Videogame players aren’t only guys between the ages of 18 and 34 anymore. Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony all say they’ve attempted to appeal to a broader audience. But specialty retailer GameStop is sticking to the core gamers, at least for now.

“Power to the Players,” GameStop’s new marketing effort, much of which launched October 1, aims its television, print, and online ads at that core gamer demographic.

What GameStop wants you to know
 
GameStop is going after its once-most-loyal customers with messages meant to lure them back. The campaign, created with the Richards Group, a Dallas ad agency, portrays the leading specialty videogame retailer in the U.S. as a venue for trying out games, trading in old ones for store credit or cash, and getting expert advice on how to beat games.

The campaign’s commercials are styled after machinima, films assembled from videogame footage, and are meant to speak to gamers in their own language. Philip DeBevoise, president of Machinima.com, says his company’s core audience is males aged 18 to 34.
 
“The Breakup,” one of GameStop’s two “Power to the Players” commercials, begins with a man and a massive monster, both sporting mohawks, and a couple of smaller monsters in a spaceshiplike interior; they’re all firing guns with barrels that appear to be larger than their heads. Then the big monster, in an everyday-guy voice, requests an end to the fighting and calls out to the man, “I’m getting the feeling you’re just kind of going through the motions, like you’re not really into it anymore.”

The two obviously have a history. The monster suggests that his opponent sell the game back to GameStop but only after one last romp. “Do you mind if we dismember you again, for old time’s sake?” he asks.

“Sure! You can try,” the man responds. The battle continues as the screen fades to black and the words “Your old games find new life at GameStop. Power to the players” appear on the screen.

The other commercial, made with footage from the game Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, depicts a soldier thwarting an alien’s plan of attack because of a tip he received from GameStop.

The print ads bear large headlines proclaiming, “Leading Arms Dealer to the Console Wars,” “Where You Go After You Die a Couple Hundred Times,” and “Trade in Your Old Battle-Ax for a Hot Alien Babe.”

GameStop’s aim is to remind videogamers that its stores are dedicated to them and not the broadening demographic of videogame newbies.

What GameStop’s advertising doesn’t say

Women are playing games. Forty-five percent of gamers are female. Women over 18 represent a larger portion of the game-playing population than boys aged six to 17. The average player is 30, and 19 percent of gamers are over 50.

GameStop knows these facts, which were discovered through research performed by its ad agency. This expansion of the videogame-consumer base and the growing pop-cultural relevance of the products helped inspire the advertising, says Tom De Napoli, GameStop’s vice president of marketing. (For more information on this trend, see “Games for Grownups.”

Still, GameStop is focusing on that core group of gamers, men aged 18 to 34, who play videogames at least once a week and spend a minimum of $300 a year on gaming software. “Once we feel that [core gamers] have a thorough understanding of how GameStop helps give them power, we can begin targeting the casual gamer,” says Christopher Owens, brand planner at the Richards Group.

Almost any brand messaging will be new to the core consumer. Before its current campaign, GameStop barely advertised outside its stores, a spokesperson says. In 2006, GameStop spent $3.1 million on advertising, according to T.N.S. Media Intelligence, an advertising research company. Before launching “Power to the Players,” GameStop had spent only $1.9 million in 2007. (GameStop declined to provide its media budget.)

“It comes down to economics,” Owens says. “The core gamer group is much smaller than the casual group, and with a limited budget for our first year, we felt that the money would be spread too thin in an effort to speak to a group as broad as the casual gamer group.”