When I was 16, I got my first non-babysitting job and spent four months toiling at the drive-through window of my local Carl’s Jr. restaurant. Being a quick study, “Want some fries with that shake?” or “Can I interest you in a hot apple pie this evening?” soon rolled off my tongue at the end of every order as I eagerly attempted to up sell customers.
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During some of my “kid-oriented” presentations, I will often talk about some of the things that we adults can still remember, but that kids of today have never been exposed to - like rotary-dialed phones or 8-track tapes. I was reminded of this recently when I had my car in for service and was given a loaner for the day, and the car actually had manual roll-down windows. My kids had no clue how to operate them, and a verbal explanation wouldn’t do - I had to visually demonstrate the hand-cranking method for them as they stared on in disbelief.
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I fondly remember the things my parents used to say whenever we complained about things, like walking a quarter of a mile down the street to the bus stop for school. “When I was a kid, I walked three miles to school, through a snowstorm,” was one of my all-time favorites. And, of course, as most of us have, I vowed never to say these types of things to my own kids. And like most of us, I have failed miserably at keeping this promise.
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Like many of you, I spent a good portion of my Thanksgiving weekend cooking. In addition to the traditional turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie, my weekend menu included hundreds of portions of Triple Berry Cheesecake, French Onion Soup, chips and guacamole, home-style pot roast and Tikka Masala Kabobs. Now, mind you, not all of this was real food. Much was conjured up in Cafe’ Frazier compliments of Cafe’ World, one of the most popular social networking games on Facebook. As my kids observed me running to the computer to serve up my fruit salad before it rotted on the stove (who makes fruit salad on the stove anyway?), they soon became curious and interested themselves, and before I knew it, I had created a Facebook account for my 7 year-old twins so they could run a cafe’ of their very own. And my kids have a lot of company when it comes to gaming.
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I was shopping last weekend for a gift for my twins to take to their friends’ party, and I entered my local specialty retail store without a preconceived notion of what I was going to get, but with a definite price range in mind. As my kids suggested various items to me, I evaluated it against my predetermined price range. Too often, my response to their suggestion was, “No, honey, that’s above my price range,” but eventually we settled on the perfect gift for the boy that they thought he’d enjoy, while also sticking to my budget.
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The highly anticipated video game industry sales results for September have now been delivered, and many who were expecting a bigger increase over last year’s results, were underwhelmed by the numbers. The industry did return to positive territory after six consecutive months of posting declines, but the increase was a modest 1 percent.
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As I sat down at my desk one morning last week and scanned industry news along with items posted on Facebook and Twitter, I ran across something really interesting that one of my Twitter followers posted. “Barbie Premieres Her First Music and Dance Video” read the headline and of course there was a handy link to the video. The video itself is a lot of fun, but its bigger purpose is to promote a new line of fashion dolls being introduced for this holiday season by Mattel. The following morning I came across a posting on KidScreen that highlighted how Disney is also using YouTube as part of its launch campaign for the new line of Toy Story toys tied to the re-release of the first two movies in 3-D.
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We frequently meet with clients to take a look at changes in the industry and consumer behavior, and provide analysis and insights into how the changes will impact things to come. This spring, it was clear that last year was one of the most transformative years in the video games industry: audience expansion, the accelerating adoption of digital distribution, increases in mobile and social gaming, and the influence of the Wii were all topics on the minds of industry followers. But I get a little uneasy when I see how all these factors are influencing the plethora of free game options available, and while it’s great to have more ways to expose gaming to a broader audience, the industry struggles with how to best monetize that gaming activity.
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Just last weekend, my 11-year old son had a bunch of his buddies over on Saturday night to hang out and play video games, watch movies, shoot hoops, and engage in an epic Nerf gun battle. A few of the boys’ mom’s hung out with me and we enjoyed an evening sipping wine and exchanging gossip. After a couple hours of complete mayhem, we wanted to settle the boys down so I went to the cupboard and picked out a movie - initially it was hard to pick one I thought they all would like and then my eyes spied one of my all-time favorite movies: “Big.” As I announced to the group, “Okay, I’m putting on “Big,” several of the mom’s chimed in, “Oh I love that movie.”
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Many of us in the video games industry eagerly await E3 next week in Los Angeles. As we’ve been busily working on our meeting schedules, invariably the conversation turns to, “What do you think will be the big announcements coming out of E3?”
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Video Games | Anita Frazier, Entertainment Industry Analyst Toys & Video Games | 
March 8, 2010 10:45 am | 
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