Do some gamers want to exclude others from gaming?

[acosn]

It is an issue of resources... people are afraid that the rise of other gaming (such as casual gaming) will shift larger companies to produce for that segment (instead of for their own segment of gaming).

You saw this happen when consoles grew more and PC game titles started to drop a lot.

It's a perfectly legitimate concern. You really can say that they don't make games like they used to. In some senses this is a good thing- if Japanese developers had their way RPG's would still heavily function in a turn based pseudo-DnD style combat system. Which is fine, but it doesn't work in every game. In others its a bad thing. Call of Duty really put the first foot forward for this one, but the idea that a game needs to hold your hand is something relatively new.

You see it a lot. A lot of games are scaled back in terms of what they try to do or what they challenge players with because developers are trying to capture a bigger audience and don't want to lose people with more complex systems (so the more complex games become more niche market and the resources to make them are much smaller).

This is an entirely different problem that stems from the corporate business model in video games. Which is in itself fine if you're trying to deliver your call of duty, or your Madden 201X. But it doesn't work when you try to inject the medium with any sort of creativity. Publicly traded companies and the capital that comes with them simply are not equipped to deliver a new experience in video games, they're for recirculating old ones. Ultimately the problem becomes that when games aren't necessarily unsuccessful, but rather that they're successful, but fail to reach arbitrary sales figures and numbers.

It's not that old bread and butter genres like the RTS or action FPS / TPS have shrunk- sales in the genres have actually remained fairly constant- but rather that everyone's looking at your world of warcrafts, your call of duty 4's, and so on and saying, "Well why can't we have that kind of money?"

Gamers are not a problem. It's a red herring at best. The industry has always been led around at the wrists by what sells. If you look back at Atari era games everyone was trying to make the next Pac Man. Maze navigation games became a genre because of it. Look back two decades and everyone wanted the next Mario or Sonic. Right now? FPS's. The market's always going to change, but as long as people are capable enough to voice their opinions with their wallets then things will be fine.

 

[AngloDoom]

I can see both sides of the argument, really. I'd personally love to see more people feeling comfortable with the medium and the obviously have to start on the casual games before they can get into what are considered the 'hardcore' games. More people joining in means bigger community and more money being brought to developers.

On the other hand, if more people join gaming due to casual games - which are often cheaper, easier, and less time-consuming to create - then it may weaken the drive of some publishers to create more 'hardcore' games and we'll end up watering down most games as a whole. A lot of the so-called 'dumbing down' of games I consider to be streamlining and efficient, but I'm not going to lie when I say I lack the patience with games I used to have because I'm used to things almost being handed over on a plate to me.

I honestly don't have an answer. I want the former with none of the latter.

 

[sammysoso]

Gaming is still a fairly insular culture, and it's a problem.

Video games are getting very popular. This is fact, screaming about "teh n00bz" and using the term "hardcore" unironically isn't helping anything. And it's perpetuating the stereotype that we're all socially-repressed shut-ins.

And the assumption that complicated=quality needs to stop.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Of course there is still a huge market for so called core games and it is foolish to think that casual games, or motion games, or social games, are going to kill core gaming or even hurt it in anyway.

A huge market for core games? Where? Only in action games. Puzzles in games have been dumbed down gradually over the last two decades because it is feared casual gamers won't buy something they can't play. Which is true.

Huge market for core games where? Here:
XCOM
Diablo III
Torchlight 2
King's Bounty: Warriors of the North
War of the Roses
Orcs Must Die!
Guild Wars 2
Unity of Command
Fallen Enchantress
The Witcher 2
FTL
Warhammer 40k
Super Meat Boy
Magicka
Fallout 3
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
Bastion
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Greed Corp
Crusader Kings II
Dark Souls
Worms Revolution
and tons and tons more.

Well yeah, there are some, but a lot of those games are dumbed down. Fallout 3 is for idiots compared with 1 and 2. Dark Souls is an action game, so is Witcher. And why Bastion? That game was easy. Ditto Diablo 3.

But you mention puzzle games specifically. Puzzle games have ALWAYS been a pretty small part of the gaming market but there are more puzzle games released now than ever before!
http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/genre/date/puzzle/all?view=detailed

I didn't say puzzle games - puzzles IN games. Doesn't matter what kind of game. I hate those puzzle games which are all puzzle and nothing else. It's true they are flooding the market, but that doesn't prove much. Most of them are easy.

So yes, there is a huge market for core games and there will continue to be. Some large games are "dumbed down" or rather simplified to appeal to a wider audience. That is not always a bad thing! There will still be complicated games made but the games made are more engaging and easier to play on your own terms. Overall it is a good thing.

I'm prepared to say there's a small market for challenging non-action games, but that's it. Whatever it is, it's not a "huge market" and it's much smaller than it used to be, comparatively speaking. All I know is the games I like have generally become easier to the point where much of the enjoyment is gone. There are many exceptions, but that's the general rule.

 

[Pink Gregory]

^ Define 'idiots'

 

[grey_space]

I never understood the whole "Hardcore" and "Casual" thing, playing a complex RPG doesn't make you hardcore.

Although I do see how games are becoming much simpler, Elder Scrolls is a prime example.

Totally agree. I found Skyrim way more easy to play compared Oblivion. And likewise Oblivion Morrowind

Even to the extent that I could see myself playing through Oblivion again way quicker than sitting down to trawl through Skyrim, even tho it's a way prettier game.

Simply a better challenge.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Yes. I know I certainly do.

I want to exclude everyone who buys and plays games that are (in my opinion, I'm not unbiased but I can want what I want) much less deserving of money than other games. Because that means more and more of that type of lowest common denominator, setpiece-driven simple crap and then almost inevitably my beloved games either pandering to that audience or going extinct. I'm not going to call these 'casual gamers', I'm going to call them 'tasteless gamers'. And I would just love to exclude them.

