What Makes A Game "Hardcore"?

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RUINER ACTUAL

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Oct 29, 2009
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Cynical skeptic said:
RUINER ACTUAL said:
Fallout 3
To be fair, oblivion with guns is about as "pick up and faceroll" casual as bejeweled. On any difficulty.
I should've just put Fallout. Including New Vegas, because hardcore mode on that game will be a *****. One of my friends is going to play it straight through on HC.
 

Legendairy314

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Aug 26, 2010
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Anything not on the Wii *Ba Dum Tsh*

Now for my actual thoughts. For me a game will basically reach a certain point where it has a certain added element (such as a well designed multiplayer or the ability to take everything from your foes corpses) that it moves away from that casual audience. Themes simply aren't enough anymore.
 

MrNickster

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Apr 23, 2010
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In my books, for a game to be 'hardcore' (that word has become dirtied over time), it can't be a mini game collaboration and it is difficult but not stupidly so. That's about it for me. If a game was made with the intention of giving the player a fun challenge, it is a 'hardcore' game. If it was made to try and introduce outsiders to video games and is thus simplistic and relativley easy to win at, it is 'casual'.

Casual gamers are not the scum of the earth, as some people seem to believe.
 

bojac6

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Oct 15, 2009
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RUINER ACTUAL said:
Children don't play it, or there's no multiplayer.
I would actually argue that some of the most hardcore games are hardcore only for multiplayer. Counterstrike is definitely a hardcore game because you can't just pick it up and play it.
Starcraft must qualify, because you could make a career out of winning at video games, that seems hard core to me.

Some old school single player stuff might be hardcore, like Fallout 2 or Deus Ex, but come on. Children don't play Assassin's Creed and it has no multiplayer. I hardly think of it as hardcore (though very good). Batman Arkham Asylum is one of my favorite games, really wouldn't call it hardcore.

I think hardcore is how much effort you have to put into it to be considered good. Most modern single-player only games, despite being well designed, don't really require you to try that hard.
 

Scars Unseen

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May 7, 2009
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I would argue that the meaning of "hardcore" changes from genre to genre. What makes a platform hardcore is not the same as what makes a simulator hardcore. Also, there is a line that, once passed, drives a game from being hardcore to simply obtuse. Battlecruiser 3000AD is a good example of a game that can't even see that line anymore.
 
May 5, 2010
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I don't know. Anything incredibly complex or difficult, I would consider "hardcore".

Anything pathetically simple and easy for anyone, any age, to get into immediately, I would consider "casual".
 

SimuLord

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Aug 20, 2008
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To me, hardcore is anything capable of breaking the brain of anyone who thinks "strategy gaming" is Starcraft and DoTA.

Games like Victoria and its sequel (and really Paradox Interactive's entire body of work). Like Patrician 4 (which is fucking frantic for a game in its genre.) Like Football Manager and Out of the Park Baseball. Basically anything my ex-wife (herself an ardent WoW player and guild leader) thought was over her head, though she was an airhead so maybe that's setting the bar a bit low.