Need new thinking to attract new players

I went to a career fair Tuesday and talked to game developers, Blue Shift and Activision (Treyarch). I knew they were recruiting for programmers. I asked them straight out if theY hired educators. I was looking for an internship. I went on to share my two reasons why they might need educators. First, while games are about fun, they are fundamentally about learning. You can't keep a player engaged, if they aren't learning something. Second, all their game designers probably think alike. They need to build better games that appeal to a broader base of people. Diverse designers produce diverse games.

In Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's, speech at the Tokyo Game Show 2005, he outlined again the need to appeal to a broader market. His strategy was to define new genres, features and tools to appeal to non-gamers. He sited games like Nintendogs or the brain training game (developed with a university) that attracts a variety of players. In fact Braintraining is popular with adults who want to prevent Alzheimers. Nintendo is succesfully reaching new users. The number of women has risen higher than other Nintendo platforms. Furthermore they are innovating on the controller for the Revolution console by using something people are familiar with - the remote control.

Nintendo gives us an example of how collaboration with university professors and new controllers can develop tools that will attract new players. History has shown us how new thinking and new tools can create breakthroughs and leaps in evolution.