Here is what I envision ex-MTV Europe boss Peter Einstein’s pitch to Bravo UK for the new show Game Face to have gone like:
Einstein: The thing casual gamers like least about games is the interesting stuff like developers, new games and other such things. You know, hardcore stuff. Let’s make a show without it.
Bravo Execs: He said casual and gaming together in a sentence! This has to make money. Let’s do it!
See Game Face, which launched last week, is a show where you watch games that have already been released. That’s all. There are reviews of the games and the like, but the show isn’t focusing on developers, new games or sneak peaks. Just games people can play. According to the show’s site, developers are boring and if you want “those all singing and dancing ‘exclusive looks’ at games that aren’t even finished yet” you can head to the hardcore gaming sites (like you’re doing right now). Casual gamers don’t want that, they want games they can play. Einstein, whose name I am trying to type as un-ironically as possible, told MCV UK that this is something the casual market is really looking for.
“From what we’ve seen in the past a lot of the focus has been more outside of the games, with presenter reviews, stats, interviews with creators and only a bit about the games themselves – as one assumed that you only ‘play’ games you can’t ‘watch’ them,” Einstein said. “We feel this concept provides a fun, entertaining TV event which is appealing mostly to the casual gamer.”
OK, I really tried to make the show sound as stupid as possible up there because taking Einstein’s quote completely out of context the original MCV UK interview makes it sound particularly dumb. Upon second thought, and doing some actual research on the show while writing this post, it turns out that the show is really just a game review show geared towards casual gamers and the original story says absolutely nothing about just watching videogames and not discussing them. Having now watched a few of the reviews on the show’s site I can assure you that it is no more stupid than most other videogame review shows. I should probably rewrite this whole post, but then I wouldn’t have an excuse to type this: JOURNALISM!