As for new players, completely the opposite. How anyone can want to exclude new players is beyond me. Being annoyed because they're in your team and doing hopelessly, fair enough, but you have to accept that as part of the game.

 

[Kinguendo]

I dont think anyone should be excluded from gaming, however I do think people who play certain kinds of gamers shouldnt be considered Gamers. Zynga and the like, last time I checked people playing Monopoly and Chess werent considered Gamers.

 

[Kinguendo]

I never understood the whole "Hardcore" and "Casual" thing, playing a complex RPG doesn't make you hardcore.

Although I do see how games are becoming much simpler, Elder Scrolls is a prime example.

Totally agree. I found Skyrim way more easy to play compared Oblivion. And likewise Oblivion Morrowind

Even to the extent that I could see myself playing through Oblivion again way quicker than sitting down to trawl through Skyrim, even tho it's a way prettier game.

Simply a better challenge.

I think the reason Oblivion was easier than Morrowind was because of 2 key things, 1) Mission Compass and 2) When you hit an enemy you actually hit them, unlike in Morrowin where you could stab an enemy right through the face and it would hit.

 

[snowbear]

Too much to ask, hoping half the posts wouldn't be misanthropic rants about how everyone sucks, or else justification of exclusivity bias. But meh, this is the Escapist. The reason console gaming is doing better than PC gaming is that, except for MMOs, console gaming has caught up to PC gaming in almost every way, but far more accessible. Sure there are super-cooled over-clocked powerhouses out there that can run Crysis at full, but is that necessary for a game to be good, to have the PC experience? If the biggest complaints are the controls and the lack of a graphics slider, PC gamers need to wake up. Those things barely matter. Do you really use more than 16 keys in most games? Not unless you're playing a MMO, and I'm not counting WASD movement, that's bound to a convenient sensitive analog stick. Graphics still an issue? Most gamers out there, even PC gamers, honestly don't care enough about the TINY boost in appearance to justify the need. You can only budge that slider up to your PC's optimal settings anyway, and consoles are already optimized, AND don't have to worry about background process crashing your game or literally anything short of a software bug grinding performance to a halt.

It's time that PC elitists understood that consoles are the mainstay of gaming. PC was an anomaly, it had a temporary boost because household PCs became commonplace and consoles favored volume over quality. Consoles aren't the mere electronic toys of the Sega era anymore, they've caught up in the tech arms race. They're independent, dedicated gaming PCs. All you're doing when you run a PC game is treating your computer like a console.

Errm where to start with this! this is going off topic a little but ill try not to stray too far.

The boost isn't just in visual fidelity, more power = more things on screen and overall larger scale (BF3 is a perfect example, not only were the graphics massively better also had the advantage of larger scale fights with more players).
The controls really do matter to some and for some games the removal of really sensitive aiming and custom hotkeys can completely change a game.

Imagine for an (unrealistic) example 343 studios decided to make HALO 4's main platform the wii. Making the the game amazing on the Wii graphically and control perfectly with the wiimote. Then porting the game to the xbox 360. When you played it you would realise the enemies moved slower to compensate for the imprecise aiming of the wiimote and the graphics seemed bland and lacking detail.

This would make people think that HALO had been dumbed down to cash in on the wii's success.
The same is true for the PC with the consoles. Im not saying the PC is better than consoles, but it is most certainly different, and to call PC gamers wrong is being elitist yourself.

As far as the OP's question goes, no I don't want to exclude anyone from gaming. However to do wish devs wouldn't try to cater to everyone all the time. Now and again it would be nice for them to say we are making this for the fans, we aren't going to make it more accessible, if people want to play it then they can still join the fans, learn and maybe find out why the fans like it the way it is in the first place.

 

[debra_ beretta]

Well, I've been gaming for 24 years and have seen this exclusionary attitude on many, many occasions. A lot of it is that snooty, "holier than thou" attitude, which I think has been encouraged due to the competitive nature of many games.

A lot of it (in my generation, I've noticed) comes down to a load of stuffy stuck-in-the muds whose eyes are too misted over by nostalgia to realise how gaming has changed and become a -huge- business and long for the days of yore when you'd invite your mates round for a few scary rounds of Doom. These guys like to throw out the "There's no originality in games these days, it were all better in my day, kids who play games now have no idea what they're doing" blah blah blah. If they'd only just open their minds a little, they'd realise that there are some *incredible* things going on, but they're just to stuffy to get it.

I grew up with a pile of Amigas to play with. I still have those machines, they're my babies. I'm not about to get snooty about casual gamers, console/PC gamers, new platforms or people who have only just started, or are young. The more people I can encourage into gaming, the happier I am. It might not be the same form as I grew up with, but if I can form bonds with strangers over shared experiences of games 20 years ago or those released 20 minutes ago, I'm of the opinion that we need to try to banish this exclusionary, elitist attitude which is ruining the experience for everyone.

 

[squid5580]

Duh.
Gaming is full of people who want to exclude others because they were excluded.

Also, I think they worry if games become more accessible then no one will make the games they like any more.

Call me an elitist, but I really wish casuals would just leave gaming all together. Games started going downhill when gaming became (more) mainstream, so I wish it would really become a more specialized hobby again.

So you want 8 bit graphics (or less) and games that are 1/2 hour long?

We are in the golden age here. I have been gaming since I got a colecovision at the ripe old age of 8. Sure games have gotten easier. But they have also become a richer deeper experience. Lets take the biggest complaint against Dragon Age 2. OMG the dungeons were all recycled. That is how most games were back when gaming wasn't mainsteam. Zynga has been around for years. The Wii has been around for years. And in the last month Dishonored was released. Think about it