• by David Ward , January 9, 2003

If the thought of video games conjures up images of gangly teenage and preteen boys who would be better off riding bicycles, you may be living in the wrong decade. The past several years have seen an explosion of growth in video games and systems, to the point where gaming has joined music, movies, and television as a pillar of popular entertainment.

Cover stories in magazines such as Time and Entertainment Weekly tout the arrival of a video game nation, giving the impression that everyone from first graders to retirees is eagerly taking joystick in hand and becoming immersed in an intense interactive experience.

On the surface, at least, the numbers seem to bear this out. The Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA) notes that 145 million Americans — 60% of the population — now play interactive games on a regular basis. The IDSA also reports that 43% of game players are women and that the average age of a player is 28, a number that rises annually as more people continue their game-playing habit well into middle age.

But as compelling as the image of grandmothers hunkered down over their PlayStation 2 may be to the game industry, you won’t be seeing ads for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City in Sunset magazine anytime soon. Indeed, the industry may talk about a broadening demographic and cross-gender appeal, but when it comes down to where they are putting their marketing dollars, the vast majority is still spending to reach the audience that historically has supported games, and that’s 12-to-24-year-old males.

There are a few exceptions, of course. “A game such as Pac-Man appeals to a very young audience as well as an older audience who may have played the game in the arcades in the 1980s and are now parents,” says Stacey Hirata, Namco Hometek’s director of marketing. “Then you might look at a different media buy where you run into something like Toy Wishes, because a lot of these games come out during the gift-giving season.”

But in general the strategy remains to reach young men by leveraging their main interests — women, sports, and music. “We either advertise to males or we advertise to adults,” says Laura Campos, director of marketing communications for game publisher Infogrames, which recently ran a campaign for Unreal Tournament. “Very rarely do we do something for girls or females unless it’s a mom-directed message, becauseit’s cost-prohibitive.”

That’s not to say there haven’t been any changes in how games are advertised. The explosion of men’s lifestyle magazines such as Maxim, Stuff, FHM, and Gear is providing a whole new avenue for reaching young men who previously could be reached in print only through sports and game-enthusiast publications.

The other surprising area of growth has been in newspaper circulars. The advertising market research company Beyen reported that video game ads in newspapers jumped 273.9% in September 2002 compared with the same period a year earlier. “Retailers that are hard-pressed to find a growth category have pretty well established video games as that opportunity,” says Roger Lanctot, Beyen’s director of advertising analysis. “It also reflects the fact that retailers are now fighting for these young male customers — selling things such as highly caffeinated drinks and other nontraditional merchandise to lure them in.”

But the biggest change in game advertising can be seen on television. TV game ads have been around for nearly two decades, but at nothing like the levels seen in 2002, where an estimated 60 games were supported by television during the fourth quarter alone. “Television is now the driving force,” says Sheldon Hirsch, president of media buying agency Summit Media. “The ratio for us is 90% goes to broadcast and 10% goes to all other media. Your gamers are tech savvy — they live and die by television. If they’re not watching FX or MTV, they’re watching TechTV, and when they do their reading, they do it online.”

“One of the reasons you’re seeing more television advertising is that right now you’re competing with the movie industry. In order to get out to the masses, TV is still the best vehicle,” adds Campos. “What you’re seeing in creative is that a lot of video games are starting to mimic movie trailers, and that’s to provide a key premise and the hottest scenes.”

Mickey Taylor, co-creative foreman for the Los Angeles–based boutique agency G&M Plumbing, notes that some of these changes in creative strategies stem from a better understanding of what appeals to male teens and young adults.

“A lot of times agencies who are coming up with the creative try to imagine what a 16-year-old will like. They end up with hard music, a lot of cuts — it’s very sort of in-your-face,” says Taylor, who previously worked at TBWA Chiat/Day on the Sony PlayStation account and whose company is currently the agency of record for THQ. “But when you go to focus groups and ask that same age group what commercials they like, they’ll talk about ESPN SportsCenter, which is very straight and sophisticated comedy. So even if the audience is a 16-year-old boy, we’ve learned you can still do something that appeals to them as well as the 25-to-26-year-old.”

Traditionally, the game advertising flood is a fourth-quarter phenomenon. For instance, Q4 2002 was driven by the fact that there were three console systems and 600 individual games competing for the consumer’s attention and dollars. But Campos for one suggests that last year was just the beginning, and that the game industry may finally shake its reputation as a holiday-driven industry and become like movies, music, and TV — a truly year-round business. “Q4 and spring/Easter will remain the key selling times, but like movies, you’re going to do a lot more summer releases and a lot more summer advertising,” she says.