In a recent interview, I was asked about the declining interest in strategy games over the last decade. Quantic Foundry adds data to the conversation but can't answer the fundamental question. They pose these, instead: 💡 Why do you think gamers have become less interested in strategic thinking and planning? Are there other potential causes that come to mind? 💡 Do you feel your attention span and ability to think deeply has changed since the emergence of social media and/or smartphones? 💡 Are there other documented changes in our media-consumption habits or cognitive metrics that you think might be related to this? 💡 Have you seen similar or related findings specific to gamers and games research?
Chad Mauldin
1mo
Maybe games have stopped rewarding long term strategic thinking? There is so much FOMO in the audiences today, that nobody wants to risk making the "wrong" play.
Brandii Grace
1mo
"shorter YouTube videos have garnered a higher share of overall views" Yes...because creators will do whatever is incentivized and YT's algorithm changed to strongly prioritize shorts based on a desire to chase TikTok. Once it became clear that was the new incentive structure, creators pivoted to turning out catchy 60sec shorts multiple times a day instead of one 5hr long essay once a year. Having removed your friend's reason NOT to watch that-one-YouTuber-you-keep-going-on-about (3hrs? Eh, I'll get around to it...eventually), they gave in and sharing went up. Sharing == views. Views == money. Money == further incentives. In the same way, I've seen a TON of studios making mobile match-3 games, but in the deep strategy space, I mostly see the same 5 strategy games pump out sequels. If publishers aren't funding it and devs aren't making it, then players aren't going to be able to play it. If players don't play, they don't "get good". Not increasing your skill decreases your incentive to seek it out that challenge. So...yeah, I think players care less about a genre we haven't made a lot of in recent years. 🤷♀️
Rich Eizenhoefer
1mo
Very interesting. I play RPGs primarily and strategy and the battles are the most fun part of the game for me. Every battle in BG3 seems to take me 15-30 minutes to plan out before and during. Most of my friends and family prefer FPS or just “run and gun” whatever game they play, so anecdotally the trend in this article seems to ring true for most.
Outstanding in the trees.
1moI'd really want to do a deep dive into selection & response bias here. 9 years of collected data is a powerful dataset (even small effects can be teased out) but w/o broadly sampling the general population (including non-gamers & folks who game but don't identify as gamers) you don't know if Gamers are changing, the Definition of Gamers is changing, if Strategy Gamers were just the most likely segment to self-select into the early survey populations, or something else. The demographic caveats about sampling are 'inside the box' of the survey design & population selection, begging the question of the box itself changing over 9 years. A lot has happened in that time - we have 65% more gamers now! The raw counts of Strategy gamers going up is not incompatible with the declining share of Gamers interested in strategy. This is Simpson's Paradox space and without direct inspection almost certain to lead to misleading conclusions - getting out over one's skis. I wouldn't over-index on it. Is there sufficient market for your game to thrive? Have you served the needs of your segment? Will chasing additional segments come at the expense of serving your segment well? Is this enough? Those are answers you can make good decisions with.