Embarrassed of "Games"

The story is this:  there used to be an Edinburgh Game Festival.  SCEE didn't want to support them, because they don't want the Playstation to be associated with "Games" -Playstations are for "interactive entertainment" - so now it's the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival.

There wasn't much of a Sony presence at Gamecity for the same reason, allegedly.

My blood boils.

Comments

[Paul]

I've got a great story about how incredibly unhelpful SCEA has been in helping get our current PS2 project out the door. I think there are more lawyers than developers working there. I suppose they're all busy trying to make the PS3 not look like a total bomb.

My experience with Nintendo of America, however, has been the absolute polar opposite. I think they have more rational humans than lawyers working there. So if I have a choice of platforms for my next project, guess where I'm going to go?

It's too bad really because I have a lot of prior experience on Sony hardware and used to prefer them.

[Nathan McKenzie]

As much as it frustrates me, I sort of can't blame them. I've been trying to tell (often older, non-gamer) people what I do for a while now, and it's always suddenly an uphill battle once the word "game" rolls out.

I take solace, sort of, in the fact that all such verbal... games, really, will become unneeded in a decade or two, once we have large amounts of 50 and 60 year old gamers.

To be honest, I'm more annoyed at the stigma that Sony managed to attached to 2D gaming back when the Playstation 1 was rolled out. There's something poetic about watching the 2D-heavy DS beat the hell out of the shiny PSP for that very reason.

In fact, maybe the Wii vs the Playstation3 demarcates a pretty good similar battle of world views, embracing the word game versus eschewing it. I like framing the argument this way because then you can just watch the sales figures and claim the market backs up your opinion if you happen to be right =)

[zachary j. gamedesigner]

I'd like for people to respect the games I play, if that means calling them interactive entertainmment, so be it. Though I'm not renaming my blog to interactiveentertainmentqablog, that would be ridiculous....

Unless sony wants to give me a 60 GB PS3, then we're all good to go.

[Jay Barnson]

Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me!

Now, I do vaguely kinda-sorta agree that the name "Video Games" is an overly restrictive term that has unfortunate connotations of the medium being "just for kids."

Interactive Entertainment is overly broad. I mean, passive entertainment really only came into vogue fairly recently (in the last century or so) as the whole literacy thing caught on and technology allowed pre-recorded performing arts to be distributed to the masses.

And as to Sony being high-handed about the PS3... I suspect they are making a bad marketing error. They are distancing themselves from their core market, and I think most consumers will see it as smokescreen to try and justify the high price point. Why are they calling it a PLAYstation, and the third in a line of gaming consoles, if this is the case?

[Ramification]

Sony dug their own grave, and they deserve to lie in it, decay and perish.
The company itself is out of any sensible functioning (electronic div vs. motion pictures div) for a syndicated conglomerate.
Instead of having qualified men run jobs, they have all sorts of political powerplays and one advances by who he knows and if that person need to fortify his position within the corporate.
They've also long been detached from their consumers and the less said about their treatment of games and gamers and devs the better.

In E3 2004 they pronounced in great vanity that they've won the console wars, they said "the war is over", lets move on.
They were right in their arrogance, just not the way they thought.
The war was over the moment MS decided to step intot he arena, and Sony has lost.
While the xbox failed versus the PS2, the xbox360 has consolidated itself and even the Wii is making a substantiated acclaim.
Meanwhile, the PS3 lack much functionality and services, cost the most, barely can make go in production and much of its hardware, as I understand it, still fails (go blueray, this bet sure paid off!) and so on.

Die Sony.
Die and make us happy.

Sony> What is this?
Microsoft> We call it the xbox, 360; you may call it a giant enemy crab that hit you in the weak spot for massive damage faster than ridge racer.

[David]

How about that confused, redundant euphemism, "interactive games" (1,150,000 hits on Google, a respectable showing against "interactive entertainment," with 1,400,000 hits).

When I hear "interactive games," I always feel like someone is making an effort to not talk down to me. Does putting a four-syllable word like "interactive" in front make "games" sound a little more grown up?

[Andrei Pokrovsky]

I actually kind of understand where sony is coming from and agree with them. Oversimplified, in the eyes of general public, "playing games" is something geeks do. Games are generally not perceived as a "cool" form of entertainment. Also, a popular point of view is, 'Games are addictive, therefore bad'. Most common argument in defense of games is
"games are not quite as bad as drugs so i let my children play".

Sony really knows how to market stuff, they have correctly identified that they need to change the general public perception of games into something cool that everyone _has _ to do, like having a tv and watching movies. Its the only way for this industry to get really really big. Currently an image of someone playing a videogame is not a positive or even acceptable image for anyone over 20 years old. You'll have to agree with me on that one no matter how hard it is to accept for an industry insider. An image of anybody over 20 with a game controller is rather humorous in the eye of general public.

So anyway, perhaps sony is doing us all a favor by attempting to break the 15 year old gamer stereotype. Want your game to be played by 300 million people, just like the movies? I do.