Big video game fans prove crucial to the industry

NEW YORK -- They stand in line outside stores waiting for midnight launches of new video games. When they get home after a long day, they plop down in front of the TV not to sit back and watch, but to play.

They're known as "core gamers." They are people like Greg Wilcox, who writes about video games and has bought roughly 100 this year, and people like Mark Hengst, who's in law enforcement and says daily gaming gives him an "interactive form of escapism." And there's Wyatt Du Frane, a geology graduate student who's been playing since he was a little boy.

"I like their scope," said Du Frane, 28, a student at Arizona State University. "A movie is only a couple of hours. A video game is more like a book or a TV series, where you can kind of continue the story."

For the video game industry, core gamers are proving crucial. Their willingness to regularly, loyally buy new titles — no matter what — gives the industry a better chance of success than other businesses that rely on discretionary spending vulnerable to the recession.

"As long as hard-core gamers have a job, they will continue to buy games," said IDC video games analyst Billy Pidgeon.

The industry's ability to lean on core gamers is a bit of a twist, because video game makers have been working hard to grow by expanding their mainstream appeal.

Families and people who haven't picked up a game controller in ages, or ever, have flocked to the easy-to-master Nintendo Wii since its 2006 launch. Taking note, Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. have been expanding what their game consoles offer, adding movies and TV shows, to attract people whose idea of the perfect Sunday afternoon doesn't involve shooting aliens. Software publishers like Ubisoft Entertainment, Activision Blizzard Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc. have boosted their titles aimed at young girls, families and women over 35, who have helped push game sales higher.

Yet some analysts believe it will turn out to be core gamers — who might be more reliable consumers of their favorite form of entertainment than movie buffs or sports fans, for example — who keep the industry afloat as the rest of us cut back.