Steve Jobs and Apple's Influence on Gaming Massively Oversta

[GoDM1N]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/ ... verstated/

I didn’t think all the hero worship of Steve Jobs over the past few weeks would end up invading my little video gaming corner of the world here, but I can’t let this go without a comment.

A questionnaire was sent out to the attendees of the London Games Conference earlier this week which asked what the biggest influences on video games have been since the medium’s inception. The 1,000 people surveyed are supposed to be avid fans and industry professionals, but they should all have their consoles and computers taken away after giving answers like these.

Here’s the “most influential products” category:

iPhone: 17%
Wii: 7%
Xbox Live: 3%
PlayStation One: 3%
Steam: 2%

And the “most influential person” results:

Steve Jobs 26%
Gabe Newell 16%
Shigeru Miyamoto 7%
Tim Berners-Lee 4%
Mark Zuckerberg 3%

Ridiculousness, plain and simple. Sure, Steve Jobs was a great tech pioneer, but giving him credit for shaping the VIDEO GAME industry more than any other figure? Are you kidding ? Though the iPhone debuted some very popular casual titles like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope, they hardly invented the cell phone game, and to say that ANY mobile game is more relevant to the industry than years of console and PC titles is absolute insanity.

Then to give Jobs the top honors over Gabe Newell (of Valve) and Shigeru Miyamoto (of Nintendo) is blasphemy, plain and simple. Gaming was never Jobs’ primary focus, as Macs can barely play most PC games, and only recently has the iPhone made waves in the casual games market.

I’m all for giving Jobs credit where he’s due, but treating him like some sort of god who invented anything with an on switch is offensive to those who actually made significant contributions in other areas of technology, and it needs to stop.

[mrpikmin2]

The tl:dr is that people think that technology and gaming came from the same place. Stop hating on steve.

[Saber]

Bitch I'll hate on him as much as I want. He makes buying overpriced and not necessarily good shit look pretty.
I accept that he revolutionized stuff, but he sure as hell isn't the most influential person evar. He casualized shit and forced people to bend to his will. Sure, I find the iTouch fun and stuff, but I've never bought one and I never will.
(I have bought iPods though. They suck less.)

[Knees of Justice]

I wonder how the results would differ if he hadn't passed away recently, hmm...

If anything, Steve did bring a lot of competition to portable gaming with the App Store. casuals

[Spyder]

You can thank Angry Birds for that.

It's basically the "video game" (if you can call it that) for the bored housewife and the spoiled 16 year old brat, etc etc.

It also has to do with popularity and status. As previously stated, Steve Jobs doesn't just "flip a switch", and technology comes to life. No, he has teams and teams of people doing probably most of the work for it.

It would be like someone saying "Yo, I know Lincoln did a lot for the Civil War, but they're not giving General Grant enough credit." People remember the most popular and those with the highest status.

[Techercizer]

You can thank Angry Birds for that.

It's basically the "video game" (if you can call it that) for the bored housewife and the spoiled 16 year old brat, etc etc.

It also has to do with popularity and status. As previously stated, Steve Jobs doesn't just "flip a switch", and technology comes to life. No, he has teams and teams of people doing probably most of the work for it.

It would be like someone saying "Yo, I know Lincoln did a lot for the Civil War, but they're not giving General Grant enough credit." People remember the most popular and those with the highest status.

Except that Steve Jobs, Gabe Newell, and Miyamoto were all alive and developing within these people's lifetimes, and these people are supposed to know what they're talking about. If this sample extrapolates upwards with even half the correlation these results have, it's a very serious statement about the video game industry and its customers.

[mrpikmin2]

You can thank Angry Birds for that.

It's basically the "video game" (if you can call it that) for the bored housewife and the spoiled 16 year old brat, etc etc.

It also has to do with popularity and status. As previously stated, Steve Jobs doesn't just "flip a switch", and technology comes to life. No, he has teams and teams of people doing probably most of the work for it.

It would be like someone saying "Yo, I know Lincoln did a lot for the Civil War, but they're not giving General Grant enough credit." People remember the most popular and those with the highest status.

Except that Steve Jobs, Gabe Newell, and Miyamoto were all alive and developing within these people's lifetimes, and these people are supposed to know what they're talking about. If this sample extrapolates upwards with even half the correlation these results have, it's a very serious statement about the video game industry and its customers.

correlation doesn't apply to categorical variables

If most gamers used valve/nintendo, there responses would be different, notice how bill gates isn't a choice, this survey looks stacked.

[Techercizer]

You can thank Angry Birds for that.

It's basically the "video game" (if you can call it that) for the bored housewife and the spoiled 16 year old brat, etc etc.

It also has to do with popularity and status. As previously stated, Steve Jobs doesn't just "flip a switch", and technology comes to life. No, he has teams and teams of people doing probably most of the work for it.

It would be like someone saying "Yo, I know Lincoln did a lot for the Civil War, but they're not giving General Grant enough credit." People remember the most popular and those with the highest status.

Except that Steve Jobs, Gabe Newell, and Miyamoto were all alive and developing within these people's lifetimes, and these people are supposed to know what they're talking about. If this sample extrapolates upwards with even half the correlation these results have, it's a very serious statement about the video game industry and its customers.

correlation doesn't apply to categorical variables

If most gamers used valve/nintendo, there responses would be different, notice how bill gates isn't a choice, this survey looks stacked.

Bill Gates might have been even less influential in gaming than Steve jobs was. His company sure did a lot for the xbox line of consoles, but I don't think he was personally involved in much of that at all.

Instead of correlation, perhaps I should have said "If the true average for the targeted demographic is even half in favour of Jobs as this sample is".

[Maringue]

Wow, this is really a short sighted view of video games. People have shit for memories.

You know who (or what I should say) is one of the most influential entities in video games? Lucasarts, that's who: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LucasArts

They pioneered so many amazing games and they don't even make the list. They helped to make gaming what it is today.