Jimquisition: Hardcore Hypocrisy

[plainlake]

So.. this "hardcore gamer" group.. Do they have a downwritten ideology? Because Jim seems to simply have an idea of who is in this group. This is stereotyping and you know who stereotyped alot? Hitler did. yeah, dident know that did ya?
TLR
Jim Sterling is a nazi(wich could be good people in a pressured situation)

 

[Rabish Bini]

Ah, good ol' Punch Out!

Now there's a hardcore game if I've ever seen one

 

[Strain42]

Hardcore Hipster here: I've been championing hardcore iOS games before Jim Sterling made a video about it

Same here. I love my iPod Touch, it's actually the one gaming console I use the most now. It's small, easy to carry, loaded with fun games and more often than not I'm finding FREE games on the top charts.

I'm glad that Jim did an episode about it, because I really do wish people would stop treating iOS games as somehow inferior.

 

[Hiroshi Mishima]

I have always used this definition of gamer. Do you play games, 'yes', do you like playing games, 'yes', do you know how to get the games that interest you (retail, DD, etc), 'yes', congratulations, you are a gamer.

This is a great way of putting it. Like Jim's example, my mother actually played NES games with me. Stuff like Othello, Monopoly, Anticipation, Pinball... certainly not as "difficulty" as something like Mario or Final Fantasy, but we had a lot of fun. She especially enjoyed bowling games, which is why she monopolized my Wii for a summer playing Wii Sports' bowling game with my aunt and their friends.

...damn, lost my train of thought cause I got caught up watching MegaUltraJMan while posting this and became hopelessly entranced by Super Tempo.

I'll just sum this up by saying that Jim's got a lot of good points, and I think more than a few "hardcore" gamers can go stick their heads in a bucket of water. Also, having grown up on ridiculously hard-ass games on the Atari and NES, I have absolutely no gods-damned problem with games being a bit easier these days. I certainly don't have months to devote to mastering a game and just wanna relax and have fun.. but of course, "hardcore" gamers will tell you that's not what gaming is about.

I wonder if Jim did a video on "difficulty", cause I see far too many people bitching about games being easy, while I see just as many complaining that they're too hard. Unfortunately, all the people going on that games are too easy makes the developers thing we want harder games. Many games, when localized to the US, somehow end up being deliberately made harder or simply have difficulty settings removed for some obligatory reason.

By the way, I don't think "casual" gamers should be let off, either. Though they aren't as big of a problem as the "hardcore" crown, they can be seen as a reason why so many games don't try hard enough to come up with new ideas. Unfortunately, the same can also be said of the other side of the coin, and now I'm just rambling and forgetting what point I was trying to make.

So I'll stop talking here. Hopefully someone can make sense of this.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

If we are all wrong, and you are right. THen what happens when we agree with you?

Paradox! Universe explodes.

Truly though, you can't apply logic to hyperbolic rhetoric and expect clean results.

 

[MB202]

I don't own any iOS devices, but I might get one just to play Infinity Blade II... Among other things...

 

[Kapol]

My problem with Infinity Blade and many other iOS games is simple. They're exclusive to iOS and ignoring the Android market entirely. As someone who doesn't want to shell out $500+ for a piece of hardware that I can get the same specs with upgradeable memory instead of being force to handle such a pultry ammount of space for about $300, it really sucks to see so many flocking to the Apple platform just because it has more customers right now.

But with the growing awareness of Android, and it becoming much more widespread over a variety of tablets and phones, I think it'll gain strength before too long. I just hope that the companies making great games like Infinity Blade realize that before it's too late and at least give us something. I think the problem will end up being kinda end up being similar, yet entirely more pointless, then console vs. PC.

 

[snd_dsgnr]

Here's my problem with something like Infinity Blade in particular and games designed for phones in general: they make the battery run out faster, sometimes much faster.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I kind of need to have my phone available and my job doesn't always give me the opportunity to charge it in the middle of a shift. Most of the time if I'm able to charge my phone and play a game at the same time it's because I'm in my house, and if I'm in my house then why wouldn't I just play something on one of the three dedicated consoles or gaming PC that are also in residence?

So I don't really have any problem with IOS or Android games as games, I tend to agree that some of them are actually pretty clever in how they set up control schemes. I just don't know that I really see this as the next big step in gaming, as some people seem to think it will be. I do think the expansion of the phone game market will end up sounding the death knell for dedicated portable consoles though.

 

[Krion_Vark]

So... Call of Duty is casual and Mario Kart is hardcore? Did I wake up in the Bizarro universe or something?

By the definition for Casual and Hardcore that Jim gave in the episode they are both casual games because they are simple to play. While a game like Dark Souls is a hardcore game because of how difficult it is.

 

[Vault101]

the way I've seen it...I judge somones "hardcore" verses "casual" NOT in the games they play..but how much they KNOW

if somone freaquents sites like the escapist, can name and understand different games and genres and just generally "know" whats what in the industry right now then I would call them hardcore..

but thats just me

 

[Vault101]

I don't hate casual games.

I hate the industry for dumbing so many games down so that those smug, middle class cunts in those video excerpts might consider playing them.

The industry is in love with the idea that their games will gain wider recognition and acceptability - which translates either into being played at parties by 'non-gamers' or, on the flipside, being played by the multiplayer jock crowd - how else explain Bioware's desperate whoring to multiplayer other than their acceptance of the stereotype that single player is for nerds, brah... Each is as bad as the other.

