This month's 'Blogs of the Round Table' asks us to examine the silly line in the sand between Casual and Hardcore gamers and games. Bare with me while I head down what may turn into more than a bit of a rant.
Once upon a time there was pong. You hooked up this plastic and fake wood veneer device to your television, and you and a friend twiddled a big round dial to make a bar of white light move up and down, bouncing a block of white light about your TV. Thus was born the gamer, in the soft glow of the cathode ray tube.
Then came Atari, the arcade, the Apple IIe, Zork, Oregon Trail...Mario. I think Mario is when everything really started to go wrong. This was the point where people started drawing a line in the sand, to define themselves as a 'gamer'. Up until Mario, people did not really seem to care if they were hard core or soft core or no core. They just thought these video games were silly, and they were. After Mario things changed. Nintendo Power magazines giving tips and tricks, and we all of a sudden have elites. People who knew the tricks, and people who found them.
We had hardcore gamers, and then everyone else. I blame you Mario, and your high scores and times and horrible maze-like last levels that still confound me to this day!
Over the last few years clever business people and marketers have realized that the audience they so loved to take money from are now in jobs where they do not have time to sit around for hours a day, let alone a week, playing video games. I can honestly say that I, someone in a company that makes games, spend less time these days playing them then I ever have before. Thus is born the casual game, and the casual gamer. More lines, more sand.
Now that the industry has drawn all these lines in the sand, their are those who want to smudge them out again. Their are those who want to turn those lines into World War I style trenches where technoliterate 13 year olds ( and the 30 year olds who haven't grown up yet ) hurl vulgarity at each other. The whole thing smacks of a pointless semiotic and semantic debate to me.
Of all the problems and concerns in the video game industry ( and there are a hell of a lot of problems ) the debate between Casual and Hardcore products, customers, play styles, and development practices reeks of dancing shadows on a cave wall to me.
Should we even care? Does it matter if people are using a product for 15 minutes every day? Does it matter that 'Casual' gamers are statistically shown to put in way more time playing games than expected? Or that they play for longer periods than expected?
Should we care that hardcore gamers are getting fewer and further between? That the hardcore gamer, once the bread and butter, is shrinking into a niche as the video game industry expands it's scope?
I think the whole debate is a bit of a red herring. I think blurring the lines between hardcore and casual is a pointless task because the lines themselves are not important.
The real problem is not that people are playing for a certain amount of time, or play in a certain manner, but rather they are looking for something FUN to do. We are in the ENTERTAINMENT industry, yet when I look at the top tier products flying off the shelves, I really do not see a lot that is entertaining.
Big budgets, yes. Beautiful graphics, yes. The occasional novel theme, yes. Fun? Not very often. If developers are spending their time looking for the ultimate casual game, the ultimate hardcore game, or the ultimate game that grabs everyone and gets better numbers than Halo, Habbo Hotel, Secondlife, and WoW combined they are wasting their time.
They should be looking to entertain and to make things that are fun. If it is entertaining, and fun, it doesn't really matter whether it is hardcore or casual. People will play it, and that is really all that matters at the end of the day. Leave the market demographics and MBAisms to the venture capital firms and business plans and get down to brass tacks, making something people want and like to play.
Comments (4)
I think you're focusing too much on the terminology here. Forgetting the words 'hardcore' and 'casual for a moment, the fact of the matter is that the (now) traditional methods of designing games have perpetuated a limited gaming audience. With the upsurge in casual games, we've found that the appeal of short play loops and light subject matter makes games more accessible to a wider audience.
Wider audience == more money.
So even if you reject the semantic component of the discussion, your observation about current games not seeming fun directly addresses the point. I'd consider the first LEGO Star Wars game to be a perfect example of a game pitched to a broad spectrum of player (even though its sequel pitched more towards the long term player).
Posted by Corvus | August 19, 2007 12:25 PM
Posted on August 19, 2007 12:25
Unlike Corvus, I don't think you're focussing too much on the terminology - I feel we almost have to spend some time looking at the terminology if we are to have this discussion! :)
"They should be looking to entertain and to make things that are fun. If it is entertaining, and fun, it doesn't really matter whether it is hardcore or casual."
I agree with your premise here, but "fun" means different things to different people. I contend, unsuprisingly, that we must at least endeavour to understand the audience if we are to make games to entertain them. Although the "hardcore versus casual" audience model is crude, at best, it still holds some water - although I wholeheartedly agree with your contention that the line in the sand here is utterly arbitrary, and I for one prefer more detailed models.
Then again, putting games in front of players is by far the best metric. It just happens to be by far the most expensive approach, too. :(
I feel the basic problem with the games industry is what you hint at here: the big budget games "aren't fun" (for most people). But it's worth remembering that many of these big budget games are fun for the people who made them. And that's the problem: we have people who play in a certain way making games purportedly for everyone, but really only to satisfy themselves.
(Oh, and one utterly minor point, Halo is not really a landmark best selling game, having sold only a little over half of what Half-Life and Goldeneye sold. Microsoft did an excellent job of making the importance of this game seem bigger than it was! It *did* set some release-day sales records, though).
Thanks for this! It prompts me to tackle my own entry for the round table, which is what I'm looking for in a round table post. ;)
Best wishes!
Posted by Chris | August 20, 2007 5:09 AM
Posted on August 20, 2007 05:09
In response to Corvus:
Are you speaking of a wider audience for an individual product, or a wider audience for the industry as a whole? Or both?
In response to Chris:
I agree, you have to stick the game in front of gamers right away. I think the entire industry could use a lot more agile in their development. And honestly, it is a lot cheaper in the long run to playtest your game on players and not developers early and change as you go. $5 million bucks to spend on a game that isn't fun and only has a few thousand players is a good kick in the butt... *cough*Auto Assult*cough*
You are correct that understanding the audience is critical in making something that is fun, and therefore marketable, to your target audience. I just think that taking a look at casual vs. hardcore is the wrong direction to even begin charting the 'demographics of fun'. It is almost a completely useless metric because it is so ill defined. It is akin to Hollywood using theater goers vs. renters. Just utterly useless when you actually need valuable information.
Posted by Marcus Riedner | August 22, 2007 11:14 AM
Posted on August 22, 2007 11:14
What I was hoping to kick around was an exploration of making individual games appeal to a wider audience and I used the terms 'hardcore' and 'casual' as easy representations of the audience scale. My hurried and last minute post before I shut down the blog for a month's hiatus undoubtedly muddied the waters of my intent though.
Good post, despite my surprise at its contents!
Posted by Corvus | August 22, 2007 11:22 AM
Posted on August 22, 2007 11:22