Product Life Cycle of a Gamer (that's Me)

I like to call myself a Gamer...Ummm....I used to call myself a Gamer...But not now...Well I think it is a life cycle. Like everything else in this world.

There are 4 stages in any product lifecycle which are listed below

1. Introduction
2. Growth
3. Maturity
• Product Extension
4. Decline

                       (picture courtesy tutor2u.net)

Like any other "Gyan", I can relate this graph to my personal gaming journey. 

1. Introduction

My gaming journey started with (and can be attributed to) Prince of Persia (MS-DOS edition).

My maternal uncle (who lived in different city) had to travel a lot and was given a "80386" powered laptop. And on that apart from Lotus123, he had this amazing game. He was a big fan of the game and had saved the princess, I mean completed the game in the designated time. And passed on the fandom to me. So whenever he visited our place, I used to hijack his laptop and go crazy. Being the first ever game POP (Prince of Persia) franchise has a special place in my heart. 

I was introduced to my first gaming console by my grandfather, who had brought it from Germany. Since it was German make, there were no compatible game cartridges available in India and I was stuck with the 20 odd built in games. But the worse part was no Mario. (I had never played Mario till I got a DOS game simulator in my PC. But that comes later.) On top of that my grandfather used to stay in different city and I got to visit him only during my summer vacation. So the kid was separated from his dreams by quite a distance. So, I kept asking my parents to get me a new gaming console, so that I can play the games every kid dreams when he dreams of playing of and many others, but instead they bought me piano.

2. Growth

My grandfather also had a PC. By virtue of my uncle being pretty found of computers, the PC saw the journey from running DOS to Windows 3.x to Windows 95 and then Windows XP and I got saw the journey from DOS games like POP, Doom, Allan Border Cricket, to Minesweeper/Pinball to Roadrash to Mortal Kombat and other more advance games.

  

                       

                                                    

I used to spam the computer with games.I was a big fan of the PC digest magazine. Not because it had any good articles or something, but it used to give a free CD, that had lots of demo games and I used to install them all.

After a long long time got my own PC, when I entered college. For the first time I got an full-time gaming access. Then started playing all sort of games and started to find my niche. My favorites were POP series (Duh!), AOE series, NFS series, Classic games like Mario, Kirby adventure and list is long.
I got a good partner in crime as my sister. Me and my sister used to play games together, I mean, I used to play and she used to watch/help/guide/motivate etc.

3. Maturity

I would call my gaming to mature when I started playing with other people. During my post graduation I lived in hostel which bode very well for network game-play. I took AOE to the next level with multiplayer wars and also learned new multiplayer games like DOTA and CS. I remember one time preparing a presentation (MS Powerpoint) on advance level strategy for Age of Empire 2.

My second big break came was when I was an independent working lad staying with roomies. I purchased a..wait for it....PS2, Though PS3 was recently launched then, but somehow I thought that availability of more gaming titles (at that time) would make PS2 a better choice. I was got some great gaming titles like God of War and Resident evil and some good titles like Tomb Raider, GTA, Virtual fighter and some bad ones like WWE, Ninja turtles. Eventually I ended up owning about 15 games, on which I spent as much time as the time taken by light to travel lot of light-hours ;)

           

Product Extension

Another revolution in gaming came with phones (both smart and dumb). A device on which you can play games anywhere. Its like a dream come true. Never in the human history has some been able to play his/her favorite game while visiting the loo :P
I got my first phone during my college, the heavyweight Nokia 5110.

It was a huge phone. It was so heavy it had its own moon circling around it. You need to be compulsorily wearing belt if you want to carry this phone in pocket. With this phone I was lucky to play the classic Baap (ancestor) of all games, Snake.  And then with my first smartphone I was addicted to tower defense games. Using phone for games was a big-time battery drainer. So for that reason I bought Nexus 7, specially (only) for gaming. Though no sooner did the warranty of the tablet expired than "my 7 inch window to the android world closed" (quote from by FB). But then I was gifted a brand new iPad and the flower seemed more colorful, the sun more bright, in the Retina display. 

4, Decline

But sadly, somehow for last few years I am not finding the time or the energy for playing games.Though I feel excited when any news related PS, XBOX or Nintendo is there, but always find the energy is lacking to open up my PS and play. A few weeks ago I had gone to Croma and saw the on-display PS4. I held the Dual-shock 4 controller in my hands. But there were no spark running through me, no butterflies in my stomach no wind blowing through my (short) hair.

And I was thinking "Where has that gamer gone?"......

(End scene)

Hai na Oscar wining story.