A delayed reaction

Hi again one and all. It's been a hectic week as I try to come to terms with the growing popularity of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. I went to the opening at Shaw Lido around 12pm on Monday and there was already a queue forming up with a growing number every minute or so.

At first, I was quite surprised because it was firstly a Monday so most people should either be studying or working. But obviously there was something amiss and people kept streaming in. The opening wouldn't be open until 2pm and the line started snaking around the circular ring at the box office.

I had decided to do some preliminary research on the maturity of the general gamer market and do a full day observation. I stood by the stage entrance and said my hellos to Chris and Leong. I started looking around at the forming crowd and listened in on their small talk. The reasons why they are able to come here for this event slowly became evident to me.

The Reasons

So what were the reasons this crowd was forming? The superficial reasons were easy to deduce, some of them were university or poly students with their lessons starting later in the evening. Some of them were working adults that took a day of MC to come down to the event. Some of them were retirees who were here on behalf of their children or grandchildren to collect the game. Eventually the crowd itself was the reason why it kept growing. People joined the crowd just because of the sheer hype that the crowd was generating.

What I was interested in was actually the hype the crowd itself was generating. It seemed that despite the fact that EA did not have any radio or television advertisements, people came down in droves anyway. And the fact that common psychological term "Mob mentality" kinda reared its head during the event made matters far more interesting. A preliminary conclusion at this point was that people in Singapore are highly affected by mob-like mentality. Where the word of mouth and a presence of a crowd would be highly effective in drawing in the crowd I saw on Monday.

Elation

This was the very reaction towards video gaming that I've been waiting for to happen in Singapore. I thought that I was one of the few that could be this affected by the games of our era, but I'm glad that the trend is changing rather positively. People are treating video games more and more of an accepted form of entertainment. It's true that in the Caucasian countries, video games have a larger draw than the movie and music industry. But here in Asia, the people have not yet accepted video games on the same level as they would a movie or music.

While this trend is set to change in the near future, I decided to do a more in depth look at the crowd and its makeup a little more carefully. I found out that about 20% of the crowd that stood near my observation point, came with the intention of not buying the game. They were there with a friend that bought the game, a person who came to watch a movie but got entranced by the crowd and the live game demos or a person who just was curious and came to see what the hype was all about.

This crowd of non-buyers formed an extremely interesting group to study. They were subjected to the game's marketing hype and eventually, of that 20% about 60% succumbed to the hype and actually lined up to buy the game. Overall, there were about 8% of the crowd that were there just to experience the game because they either can't afford it or they weren't interested enough to buy the game.

This is a rather intriguing finding that I didn't believe possible at Singapore's current market maturity. If close to 98% of a crowd at an official opening actually bought the game, Lido's small size might actually have limited influence of the game's hype. The final tally of games sold by the EA crew numbered somewhere between 4800 plus. They had a target of about 5000. But by looking at the unexpected turnout of the crowd, Chris felt that it was still a huge success and discussed some of the difficulties of managing this event and the steps he took to solve the problems that cropped up.

Memorable Moments

There were a few memorable moments. The first memorable moment was when I saw an old man with a walking stick in the queue buying the game. I took a picture and would put his picture up, but I would rather respect his privacy on my blog.

A second moment was when a group of 3 middle aged men in their 40s and 50s lining up together to get the game. They knew each other and from their conversations, I noted that they were buying the game not for their children but because of the hype.

One other moment was when Ismet wanted to exchange numbers with me so we could talk some more about where I would be headed on gaming psychology. If you don't know the name, I will not further divulge anymore further privacy violations.

Another moment was when I met a student who is working for EA part time and he is studying in Communications and New Media in NUS. He seemed pretty interested in the observation I was doing, but couldn't do much to communicate with me because he was really busy as the event went on.

And on a complete unrelated note, the best moment was probably when I had dinner with E. Haha, after moving around and observing people for a whole 8 hours. It was probably the only time I sat down at Lido. And of course E's company was somewhat therapeutic as I've had almost no personal time on Monday. Also helps that E was in a mood for Japanese food, which incidentally is my favourite cuisine.

The Details

Here are some finer details:

• An estimated crowd turn out of about 5500 over the course of 7 hours
• Crowd maximum swell at around 2pm - 3.30pm
• Crowd dissipation at around 4.30pm
• Secondary crowd was small and maintained until closing
• Crowd participation in prize winning Q&A session is excellent
• Crowd involvement in lucky draw is enthusiastic
• Crowd participation in ground challenges excellent
• General reason to buy the game is because of the hype and previous ownership
• General pick up reason is because everyone else is buying it

The End

A finishing note, I'd give the Singapore market another 18-24 months before it's mature enough to do a small scale gaming psychology study. At it's current stage, I say only 50% of the target audience are researchable via conventional means. Another 1 1/2 to 2 years would give sufficient time for the take up to spread to a more desired demographic. And of course the difficulties would then to know how to speak fluent malay, dialect and mandrin to reach the older population to know their reaction to this growing trend.

That's enough serious talk for one day. Come what may, I hope there's a tomorrow for all of us. Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow