Casual gamers are not the enemy.

[Something Amyss]

Why do you think everything's turning into a damn FPS or action game now ?

Immersion, man. It's the only way to enjoy them.

>.>

 

[Fanfic_warper]

Would someon please explain what a casual gamer is to me so I can understand this better and then what the other side of the specturm would be?

 

[Something Amyss]

Yes dam those developers for wanting to make games that are profitable instead of loosing money by making what you personally want. Game development is a business just like any other and they cant afford to keep making unprofitable games just because a small niche likes them.

Yes, before the FPS craze, gaming was a giant sinkhole and game companies lost money for making diverse titles.

Further, people legitimately expect game companies to want to lose money.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

streamlined mechanics, less depth, low innovation, multiplayer prevalence and less genre diversity

This has nothing to do with Casual gaming just lazy pubs wanting more cash for less refined products(easy example CoD) and to be honest neither do we(proper gamers not casual ones) obsesses over graphics basically anyone who is properly interested in gaming(ie bothers to go on forums and check out news) is not omg graphics are the best thing ever.

We can all agree graphics are nice but I think everyone who has genuine interest in gaming would rather the large and disproportionate amount of resources dedicated to graphics should be spent else where.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Would someon please explain what a casual gamer is to me so I can understand this better and then what the other side of the specturm would be?

Well what it should be is someone who games casually ie does not do it often nor have any desire to game in any serious manner. While at the moment it is someone who plays stuff like Peggle, Farmville and Angry Birds.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

Yes dam those developers for wanting to make games that are profitable instead of loosing money by making what you personally want. Game development is a business just like any other and they cant afford to keep making unprofitable games just because a small niche likes them.

Yes, before the FPS craze, gaming was a giant sinkhole and game companies lost money for making diverse titles.

Further, people legitimately expect game companies to want to lose money.

Not sure if sarcasm...

OT: I agree with OP. It's our expectations of games that are ruining them. However, I have been greatly enjoying the Mass Effect series and cannot wait for the third instalment. As previously stated in the thread, I think the way forward is middle ground developers teams big enough to deliver a fantastic game, but not so big as to put too much pressure on making a mass appeal game.

 

[go-10]

old gamers have turned to Hipsters, out ruling anyone and everyone
new gamers, even though most of them are better than the hipster gamers, stick to what they like and bash anything new because its not what they played 1 year ago but if its too much like the first game they bash it because its the same game
casuals don't care about fan base or loyalty to the original they just play the game finish it and move on to the next one or re-play it if they liked it a lot

if you ask me the people that truly enjoy games now ah-days are casuals

 

[Something Amyss]

Not sure if sarcasm...

Less sarcasm and more an open mockery of the sort of picture the poster I was quoting painted.

 

[Rabidwolf27752]

Hey everyone, check out The new Let's Play channel of RabidWolf9000 and his friends. there are plenty of laughs and entertainment for all! Current LP is terraria, more to come!
http://www.youtube.com/user/RabidWolf9000?feature=mhee

 

[Condiments]

When this rule became the law:
A good game requires lots of time, money, and effort.

Games have always required significant amount of time and energy to create, but our focus has shifted as gamers to how to the games are presented, rather than how they play. Developers are forced to reach or exceed our minimum expectations of how a game should look or it receives a lot of criticism by both the gaming community and press.

So my question is, when did we as gamers place presentation(how much do we talk about how cinematic and immersion level in games are these days?) over compelling gameplay mechanics?

 

[targren]

Games have always required significant amount of time and energy to create

Not necessarily true. It would never fly today, but one of the most popular games of the 80s was "Ghostbusters," which, IIRC, was written by 1 guy in eight weeks.

It didn't have photorealistic brown or bloom effects, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.

 

[LilithSlave]

Eh, Angry Birds and Bejeweled aren't bad games in the slightest. In fact a great deal of some of the greatest games out there have been puzzle games. And I probably have just as many people I wouldn't get along with on the "hardcore" gaming side as the casual gaming side.

What I don't like on the casual gaming side, is people who never get into video games and only play casual games, very rarely, ever. Like playing Solitaire at work, goofing off with Angry Birds on their cell phone, then coming home to do nothing other than watch crummy reality shows on their TV and never show any interest in any other gaming before they die.

Those people... I do not have things in common with.

Now, if casual gaming means someone who buys a Nintendo Wii and plays lotsa games for it instead of 2,000 on a computer with quad SLI just to play another violent shooting game, which is "hardcore", I'd happily consider myself a casual gamer over that anyday. I mean, for the price people are paying for these newfangled first person shooters which seem annoying to me, they could buy every single retro game ever. So to me it seems like a vast waste of money.

 

[Mafoobula]

tl;dr
Of COURSE casual gamers aren't the enemy. How can we call casual gamers the enemy if we're not really 100% sure what that enemy looks like? Has anyone been able to thoroughly define what makes a casual gamer?

