Negotiating the Maze of Computer Games
Many parents bought computer games this Christmas, some just because they have a home computer and want their child to learn something while fooling around.
It would certainly get the kids away from the TV or the Nintendo. It involves some reading, if only of the manual. And there are great-looking games now, with dungeons, warlords, space travel, mazes and mysteries--obviously pure fun.
But these aren’t video games, and computers aren’t television sets. New buyers often find themselves up to their keyboards in problems. They can’t “load” the game onto the computer. Or they can’t figure out how to play it.
Or they can’t get beyond a certain point in the game. With Who Framed Roger Rabbit, they never manage to navigate the highway to the nightclub, where the real action begins. With King’s Quest, they never get the little hero much past the goat pen near the start of his journey. With Flight Simulator, they never land a plane without crashing.
Devised by computer hackers in the days before personal computers, computer games now have sales of $262.6 million a year, having risen 30% between 1987 and 1988. But they’re still a hacker’s hobby and only 10% of the $2-billion software market.
Computers themselves aren’t mass market yet. They’re present in only 20% of American homes, according to the Software Publishers Assn. in Washington. Keyboard-driven, coded with “commands,” they’re not easy to operate, unlike arcade and video games. They’re not even standardized: Each computer needs its “compatible” game version and a proper-sized disk.
Still, there are ever more computers out there, and their owners are changing the profile of the computer game player. “Not hackers or hobbyists, these are people who got their computer for Christmas,” says Peter Spear, a computer game expert and author of the book “King’s Quest Companion.”
“They think they bought a toaster, and they want to plug it in and have it work,” he says.
Too commonly, such people “have 128K computers and they’re buying 640K games,” says Mason Rutledge, spokesman for Egghead Discount Software in Issaquah, Wash. More commonly, there’s an incompatibility between the game’s capacity and the player’s.
These aren’t board games, all laid out, with moves and rules detailed inside the cover. Some require mostly speed and dexterity--dodge-’em, shoot-’em arcade games or abstract puzzles such as Tetris and Revenge of Doh. Others involve strategy or guesswork--simulations of flights and battles--or “animated adventures” featuring journeys and mazes.
For the computer “techie,” the challenge is the game. “The hard-core veteran gamer will slog through 50 pages of rules and grumble,” says Russell Sipe, editor of Anaheim-based Computer Gaming World (circulation 30,000), “but then play for 40 hours.” Or they’ll gladly start with nothing, Spear says, “part of the point being to discover the game as you go.”
Given the ethos, software publishers “didn’t always make sure the documentation was easy to read,” says Phillip Adam, president of Spectrum Holobyte (Tetris) in Alameda, “or that the game had documentation.”
Where manuals exist, they’re often elliptical, for readers who say, “Don’t ever give me an answer, give me a clue,” Spear says. A King’s Quest game, for example, comes with a fairy tale introducing the kingdom featured and a “reference card” outlining the key commands, but it leaves players to guess that when a condor flies overhead, one should type “jump,” projecting the little hero onto its back to fly to the next scene.
In fact, these games began as group entertainment: Players shared the experience, comparing notes, admiring graphics. Computer Gaming World’s roster of 10 top games is not a list of best-sellers but of readers’ own ratings. Even kids work together, particularly the adolescent boys who form an obsessive subgroup of the market, “playing in groups of two, three or four,” says one mother, “talking on the telephone, passing around lore. If they all get stuck, whoever has a hint book brings it out.”
There’s some help available from vendors, but it indicates their ambivalence about serving a mass market. “The core market is always going to be there, and companies want that market badly,” Sipe says. “The number of users is smaller, but the amount of money spent is so much larger--$50 a month on computer games, compared to four games a year for the mass market buyer.”
There may be hint booklets, as with King’s Quest, but some consumers are offended when asked to pay $6 for guidance on playing a $40 game. Worse, they move by hints, coyly printed in ink revealed by a special pen: “How do I figure out the gnome’s name?” “Read the note you found on the witch’s bed stand for a hint.”
Publishers do offer “technical support” by phone but apparently find no message in the fact that people have so many questions. Few provide 800 numbers (except for orders): They can’t afford it, they say, given their limited sales volume, and they have some disdain for the questions. Kids pester them, people want help using their computers, callers waste calls on what one vendor calls “solvable problems”--things they should have figured out themselves.
Some retailers help, although as interest grows and popular games sell themselves, retailers do less work. Some let customers open and try games in the store, or return the goods after purchase--most famously, the 205-store Egghead chain. “You may buy a product far beyond your capabilities,” Mason Rutledge says, “and you won’t know till you try it.” (One consequence: Consumers may find that Egghead games, rewrapped and resold, have strangers already signed on as players.)
Because the new buyer of computer games is truly up against something new, “my personal advice,” says computer analyst Lawrence Magid, “is if your kid says he played something at Johnny’s and liked it, then you buy it.” It’s still a word-of-mouth industry.
