You’re Playing It Wrong: exploding the happy gaming family myth

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http://media.edge-online.com/wp-content/uploads/edgeonline/2013/08/Wiibelisk-610x343.jpg (http://media.edge-online.com/wp-content/uploads/edgeonline/2013/08/Wiibelisk.jpg)There’s only one thing that marketers of nontraditional game control systems seem certain of: middle-class families, their most coveted customers, still haven’t a clue what their products are supposed to do. Early Wii test groups must have resembled the first encounters of primitive hominids with alien monoliths, and ended in Dad strangling Junior with a Nunchuk cable and Grandma howling at the rafters with a Sensor Bar lodged somewhere unspeakable. To head off such atrocities, Microsoft and Nintendo have deluged the Internet and TV with strikingly unironic adverts whereby actual lovely families, who were compensated for their time, demonstrate how to use Kinect and Wii U without it turning all Lord Of The Flies, ‘spontaneously’ spouting on-message dialogue. The ads are so trendy that Sony made one for something called PlayStation Move, which as far as we know doesn’t exist. And we’d probably have heard of it.Attempting to boost middling sales after a lacklustre E3, Nintendo set to work on a desperate new ad campaign – a Hail Mary pass to the consumers who weren’t buying Wii U because of the misconception that it was something other than a new console. Indeed, surveys showed that 83 per cent of the Wii U target demographic still thought it was either a fancy peripheral, a Japanese conceptual art project, or a government surveillance drone. More informed players now know Kinect is a surveillance drone, as reporters who waded deep into its EULA discovered. In any case, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to explore the first question that strikes anyone who sees these ads: “Where do they find these people?” We shadowed the Galoresby family from casting to final cut, setting out to report on a trend but stumbling on a family’s downfall.The Galoresbys are an American family of Caucasian extraction. Responding to Nintendo’s open call for submissions, they sent in a video application of themselves convivially gaming, and were thrilled to be selected.They were flown to Nintendo HQ, and ushered into a cosy living room set with sleek furniture and a window onto a perfectly manicured lawn. The Galoresbys had been told that they’d only have to play games on camera and say what they liked about the system. “We thought they chose us because we’re a nice family,” the father, Barry, said later, looking rueful in his cell. “But as soon as we got there, they started making changes.”

http://www.edge-online.com/features/youre-playing-it-wrong-exploding-the-happy-gaming-family-myth/