My wife fell in love with me while we played Super Mario Galaxy. The Wii, for all its faults, is still a fantastic system for casual gaming. As someone to whom gaming is very important, casual gaming is an interesting genre for me. Casual gaming is one example of a concept that I call gateway gaming; it serves as an entry point into gaming for people that may not otherwise become gamers.
I suppose I could be called a gaming apologist. I feel that there are many important benefits of gaming: improvements to hand-eye coordination, stress relief, and exercise of problem-solving skills, to name a few. I’ve heard many reasons why non-gamers don’t play. Many simply don’t have a lot of prior exposure to games. That’s where the gateway game comes to the rescue.Perhaps the most prevalent type of gateway game is the casual game. These games are very accessible, often easy to play, and sometimes feature a ‘sandbox’ mode of play. Some popular examples of this are The Sims and Guitar Hero franchises. On the face of it, these games are wildly different, but both can be played casually. I call these gateway games because both offer an avenue into more serious gaming: The Sims is an introduction to the world-builder type of strategy simulator, and Guitar Hero offers higher levels of difficulty that stretch the player’s coordination.
Because gaming is important to me, I’ve used gateway gaming to my advantage in the past. One example of this is my stepfather. He has been an avid chess player for decades. In the mid-90’s, when he first got a PC, I used his interest in chess as a way to get him into computer gaming. I showed him the Chessmaster series of video games to successfully introduce him to video gaming on the PC, then later introduced him to other games once he was familiar with the idea.
Another good example is that of a friend of mine. I knew she had played and enjoyed the Caesar II city-builder strategy sim in the past. Because city-builder type games and the RTS genre share so many traits, I was able to introduce her to Age of Mythology, and later AoE 3. She turned out to be a quick study and a fantastic RTS player. She later thanked me for broadening her horizons in gaming. I took advantage of the situation by pushing the boundaries of the gateway gaming concept by introducing her to Oblivion, to which she became wildly addicted shortly after the game’s release.
My experiments with introducing people to certain games in order to further their interest in video gaming were so successful that they actually served as the foundation of my theory of the gateway game. I’ve studied individuals’ play styles and found a strong correlation to the way in which they interact with the world. I’m convinced that most people could benefit from an introduction to video games, and I think that the gateway game can be a great way to make that introduction. In what ways have you seen this concept at work around you?
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