.....I dont think single player is going anywhere though...depth and complexity sure

 

[LazyAza]

I always laugh at the hardcore vs casual whiners because like most sane people who play games I like diversity. Not every game needs to have a million systems and a billion hours of content to be amazing. It really depends on the individual game. Take Arkham City for example, I felt they added too much to the combat and I constantly found myself doing the wrong thing at the wrong time because I've forgotten the exact specific way to deal with the specific enemy using the specific gadget/combo required. Likewise the city area, though much larger than the asylum feels less interesting, less refinied and less meaningful.

And on the flipside their is Crysis 2 which I felt was way too simplified and streamlined compared to the original game which had a certain scope and depth to its design and systems I had far more fun with.

 

[Gatx]

How does he know they're hypocrites? Not all hardcore gamers like or even respect the Mario franchise. Maybe they didn't grow up playing those simple 8-bit games. Just because it helped the industry doesn't mean every gamer likes Mario, maybe some hardcore gamers grew up with RPGs and 4x strategy games or something, so then they wouldn't be hypocrites exactly. But then again the likelihood of this being even partially the case is fairly small.

 

[Fearzone]

Salvadore Dali once said: the first person who paints clocks melting from a tree is a genius, the second person is probably an idiot.

Pong pushed the medium forward, then Lunar Lander, then Space Invaders and Asteroids pushed the medium forward beyond that, then Donkey Kong and Pac-Man, and then Street Fighter started doing it's thing. Each of these were advances of video gaming.

So if somebody took Pac-Man but rendered Pac-Man in 3D as a colorful seal eating glistening fish on the beach while sea monsters with kelp hair chased him amid a maze of waterfalls and sand castles with surprisingly good texture and particle effects, and put that on an iOS device with mediocre touch-screen controls, should we be impressed with how great that is?

If Infinity Blade is graphics demo for the iOS with shallow gameplay added as an afterthought because it has to be there, I'd say the so-called hardcore gamers are showing good discretion.

 

[Sylveria]

If only Infinity Blade was given the opportunity for a proper console release. I'd love to see what the minds behind that game could do to it with more versatile hardware.

I don't have any particular issue with iOS stuff, just the hipsters that use Apple products. I imagine a lot of the vitriol comes from the fear that eventually all gaming may turn into iPhone level gaming because of the better costrofit ratio. The "real" gaming area has it's fair share of shovelware (CoD and the EA sports stuff being the most notable) but there's a lot more garbage on the iOS which is still pulling decent profits at far lower cost.

The only time I've put on my "hardcore" hat is talking about WoW when they started retooling the game for a minimum effort = maximum reward system to cater to the "casuals". The result of that is what you see in WoW now; a game that is completely broken, because it's trying to please everyone, with effectively nothing to do most of the day. You raid maybe twice a week, and the rest of the time you either don't play or run dailies. Ironically enough, few people actually "play" casually, they still put in tonnes of time each week, but instead of working on raid content, they just sorta twiddle about.

Of course, WoW still has its "Hardcores" but really they're putting in far more time than most people and not getting much for it when the day is said and done. But, they still get to swing their epeens, and that's all that matters to them.

 

[Sylveria]

I don't hate casual games.

I hate the industry for dumbing so many games down so that those smug, middle class cunts in those video excerpts might consider playing them.

The industry is in love with the idea that their games will gain wider recognition and acceptability - which translates either into being played at parties by 'non-gamers' or, on the flipside, being played by the multiplayer jock crowd - how else explain Bioware's desperate whoring to multiplayer other than their acceptance of the stereotype that single player is for nerds, brah... Each is as bad as the other.

.....I dont think single player is going anywhere though...depth and complexity sure

It may not be going anywhere, but we see it becoming an afterthought rather than the focus and it'll likely get worse as time progresses.

I have to agree with Six though. We've seen many-a-game where the sequel had a lot of "complicated features" stripped out or over-simplified to appeal to people who are, quite frankly, dumb and lazy. There's become this big thing in current gaming where people seem to just want the game to drag them, kicking and screaming if necessary, to the end credits. They've started making games to accommodate that "let's just get this over with" mentality.

They don't allow people to explore or experiment. Some games, like one of the recent shooters of this season, actually would fail your mission if you decided to explore. But I think FF13 is probably the most grievous example of this; there was nothing but a 1 way tunnel to the end game with 2 exceptions, a little 'fix this robot" quest in a ruined city, and the "Kill this named" missions in Pulse; half of which couldn't even be completed until after you've beaten the game because it limits how much you can level.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

While I did grow up with sonic and other such simpler games, I do not any more enjoy playing them much at all and haven't done so in the last 15~ years. I tried to get into mario galaxy and it was just dull. I indeed wouldn't play any such game over the ones I am currently playing (blazblue, disgaea, persona, you know the deep stuff)


The funny thing is that I wouldn't call infinity blade a casual game, though other games do deserve that title I feel that for what it is it's about as non-casual as it gets. In a world where Wrpgs are all button-mashy action games with looting ant stat elements like Diablo it's a breath of fresh air.


Oh and call of duty is indeed a casual game. If you have millions of people all on one game you can't expect everyone to be pro.

 

[nick2150]

JIM! Enunciate your T's. I know youve been in America for a long time, but a more English pronunciation is perfect for your style of pseudo arrogance and smugness!