media blitz that sees Lord British splashed across billboards and TV screens.
Niche? Shut the fuck up.
*burns the rest of the straw man argument*
Speaking of reading disability, how have you been lately, Volourn?
