If you are unaware what what the Dark Age of Comics is, here is a brief summery. The Comic book finally became considered a mature medium with the advent of two legendary book, Watchman and the Dark Knight Returns. These two books are widely regarded as the greatest comics in history with their complex story, great writing, serios parody's of the medium in the vein of Citizen Kane, their mature themes, and the guts to be both sexual and extremely violent in a medium that still was a "children's media." Comic's were changed, but instead of taking the complex story, great writing, and the stuff that actually made those graphic novels GREAT, they took the over sexualization and violence instead. Watch Linkara if you need to know lots of examples of this. Everything seamed good. Even if the comics pretty much sucked while trying to be "HARDCORE!" they were selling better then ever before. About four editions of every comic was being made in hopes of attracting spectators to buy now and sell in the far future (this was when people started selling first editions of Superman and Batman). However, everybody forgot one thing about any entertainment industry, they need to get new readers, I.E. kids. While I don't doubt most kids would love to read how Aquaman got his hand chopped off, comics had moved to secluded comic book stores, and their parents aren't getting that kind of stuff for them. This left an older audiance which has a finite buying time. With new readers, the comic industry fell under its own weight. It has yet to fully recover.
How does any of this relate to gaming? Let me give you a little test. Think of three games released in the last year.
Go on, think about it.
Now, how many of those was a "Hardcore" title? Not hardcore in that it is hard or that it requires dedication, Hardcore that it has a big fat M on the front of the box. Unless your think Nintendo or Pop Cap games, I would be surprised if didn't think all three of them. Just think about this. How many "Hardcore" titles are coming out as the mega hits, the block busters? How many games that are suitable for children?
Currently, only ONE of the three console developers has children even in mind, Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft are more then willing to just give to the "Hardcore" crowd, only going into the realm of family games when they want some of that huge money pile the Wii is sitting on. Sure, more people have a console (the wii) that has never even touch gaming then ever before, but how many of these new gamers don't go past the party games?
How do we prevent our little hobby from going the way of comics? How do we prevent implosion from lack of new audiances taking up games or more importantly, segway them into gaming?
And yes I got most of this from the Game Overthinker's video on this subject, but he never asked "what can we do to stop this?"
How does any of this relate to gaming? Let me give you a little test. Think of three games released in the last year.
Go on, think about it.
Now, how many of those was a "Hardcore" title? Not hardcore in that it is hard or that it requires dedication, Hardcore that it has a big fat M on the front of the box. Unless your think Nintendo or Pop Cap games, I would be surprised if didn't think all three of them. Just think about this. How many "Hardcore" titles are coming out as the mega hits, the block busters? How many games that are suitable for children?
Currently, only ONE of the three console developers has children even in mind, Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft are more then willing to just give to the "Hardcore" crowd, only going into the realm of family games when they want some of that huge money pile the Wii is sitting on. Sure, more people have a console (the wii) that has never even touch gaming then ever before, but how many of these new gamers don't go past the party games?
How do we prevent our little hobby from going the way of comics? How do we prevent implosion from lack of new audiances taking up games or more importantly, segway them into gaming?
And yes I got most of this from the Game Overthinker's video on this subject, but he never asked "what can we do to stop this?"
