“No,.. it’s the children who are wrong.”

Going over a recent post at Engadget, I was surprised by the recent results of the latest Nielsen report on “The State of the Video Gamer.”  David Hinkle however, seemed to take this in stride (see his review at Joystiq). This caused me to take pause and reflect a little bit about what I thought I knew about the gaming industry. I used to be a very avid gamer, and as one of many hobbyists who still build my own machines, I still like to keep a close eye on the general state of the industry.

After reading the report, a couple of points stuck with me. Firstly, especially after the last 2 years, I’d always thought of the Wii as the undisputed king of the console market. Gauging press, reaction, and the general clamor for Nintendo’s darling, it’s easy to see why. But according to Nielsen, the Wii is trailing behind in terms of popularity and sales. While I’ve always been a fan of the PC as a gaming platform, everything I’ve experienced with the Wii speaks to its superior ability to cater to a market that was crying out for attention; groups of players (in the same space) looking for socially-oriented gaming experiences. No other console is as party/gathering/birthday-friendly. No other console features game franchises that have dominated the lucrative “family-friendly” market forever. And quite frankly, no other console can get away with releasing games that just do not compare to the PS3 or Xbox360 when it comes to pure graphics capabilities. Now these stats were mostly relevant to December 2008, a time when the Wii was particularly hard to find on store shelves, but is that the only reason for this discrepancy in market share?

Second, and this is straight from the report: “Females 25 years of age and older make up the largest block of PC game players…in December 2008.” Now before you fire up your email client, let me clarify that this surprises me for a number of different reasons. Even given my previous assumptions about the popularity of the Wii, it would not have surprised me as much to see a sharp increase in the numbers of female console gamers. The number of titles that appeal to both genders are incredibly vast. Conversely, the number of new PC games has been on the decline in the last 5 years or so. There just isn’t as much money to be made producing new PC titles anymore. Is it possible that MMO titles like WoW and their kin are responsible for holding onto the increased gamerGirl demographic?

These are questions I don’t really have answers for, but I think are still worth discussing. In a climate where everyone’s had to rethink their business models, it would be interesting to get some insight into the marketing plans of companies in industries where we once thought we were comfortable in. Assumptions that were once valid are now worthless. Strategies to capture the right audience are most likely outdated.

Oh, and one final note from the report. The most popular PC game played by both men and women (25-49)? … Solitaire.

I figure the first post on this blog should explain the name, which in turn should give readers a sense of what it’s all about. In the 1998 film Pi written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, protagonist Max Cohen is seen sitting in a cafe explaining to onlooker Lenny Myer that when you divide each successive number in the Fibonacci sequence into one another, the result “approaches Theta.” He then explains that Theta is a Greek symbol representing one of the key numbers in mathematics linked to The Golden Ratio, a mysterious and profound concept that manifests itself across several aspects of our Universe.

What’s interesting is that (like many ideas derived from the movies) this is only partially true. In actuality, the symbol Phi is more closely linked to this concept than Theta. But unless you’re either versed in mathematics or take the interest to research it further (the latter applies to me), you’d be among those confidently distributing “the Theta hypothesis” at your next dinner party.

What I’ve realized is that there are a lot of similarities to this albeit unintended deception in the world of Digital Marketing, a world that I’ve been a part of for the last several years. At some point, we’ve all met a Max Cohen who attempts to explain a concept like Online Segmentation or CPM ad campaigns, but fails to do so because of errors in communication or what have you. We’ve all been in Lenny’s shoes, blindly adopting the explanation and treating it as gospel. In fact as far as the world of Digital Marketing is concerned, I’d wager that there are thousands of Theta hypotheses out there, influencing corporate decisions and consumer behavior.

The important question doesn’t really have to do with the perceived “wrongness” of such hypotheses though. I think there’s a lot more value in examining the responses that are generated as a result. Let’s look at the recent atmosphere surrounding two social networking darlings. Facebook has been receiving seriously negative feedback in light of its new layout, whereas Twitter is positioning itself to be the next emerging giant in the marketplace. Should Facebook focus on figuring out “what went wrong”, in order to self-correct? Should they primarily try to understand what Twitter is doing correctly that’s driving their success? Or is there more value in evaluating the landscape for what it is; constantly in flux. It could be that by the time they’ve re-evaluated their Theta hypothesis and executed a new strategy, consumers will have moved on, even beyond Twitter, to the next greatest thing.

The over-arching theme for this blog involves looking at Digital Marketing from that perspective. Rather than wrestling with the semantic innards of concepts like Social Networks, Microsite Campaigns, Mobile Subscriber Turnover and the like, I’ll be discussing how those concepts drive responses and stimulate change (if any) in an industry that refuses to remain static and easily understood.

There’s also the fact that “Approaching Phi” was a rather unwieldy blog name. But I digress.

Enjoy.