"Hardcore" gamers are hipsters.

[Lordpils]

Casual gaming and hardcore gaming are simply lifestyle choices, is it wrong for me to enjoy games like The Sims (right now I'm loving Sims Medieval) as well as games like Dragon Age?
It's purely a matter of personal preference. For me I can't stand the Call of Duty series past Modern Warfare 1, but I know other people enjoy it. I can't say it's wrong to enjoy it nor are they bad people for enjoying it. I can point out my objections to it and deliver my opinion on the game with as much bile as possible, but I can't make judgements on them because they enjoy it.
Can't we all just get together and agree that Jack Thompson sucks and that IGN is the worst website for game reviews?

 

[Netrigan]

Seems to me hipster is just the latest trendy word to describe trendy people. Although there seems to be a lot of retro attitudes and ironic posturing in the scene, such as the fashion of wearing 70s style trucker hats. It's old, it looks a bit silly, therefore it's cool.

Although what is and isn't considered a hipster trend seems to come down to our attitude toward the trend. If you like a particular trend, then it's not caused by hipsters. If you don't like it, then damn those stupid hipsters.

As a result, I roll my eyes every time someone attempts to blame hipsters for anything. Such as, I've never seen anyone blame Justin Bieber (either those who enjoy or hate his music) on hipsters. I think people easily recognize it as just another trend that must be endured. So why is hating a popular video game suddenly in the domain of hipsters?

There are probably only a tiny amount of actual hipsters here (if any)... and they probably only play NES games ironically.

The word "hipster" along with the serious use of the word "hater" are pretty much clear signals that whatever opinion said person is espousing is little more than a knee-jerk demonizing of those who criticize something they enjoy.

Besides, I think the whole anti-hipster thing is completely over-blown. I imagine a bit of hipster style has seeped into our culture, but not everyone wearing a trucker hat ironically is a hipster... merely people who jumped on a fashion bandwagon. And every last one of us has done that from time to time, be it buying a pair of RayBan sunglasses after Top Gun came out or copying a famous actor/actress's hair style. True hipsters are just a small group of fashion obsessed people who exert a certain amount of influence upon the wider culture.

Hipster culture does not care that you enjoy Halo or Call Of Duty.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

But artist and developers "seeling out" is actually a real occurence. Unless you want to suggest Doom and Wizardy are worse than Ravenwood Fair.

 

[Weaver]

Though I don't blame casual gamers for that, I blame raving morons.

That's one of the more extreme examples off the top of my head. Unfortunately most people between the age of 20-30 in my area are complete, raving idiots and that seems to be the popular thing right now. If you have to stop shooting something for more than 30 seconds to listen to someone talking or, by God, if you have to READ to progress, it's not worth a second glance.
I've actually had a complete stranger complain to me that the first 5 minute of MW2 was "so lame because that sergeant dude talked for too long." Then upon seeing me playing Disgaea on my PSP, he started to flip out because it was turn based and that turn based combat is bad because the "developers were too lazy to put real time combat in." I was utterly speechless.
I know that not all gamers are like this, I just wish that this vocal few didn't force their views on me so aggressively.

YES THAT!

I Get the same things from hardcore gamers

Now i don't play halo because fps have never appealled to me but I don't like being told i'm ruinning the industry because i play casual games (even my love foor FFXIII gets me hate.)

There are vocal people on both sides.
Those are who i'm complaining about

IMO Halo and Call of Duty are casual games.

 

[mikespoff]

Thing is...what is a hardcore gamer?

I mean I play computer games like a nutcase. I have every generation of console and 3 old pc's in my possession. I play everything from L4D to The Sims 3, from Fallout Vegas to Dwarf Fortress. I have at least 3 games lined up to play atm but I'm making myself play ME2 for 100% for ME3. One of those game is Spore another is Dead Space 2. I have Amnesia to finish also.

I ran a guild on Wow but I'm taking a break atm because of work and left it in the hands of officers. Am I a hardcore gamer or do I lose points for playing the Sims and Frontierville? I dunno I just don't know where I fit to be making judgements on other people.

...and on top of that, what do we do about the people who spend weeks on end playing FarmVille? If they start to rival WoW and CoD fans in hours invested, does that make them hardcore gamers?

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Ok, lets get some definitions out of the way and this will flow much smoother.


Hardcore gamers are people who devote a lot of time. That's pretty much it, if you play something 10 hours a day, no matter what that something is, you're a hardcore gamer.





Hardcore games are games designed to be played for long amounts of times. You can tell this is the case if a game doesn't give you an option to save till you play it for 1.5 hour and has segments where you're supposed to keep going for maybe upwards of 3 consecutive hours in order to reach the next checkpoint or save space. Also, some games that require major time investment (albeit not a continuous one) to simply get good at them, games like fighting games or starcraft, yep, those also fit in.




So, by this logic casual games are games made to be played in short bursts and casual gamers are people who play games in short and casual bursts.


