3. Audience

Audiences are being able to become less passive and be more interactive with the games they consume. Gaming is becoming a more personal experience with the ability to customize in game characters, or avatars, design and constructing objects for the game, making tracks, the list goes on. Games like Second Life for example are encouraging the audience to become more creative in their approach to the 3d virtual world. This in turn is also forcing the companies to be more creative with their advertising and marketing campaigns, for example guerrilla/viral marketing as seen in the previous post.

This interactivity with games has lead to many different things. For example, machinima, which are movies filmed inside a video game. An example called Combine Nation made using Valve’s Half Life 2 can be seen below. A comedy about patrol officers in city 17.



Here are some statistics about who is actually playing games:

Click any of the pictures below to enlarge them.

• 75% of heads of households play video games
• Average age of a gamer is 30

• With 19% still playing when over 50
• 55% of gamers are males
• The average number of years adult gamers have been playing is 12
• 53% of gamers expect to be playing video games 10 years from now



• 47% of most frequent gamers play computer and video games with friends.

However game players do spend time doing other activities too:

• 79% of game players of all ages report exercising or playing sports an average of 20 hours a month.
• 93% of game players report reading books or daily newspapers on a regular basis, while 62% consistently attend cultural events, such as concerts, museums, or the theatre.