The way to make a mass-market game is by making it FOR the mass-market.  Tautological, isn’t it?  Too often, though, the people making games are not aware of what the Average Joe is watching, the typical Soccer Mom is reading, or what’s “playing in Peoria”.  Most Game developers make games from their frame of reference.  As a result, most games are by and for 30-something, Sci-Fi watching, Slashdot-reading, iPod-listening, Gap-shopping, guys who grew up playing D&D and Nintendo.

How can we get a different perspective? One way to gauge a game’s mass-marketness is to consider how your Mom would react to it and use it.  Odds are that your Mom has more in common with the Average American than the typical game developer does. 

Consider this: when your competition makes a game, they are constantly thinking about your Mom.  Don’t blame me, it’s true, I am just the messenger.  Your competition is obsessed with pleasing your Mom, her likes and dislikes, and how to get her to buy their game instead of yours.

Below is a snapshot look at the Average American, drawn from the US Census, surveys and market data.  In it I have substituted “Your Mom” in place of “The Average American”.  Let’s see how we do:

Your Mom has a household annual income of $48,201 and lives in the state where she was born.  She listens to CDs by Carrie Underwood, or Daughtry, or some other American Idol.  She watches four hours of TV a day, and her favorite shows are Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, CSI, Grey’s Anatomy, Wheel of Fortune and Oprah.  Mom drives a white or silver Japanese car, but almost half of her friends own big American trucks or SUVs.  She saw most of the Spider-Man, Shrek, and Pirates of the Caribbean movies in the theater.  Odds are she is Christian, owns a Bible, and prays almost once a day.  She reads Nora Roberts, James Patterson, Mitch Albom, and anything Oprah suggests.  Mommy talks on her Motorola cell phone about 25 minutes a day, but has never downloaded a game to it.  (By the way, did you know her ringtone is “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas?) Her favorite restaurants are Outback, Red Lobster and Ruby Tuesday.  Your mom shops at Walmart, Sears and Costco.  She websurfs 30 minutes a day on her dial up connection (though she uses broadband at work and will upgrade to broadband at home next month) and visits Yahoo, Ebay and Pogo. She has no idea what a WoW Guild, XBLA, Free BSD, BlueRay, or Podcast is.  Oh yeah, she wants you to call her more.

So as you consider the gameplay, theme, platform, difficulty level and marketing of your game, consider your mom as a mirror of the mass-market.  Don’t ship without observing your mom playing your game cold, and seeing what she finds fun, rewarding and challenging.  Doing so could expand your market reach, and the average American represents a potential market of 300 million people.

Note to the guys making “Panzergruppe Tactics 4: Eastern Front”, you already identified the 59 people who will buy your game, so good luck with that. 

For the rest of us making games for the mass-market, we’ll keep thinking about your mother.

The TV late night chat shows have returned this week.  David Letterman is back with his WGA writers after negotiating a seperate deal with the union.  Jay Leno is back without writers, and his show is better for it.  Jay may have stumbled out of the gates, and curiosity may have driven some viewers to the WGA-written Late Show on Wednesday, but as the strike goes on Jay will prevail.

Jay Leno is a funny guy who honed his comedy on the road for decades.  His style of comedy is observational, topical, and delivered on his feet to a live audience.  In a writer-less world, Jay is back to doing what he has done all his life, the same things he did to get the gig from Johnny Carson in the first place.  Shooting from the hip with live entertainment.  Letterman, on the otherhand, is back to the same old show with the same old writers, relying on scripts and lists and snarky setups to carry the show.

An added bonus for Jay is, that without a script, there is nothing for the NBC censors to edit.  Already the Tonight Show has a fresher, rawer, “I can’t beleive Jay said that” feel.  As the show springs from Jay’s head, all Standards and Practices can do is cringe.  NBC is just happy to have a host on the air, and will give Jay lots of room to improvise and wisecrack, even if it is a bit bluer than they are used to.  The writer’s strike will allow the Tonight Show to be less Jack Paar and more Howard Stern, but then again today our culture is more like Howard than Paar.

So as the Writer’s Guild strike wears on, David Letterman will sink back into the shelter of his standard writer’s room fare.  He will get better guests (as some actors will refuse to cross the picket line) and he will get a small pop in the rating.  Meanwhile Jay Leno is going to get less sleep at night as he worries out jokes, and he will drink more coffee before the show to keep himself on his toes.  Neccessarily, Jay will go places and say things that will keep the guests and audiences on their toes too.  The Tonight Show will look and feel fresh and current, while the Late Show looks like is has for 20 years.