Is it about how often a person plays games? I think even the most avid gamer can play for only so long before needing to take a hiatus. I love World of Warcraft, but there were times when I would not play for MONTHS at a time. Even now, with my sweet gaming laptop and my many games, I'll only play every few days.
On a related note, maybe it's about the duration of the gaming sessions. Sure, I don't play often, but when I do, it's an all day thing. Except if that's the case, then what about all the people who are most certainly gamers, but for varying reasons can only play 5-10 minutes at a time? Moviebob himself made this case a while back.

Maybe it's about the kinds of games a person plays. Makes sense, but any knob can play 10 minutes of Gears of Modern Warfare 3 and put it down. Anyway, is there really anything wrong with wanting to play a little Angry Birds or Plants vs. Zombies while waiting for something? That's a rhetorical question, because we all know that the answer is a big damn NO.

So what IS the problem? Does the issue stem from the people making the games, because they're making the simple "casual" games and ignoring the mature "hardcore" games? Well, it's pretty obvious that we still have a LOT of hardcore games, each one hardcore for one reason or another. True, they're not all too common, but they never HAVE been common. Yes, I know there's a metric crap-ton of brown&gray FPSs that are supposedly hardcore. I don't care, they're just as pick-up-and-play as any other game. Point gun, shoot. Doesn't get much simpler than that.
It's the exact same problem as the one about the casual gamer. We don't really know what defines a game that is truly hardcore. A lot of "casual" games are easy to recognize - Angry Birds immediately comes to mind - but then there's an area of grey so vast, it boggles the mind.

So I ask one more time: What IS the problem? It's us. It's the gaming community at large. I'm part of it, you're part of it, the douchebags that play nothing but Gears of Modern Warfare and Madden are part of it, even though I wish to Seldon they weren't. But if I'm honest, I'm not 100% sure what it is we're doing wrong. I mean, this is a start, right here: Arguing, pretending to be so damn cool - don't deny it, we all take more pride than we should in our "gamer" label - and not really doing a lot to solve the problem... whatever it is.
Actually, I don't know if this is the real problem, either, but it sure as hell is a bigger contributor to the bigger issue, whatever it is.

So in the face of all this, is there possibly a solution to be had for this phantom problem? My first guess is to just wait and hope that clearer heads prevail. Let the market do what it will do, keep playing the Gears of Halo Warfare, the Madden, the Kirby and everything else, and if something really big happens... maybe then we'll have a better idea what the problem really was, this whole time.

 

[faithhhhh]

Causal are not enemy but they are target people so in some way or another they are responsible for change.

 

[HardkorSB]

I think the ever-growing sentiment that "casuals are ruining the industry" needs to be addressed. I think this attitude has come more to the forefront due to massive success of the casual industry this generation, and the trends we've been seeing in our games. These include, lower difficulty, streamlined mechanics, less depth, low innovation, multiplayer prevalence and less genre diversity. Its natural to place the blame upon those "new" gamers considering many of these trends cater to their tastes. I, however, would like to point out that the same argument has used multiple times in the past, possibly even against you. It might give you some perspective that you were viewed equally as bad casual gamers today to older gamers, and I don't expect this line of reasoning to die out anytime soon.

However the fallacy of the argument doesn't rule out the fact that gaming truly IS changing. Its just that we can't make foolish assumptions and lay the current generation woes on "casual gamers". The truth I believe is much more complex. The trends I mentioned above might be a result of new gamers entering the fold with different expectations, but I think we're all to blame for the overall direction of the industry. The rapid march of technology, and our general expectation of what "production" values should be have played a large part of why games are what are they are these days.

I think simply put, the AAA industry can not support individual niches anymore. Its why we've seen a general "pooling" of genres(SHOOTERS AND RPG MECHANICS EVERYWHERE) and lower difficulty to appease the largest audience possible. Tailor your specific game to much, say like an epic turn based RPG or turn based strategy(like Temple of elemental evil or Xcom), and you're not going to garner the sales needed for success. Its why we see multiplayer being attached to what would normally be singleplayer games. Developers/publishers care about the perception of their product to the overall public(singleplayer/multiplayer alike), that they would include put together a haphazard multiplayer mode that doesn't even fit with the game. Why? Because they can't afford not to.

I think this is why I'm increasingly wary of this this next generation. I can't imagine the industry when production costs only will FURTHER increase from their current state, making it much harder to profit. This all ties to our expectation of production values should be. Its on us, bros, not them(the casuals). As long as we obsess over sheer graphic quality(no including art direction), genres like turn based strategy will be viewed as "non-contemporary" to developers(poor Xcom).

So what are your thoughts on this? What do you are the root causes for the "casualization" of the industry? Sorry for the long post. Kind of went on a ramble there.

For me, the difference between "casual" and "hardcore" gamers isn't in the games the play but how much time do they spend playing it.
If you play Farmville 5-6 hours per day everyday then you're not just doing it casually (an I know people who do that) just like if you're into "deep" complex rpg's and strategy games but you just play them once or twice a week for an hour or 2, just to waste some time then you're not that "hardcore".
It's the approach that matters here, not what you're approaching.

 

[LordLundar]

Would someon please explain what a casual gamer is to me so I can understand this better and then what the other side of the specturm would be?

The only static definition I've seen is "someone who likes a game I don't."