EA - traditional reviewers are 'playing casual games wrong', Carnival Games = 200k+

[Emo-Iwata]

I know, Take Two makes Carnival Games, but it's all in the same article:

 

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=c...33&Itemid=2

 

EA Casual and the Problem with Reviews

 

“I get less concerned about game reviews because the casual gamers don’t read any of those things,” EA Casual president Kathy Vrabek tells Next-Gen.

 

“They’re not swayed by a low score on IGN or a low score out of one of these gaming sites,” she continues. “It’s a little bit amusing, in that it’s people reviewing games against measures that are important to core gamers yet are not important to casual gamers.”

 

The average buyer of Take-Two’s dismally-reviewed $40 Carnival Games for Wii, however, isn’t going to be visiting Metacritic to find out if the Dunk Tank mini-game compares favorably against the aiming mechanics of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

 

Carnival Games, with its 56 percent review average, managed to be the fourth-best-selling title on Wii in the US during September behind games like Metroid Prime 3, selling over 200,000 units. So Vrabek would appear to have a point about specialist game reviews. Casual gamers "don't read those things."

 

“…The measurement [of a game’s appeal] for women aged 25 to 34 would more likely be whether or not they’d hang up on their girlfriend to play this game. ‘Would you hang up a phone conversation for this game?’ That’d probably be a truer measure for that target audience.”

 

But perhaps the execs leading EA Casual have a point, that—here it comes—specialist press outlets are playing casual games wrong.

 

Well, at least they're playing casual games from the perspective of a core gamer who’s seen it all, instead of a mass market Joe. A recent blog post by Texas-based analyst Bill Harris, who doesn’t cover the industry professionally (but is intelligent and up to speed nonetheless—add Dubious Quality to your RSS feed now), brought forth the possibility of a “fundamental disconnect between how the people who review Wii games play them and how everyone else plays them.”

 

“As a game for grown-ups, it's true that [Carnival Games] is a ‘throwaway,’ but as a game to play with your family, it's a blast,” Harris said.

 

For another example, look at Mario Party 8—reviews average 62 percent, but the game continues to be a top ten-seller on Amazon.com and has sold over a million units.

 

Vrabek says that internally, EA needs to find out how to make sure reviews (good or bad) for casual games get in front of the target audience, as does the game publishing industry overall. She cited Yahoo Moms’ movie reviews as the type of mass-market venue that games need.

 

Under the EA Casual label are also kids’ games such as the top-selling Harry Potter series. Kids’ games are in a very similar situation as casual games as far as specialist reviews are concerned. A 20-something guy reviewing a game like THQ’s Cars is pretty pointless—can he possibly play the game from the perspective of a seven-year-old who idolizes Lightning McQueen? Will that seven-year-old's parents buy the game based on reviews or incessant begging from their kid? Despite mediocre reviews, Cars was the second-best-selling title of 2006 in the US with 2.6 million, according to the NPD Group, behind Madden NFL 2007.

 

“Metacritic scores or the GameRankings scores are just off-base,” insists Vrabek. “In fact, if you run a regression analysis against those scores on casual games or even kids games, sales don’t correlate.

[Ne0]

^^ he has a point when he says:

 

A 20-something guy reviewing a game like THQ's Cars is pretty pointless. Can he possibly play the game from the perspective of a seven-year-old who idolizes Lightning McQueen?

 

I completely agree, u should know the audience the game is targetting when writing a review !

[Emo-Iwata]

^^ he has a point when he says:

 

A 20-something guy reviewing a game like THQ's Cars is pretty pointless. Can he possibly play the game from the perspective of a seven-year-old who idolizes Lightning McQueen?

 

I completely agree, u should know the audience the game is targetting when writing a review !

 

dude!he is a she.

 

[HundredProofSam]

i agree.....casual gamers arent particular about the things we and the reviewers are.....they want something that is simple and fun....very often, that isnt enough for us or the reviewers

 

 

 

peace