Here is the PROBLEM:

When a casual gamer plays a hardcore game casually, he diminishes it, he plays it badly and doesn't experience it as it should be experienced. This is highly offensive to the lovers of the item, it would be like watching the Godfather in 40 minute segments where all the music has been replaced with African harvest chants.




Casual games are actually good, they're what keeps our deep and meaningful games from getting crapped upon by the armies of casuals who can't and won't try understanding, much less properly experiencing, anything they do, because, well, if you don't spend enough time to develop meaningful connections what can you truly ever know or enjoy.

 

[DustyDrB]

I've always noticed similarities in the attitudes of hardcore gamers and hipsters, but their motivations for liking/not liking a game are usually different. Though it has always been tempting to say something like this...I may or may not be a little resentful for being labeled a hipster just based on the music I love.

 

[subject_87]

Well, I like the fact that 'casual' games are making games more culturally visible and acceptable, but granted we do have to make sure they're not just half-baked shovelware that could ruin someone's opinion of games forever; we need to tell people, 'Hey, games don't have to be about angsty, grizzled white men shooting lots of people, and playing them won't make you a hopeless loser!'. I've noticed that people who might normally outright dismiss video games cane turn around and play Angry Birds or whatnot with no cognitive dissonance, presumably due to some hazy mental distinction between 'these' games and 'those' games. As such, knee-jerk hatred towards them is counter-productive, lest we play into their shunning of the medium.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

How on earth do you define a hardcore gamer? Someone who spends alot of time playing? What if they are crap? are they still hardcore? and then if they are playing one game non stop do they really have any right to control the industry since they dont look at any variety of games. It's such a strange idea.

Also what's a hardcore game? :s Something that's hard to play or what? That's totally relative aswell.

 

[Woodsey]

I hope that I don't get suspended again for this.

Sir, screw you and the horse you rode in on, the two don't compare in the slightest, the reason that hardcore gamers like myself take issue with the prevalence and popularirity of casual games has nothing to do with gaming no longer being an exclusive club and everything to do with it becoming the (for lack of a better analogy) face of gaming.

We desire so much for gaming to be recognised as an artform, and method of storytelling that when we see a game we truely love, a game that we can all point to and declare "That game made me feel." being ground in to the dirt by a game that was made to trick people in to spending money...
Well we get upset.

Now granted we often laude obscure games, but that is because more often than not they fall beneath the radar and we wish to seek out hidden ems and bring them in to the light.

But it's always the simple games, the "safe" games the ones that don't innovate or try something new that get all the attention, with the way things are is it any wonmder we fear for the industry?
When any firm at any moment could look at their miserble profit margin for their latest relief and simply say "fuck it, from now on we make only standard military shooters!", or in a less likely but still terrifying scenario "Fuck it, it's facebook games for us from now on.", is it any wonder we freak out and bash casual gamers as a sign of the coming apocolypse?
Especially as more and more games are being simplified to appeal to them.

It's not that we hate casual games as such, it's that we fear what they mean for the industry.

Though there are of corse hipsters in the mix, that goes without saying, and they're no good for the industry either.

I have to laugh at this in light of your comment about being impartial the other day.

OT: Play the games you want to play.

Farmville and Peggle are not in the same market as Half-Life 2 and Mass Effect - if people are so up themselves about having only their market exist, they are stupid. Personally, I don't think sites like the Escapist should devote as much virtual space as they do for Facebook games and the like, because people don't come to this site to hear about them for the most part, but that doesn't mean I wank myself silly into the belief that Farmville is stealing people away from the likes of Assassin's Creed or whatever else.

 

[panosbouk]

The is nothing wrong having casual games so you shouldn?t be embarrassed. If I want a ?casual? game I will choose to play specific titles but If I want a challenge I?ll choose something else.

There are two problems.
The first problem is when having a specific tile, it comes to its next installment to change from ?hardcore? to ?casual?. When you made a start with a design and the game become a success for what it was, changing it to be more appealing to a wider audience (easier) what do you expect? I haven?t seen a casual game goes the other way? If there is please point it out.

Second is when you don?t keep the balance between the two. If they where 50/50 games it would be no problem. But if we keep increasing either way, then all this happens.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

How on earth do you define a hardcore gamer? Someone who spends alot of time playing? What if they are crap? are they still hardcore? and then if they are playing one game non stop do they really have any right to control the industry since they dont look at any variety of games. It's such a strange idea.

Also what's a hardcore game? :s Something that's hard to play or what? That's totally relative aswell.

How does skill factor in this? You don't need to be good at something to be hardcore about it. Most film buffs aren't professional directors or actors, in fact they outright suck at being good at what they enjoy. You're sorta being ridiculous here.



Also, you're imagining someone said that just one person controls the industry, that's wrong. That person only affects his specific niche, not the whole of gaming.


