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QUARK?

© Dan Caines

Only recently I had a self-confessed "hip" guy come up to me and say "What up? Some guy just told me about this game, Quark. Apparently it's hot. What's it about?". He must have been 18, one of the clubbing, smoking party-going definitely non-computer oriented part of our society. He is exactly the audience games developers are trying to reach, as they come to the ceiling of their conventional markets. If you are reading this, you are probably either totally lost trying to navigate around this "hip" new thing called the internet, or one of the traditional "market drivers". These (you) are the people who among the first couple of generations really to get into computers and more specifically gaming. Not meaning to be rude here, but apparently you are old news. To quote a "Games Industry Executive" talking under alias to a popular English magazine, "We believe that our existing customers will carry on buying as long as we produce quality products. It is the new sectors, like the twenty-year-old non-early-adopters who will be the growth drivers in quarters to come".

Is this an arrogant assumption by a cocky, money-hungry corporate "markets guru", or a true enough prediction. Let me pose a question to all you "market drivers" (excuses to any new adopters who have strayed onto this page, but I will deal with you in a minute). Would you stop buying games just because a rude yes-man stopped aiming at you? Probably not, unless you are on a moral crusade. But before you take this man down, just stop and think. The Playstation. This was the first device apart from the Game Boy to bring fashion to the gaming world. It is only a matter of time before the "CKPlay" special edition. They tried to tap into club and popular culture, producing purely sector-oriented products like Music. These were not always great games, and sometimes not even profitable, but they were the hook. People bought a Playstation to get hold of the latest fashionable thing to do. They then had a one-trick console, and had to buy more software to justify what initially at least was quite a substantial investment. That was profitable. Bedroom Sasha's and Kid Rock wannabes started becoming Drivers, Crash Bandicoots and Parappa the Rappa's. The latest of this ilk is the admittedly very slick WipeOut 3, which boasts "great graphics, huge clubland tunes mixed by DJ Sasha, and Designers Republic graphics".

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