In this interview with CalvinAyre.com’s Stephanie Raquel, Chris Rowe of Aristocrat shares his views on why games shouldn’t be patterned for a specific generation.
There is a growing obsession among entrepreneurs to capture the millennial market. Many consider millennials as a group of consumers with great purchasing power. But like a prized trophy, entrepreneurs have to compete for the attention of this hard-to-please generation.
Many operators come up with game designs that specifically targets these millennials, but Rowe advises operators to focus more on building great games for everyone rather than targeting a specific generation. After all, he pointed out that each individual belonging to the millennial generation may have a different appreciation of games.
“So, when we think about millennials, I think it is important to define millennials. The way we’ve defined millennials is the generation between 1980 and 2000. Within that age range, people have been exposed to many different experiences, many different technologies,” Rowe told CalvinAyre.com. “So, if you think about someone that is born in the 1980 versus someone born in the 1990, the bits and pieces of technology that they grew up with would have been very different. The person born in 1980 may have a tape player versus the person born in 1990 that knows nothing more than MP3s. You can’t generalize millennials.”
In the case of Aristocrat, Rowe said that they create games that will be enjoyed by different generations. The success of an offering, according to Rowe, depends on how great the games are and not on focusing on a specified group of people.
“The Aristocrat philosophy on generations is actually not to build products for generations. We don’t build products for generations. We build products for segments, which span generations. Multiple generations would have the same sorts of technology dispositions,” Rowe explained. “And so again, taking segments and generations out of the equation, there are common elements that make great games. And that’s what really is Aristocrat is committed to do, that is building great games that our players enjoy and provide wonderful entertainment value. And there are certain games that we build that have certain attributes that may be more interesting to certain people. In terms of artwork and themes, that sort of thing. But then there are those that actually span segments.”