Lastly, I gave a couple of examples of a hardcore game, Starcraft was the perfect example. If you want more, games like Blazblue or Guilty gear. If you're not into fighting games or strategy, something like Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne should do.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

How on earth do you define a hardcore gamer? Someone who spends alot of time playing? What if they are crap? are they still hardcore? and then if they are playing one game non stop do they really have any right to control the industry since they dont look at any variety of games. It's such a strange idea.

Also what's a hardcore game? :s Something that's hard to play or what? That's totally relative aswell.

How does skill factor in this? You don't need to be good at something to be hardcore about it. Most film buffs aren't professional directors or actors, in fact they outright suck at being good at what they enjoy. You're sorta being ridiculous here.



Also, you're imagining someone said that just one person controls the industry, that's wrong. That person only affects his specific niche, not the whole of gaming.


Lastly, I gave a couple of examples of a hardcore game, Starcraft was the perfect example. If you want more, games like Blazblue or Guilty gear. If you're not into fighting games or strategy, something like Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne should do.

What makes those games more hardcore exactly more than other games? Isn't it kind of egotistical to impose some sort of magical podium for the games that you personally think make you better than another gamer for enjoying them? And I don't think skill is a strange thing to refer to, a 'hardcore' wow player is usually someone who is in a top raiding guild. For me a hardcore gamer would be someone who plays computer games regularly and with skill and can tell you alot of the gaming industry. I don't think it has anything to do with niche.

 

[Zay-el]

I also have a theory! All gamers come from Mars and I have evidence too, but I won't show it!

/sarcasm

 

[CheckD3]

Spoiler

A hardcore title isn't a game where big manly, muscle clad men run around punching things with their prostates, it's a game that has depth and complexities. It has a deep understanding of how it runs and even if it lacks a story, as Katamari does, it still has the complexity in gameplay innovations and can be held up to a movie as a piece of art. Being a good or bad game doesn't define if it can be art, because there are shitty movies that are art, why can't bad games be.

The problem is the casual game because what it is, is usually a single idea stretched out. It's like taking a single idea from a full game, cutting it out, and reselling it as a full game, stretching what would take normally an hour at most to complete and padding it out so it reaches the repetitive mark so much you could play for months and still get no where. It's like running on a treadmill, sure it's nice, but at the end of the run you're back where you started. Sure you got in the exercise and enjoyed the workout, but if you ran a mile on a treadmill, you aren't a mile away, you didn't go off and see a mile worth of journey, you saw the same thing for a mile.

well said

I think back in the day witht the whole "OMG casual gaming is killing hardcore!!" thing there was the common criticizm

"If you dont like Casual games and call yourself hardcore then your just a big dumb idiot hooked on testosterone with your guns and violence and tits!"

which isnt true at all, I want story, I want adventuer I want to give a crap about whats going on[/B] I dont play games just to kill time or for the novelty I can go do somthing else

thats why I dont like mario who wants to play the same game over and over again?

Thank you ^^

Ironically, I find that games like Wow are hardcore, because it's a full game that while addictive, gives you a goal, and uses multiple ways to complete.

Games like Bejeweled and Farmville are casual games, as is to an extent Angry Birds. It doesn't mean they aren't fun, and it by no means is hurting the game industry. However, the problem is when casual games are put into the spotlight as the example of what games are.

Hardcore and Casual games differ immensely. While Angry Birds is a successful, and I must add because I do play it when my ex girlfriend or mom let me play it, quite fun. But when people look at Farmville, they don't see art, and thusly so.

Hardcore games are the games that I would classify as art, because they try to have a narrative, a purpose, and work to get an emotional response from the person playing the game. A hardcore title looks to get under the player's skin and dig around and mess with their emotions. Try to pull heart strings, try to make a player empathize (I believe this is the right word, the one I'm looking for) with the characters. A casual game isn't art because it's looking to entertain the player while they do a task that can be repeated. Bejeweled isn't trying to make you cry when the diamonds vanish from existence, try to make you angry and empathize with the square jewels, it just looks to keep your attention and focus on the one goal, score points.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

What makes those games more hardcore exactly more than other games? Isn't it kind of egotistical to impose some sort of magical podium for the games that you personally think make you better than another gamer for enjoying them?

Good job putting words in Dreiko's mouth.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

I love games, I have loved games for the entire 21 years I have lived, or at least for as long as I remember. I don't like the "new wave" of casuals because a larger portion of games are getting easier and shorter, there aren't many challenging games around outside of the indie or JRPG genres and lets not even talk about FFXIII.
What I will say that I "hate" is when the casual gamers stereotype ME for playing difficult games. Guess what, we're giving what we have received for our entire lives. YOU ridiculed US for generations, and NOW you're going to traipse on our lawn, change the way we organised our ornaments and you're now bitching at us for liking things the way they were.
I still love games regardless. Does that make me a "hipster?" I don't think so and I think you're generalizing. Get a life and stop looking for a fight.

This. Heaven forbid I rub it in the faces of people who did the same thing to me 7 years ago.