All Annotations of In the List of Top-Selling Games, Clear Evidence of a Sea Change (NY Times)[Preview]

saved byBenjamin Jörissen on 2008-02-02

• The image of the antisocial, sunlight-deprived game geek is enshrined in the popular consciousness as deeply as any stereotype of recent decades.
• That’s changing. Online PC games in which thousands of players gab and explore together are attracting tens of millions of subscribers.
• The list, released recently by the market research company NPD Group, highlights the soaring popularity of mass-market franchises like Guitar Hero and the Wii at the expense of critically acclaimed projects aimed at the same young-male audience the industry has relied on for years. (As recently as 2006, sales charts were covered with single-player diversions and sports games.)
• hard-core gamers and the old-school critics who represent them are becoming an ever smaller part of the audience

• Game critics and players have been closely aligned in their tastes, perhaps because the writers and buyers came from more or less the same pool of tech-savvy young men.

  But judging from the Top 10 list, that paradigm may be breaking down.

• Nine of the 10 top-selling games of 2007 include a significant multiplayer component.
• If new acceptance by the masses is one pillar of gaming’s future, gaming’s emergence as a social phenomenon is the other.