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B/W attracting an older audience?
from what I noticed, Pokemon Black & White seems to attract more of an older teen / young adult audience (such as myself) than kids... has anybody else noticed this? anybody know why? |
It has? Just wondering what you are basing this off of. The only thing I could think that would attract older fans is because it is somewhat of a starting over since Unova is isolated from other regions and you cannot encounter previous generations pokemon until after the final battle with N, so there is somewhat of a freshness to the series. I don't see how this attracts more older age groups then children since the game is innately geared toward children.
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I think that every game has attracted an older audience, honestly. I mean, think about it. I doubt Red/Blue had many older fans considering there was no following by then; most people who played it were little kids. But as they grew up, more and more games came out and they kept playing, partly for fun and partly for nostalgia. Now people that played Red/Blue are 17-20 and some even older, and they keep playing. I firmly believe that in the future there will be 40 year olds playing Generation X or whatever. xD;
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If I were to guess, I'd say it's because of how much more complicated and advanced Pokemon is. An example is the C-Gear; how many 8-year-old kids will understand that? Not many. And since many features like this are becoming implemented more and more to the games, younger kids are losing interest because they don't understand it. That's what I think.
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And yes I can see how people think the fans age is rising since the fans started out as kids and progressed as adults too this point and now they are still fans of the game. I don't think new added features is going to put a damper on kids buying the game. If they don't understand it they just won't take part in that portion of the game, that's not too say they will lose interest in the main story and all the new pokemon. I'm not interested in new additions like Musicals but that doesn't mean I have second thoughts on buying the games.
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Me = 12 Yrs. Old like the Pokemon for DS.
What i wanna try in B/W it because of the C-Gear. I also like a Ferriswheel Shipping xD. My sis couldn't even understand C-Gear or kids need more advanced knowledge? |
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I dont see how the game attracted more of an older audience, I think it just attracted a little bit more people due to the graphics being so much better than the previous handheld Pokemon games.
:t354:TG |
I wanted to chime in, because I made an interesting discovery. Of course, it only concerns two kids I know, but I was surprised myself.
I was at a family friend's house, and they have twin boys, 10 years old. They love Pokemon, so they loved it when I showed them all my Pokemon on the DS games. I even let them play Pokemon White for a bit, and they loved it. Then, I decided to bring over a Gameboy Advance and a copy of Pokemon Sapphire, to see what they thought of an older game. I was kind of nervous that they'd think it was dumb, considering they had just got done playing some of Pokemon White, but they really loved it. So, then I thought, "what the heck", and after they beat the Elite Four, I brought them a copy of Pokemon Yellow that I used to love. And guess what? It was their favorite! They liked it a lot more than Sapphire and White. They thought the sprites looked cool, too. ^_^ Anyway, I think that kids prefer simpler games, and that since Yellow was the simplest, they were able to get the hang of it quicker. To be honest, even I would've been put off by Pokemon if it had been introduced to me with all the types and complicated features the games have now. I know my 5-year-old self would NOT understand Pokemon abilities, nor would I want to memorize all the types, items, attacks, and creatures you can choose from. It's pretty overwhelming. |
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I guess this means that even kids can love the simplicity of old games. In my opinion, I think B/W was catered to a new audience, old or not. It feels quite different and unique from the previous games in the main series, and I think that the old fans needed to adjust to the new Pokemon more than the new fans needed to learn the ropes. I don't think that it was a bad move for them to do that at all, because I loved White. And judging from how most kids nowadays would rather play flashy games, I think the new audience sort of got dominated with the old people who either came back and liked Pokemon again or are completely new and found it as a nice game to play. Nevertheless, I feel that the fifth generation has a fair share of younger fans, too. I'm not sure if the older looking main protagonists caused it, but it's quite possible. |
These games came out when I was in second grade, and I have enjoyed playing them ever since. I think that the audience for Pokemon games will continually seem to get older because of similar experiences amongst players.
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I've noticed more older players, well (18+ for sure) I was in my local game shop scouting for merchandise. <: And about 6 college guys came in and all bought Black/White. I must say the shop assistant gave them bad looks though.
I don't know why but Black and White seem a lot different to the past generation games and they seem a bit more "grown-up" with the more aging dialogue and plot. Whether Gamefreak intended for it to be aimed at older people or not it's worked. |
Well it could be that Gamefreak and Nintendo intended to make B/W directed toward adult audiences, what with all the spin-off games that seem more directed toward child audiences.
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I also think that GF didn't intentionally aim this at an older age group because it would be a shot in the dark to do it, because it could of either failed or succeeded, so they probably played it safe and went with what they normally do, but they just made it slightly more aimed at the older age group. I'm ranting now, lol. :x |
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I'm 19, but if what you're saying is true, I'm sure I could still get some enjoyment out of the games if I gave them a try. |
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Anyway yeah they seem to attract an older audience, and bring a lot of older players back into Pokemon after years, but in-game they're treating everyone like little kids sorta, well, it seems to be more-so than other games with free items everywhere, lots of money early on, lots of explanation, so idk. That might be just to appeal to the players that might not have played in a while and forgot everything (totally unlikely though). |
I think it did grab the older audience's attenion alot even though they still liked the new gen.
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Kay to add more to what I said in the last post, I was playing through yesterday and I noticed they're pretty much using teen speak, as opposed to other games which didn't really, for example, "mhm" and "'kay", while in the passing by surveys, the only choice of subjects to take were maths, english, science and society and environment. All of them are subjects you can take in primary school but aren't really compulsary in high school, well, not compulsary later on in high school, so I think it's that they're more trying to please two different audiences at once and depending on what aspect they're concentrating on, it seems they're sorta leaving out a group, or at least I felt somewhat awkward with the surveys. :x
Oh and there's also the fact that social studies / society and environment in most high schools and such becomes "history" or "geography" which is further proof that they do have the primary school audience in mind, or at least junior, or whatever America calls it. |
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In my own opinion, it seems to have attracted generally about the same audience as those that was attracted to the HG/SS serious. What might've given the implication that an older audience was involved was the "darker" storyline that B/W had that trumped over it's predecessors(unfortunately they still had pathetic pokemon, oh how I wished they would change this).
Other than that, I wouldn't see too huge of a difference between the audiences between the HG/SS and the B/W games. But that's just me. |
Maybe because the games are getting more and more complicated. Also, because the plot itself is considered darkier and edgier than the previous plots. But lemme explain.
1) Pokemon B&W has a lot of strategizing. You have to pay attention to stats, to moves, to abilities, hell, even to natures. Although it was the same for all Pokemon games, it seems that the newer versions seem more reliant on these strategies to make the games harder. In other words, younger kids might find the games too hard because they have to pay attention to what they're doing a lot more than in previous games, and they just don't have the patience. 2) Normal pokemon game= dark, evil villain planning to take over the world. Pokemon B&W= not-so-dark rival who intends to free Pokemon from captivity. Not so B&W anymore is it (pun intended). In the earlier games, everything was crystal clear. Now, older audiences may prefer the whole "somewhat depressed character with dark background". Kids might end up confused, and not realise the whole story. Older audiences might catch the hints. N was emotionally abused as a kid, his father (although even that is questionable) hiding him from society so he could continue with his plans to take over the world, giving him abused Pokemon much like him to care for. N begins to understand as a kid that all humans are evil. This alone is pretty damn creepy. Also, as the story progresses, N becomes a bit more angsty and you start to learn what's actually going on. And don't even get me started on N's room. *shudder* All in all. It kind of makes sense. P.S. I'm 14 and I still don't understand C-Gear. That on it's own should be pretty self-explanatory. |
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