299: Casual Gamers Are Better Than You

[Zom-B]

3. The clear point the author was making with the "smartness" of the Farmville player is in the financial sense. Rather than shelling out $60 up front, hoping for a good game, these players are choosing experiences that are free to start, and then only paying for what interests them, and only if it interests them. They are encouraging a pricing model that gives them, the player, far more control over the cost of the experience... whereas a lot of us happily roll over and shell out $60 because that's just the norm.

Financial concerns might be one side of the coin, but let's not also forget time investment. A Farmville player (we'll keep using it as an example) might not be paying money for their game, but they are paying in time. Sure, so is the person who pays $60 for a game, but most traditionally released console titles are finite, i.e. they have an end. As far as I know, Farmville does not. There is no end goal or end state to the game. You simply grow and maintain your farm ad infinitum.

You could argue that that further cements Farmville as a smarter financial choice, but I would argue that it's just a bigger time sink. Once I finish my $60 game, I'm usually done with it, unless it's particularly good or there is extra content outside the game ending that makes it worth playing. For me, I've had an experience with a beginning, a middle and an end. The Farmville player has a beginning and then a never ending maintenance schedule, unless they choose to quit, at which point they have nothing to show for it except a slowly deteriorating farm and the hours sunk into the game. I've usually experienced a story, at least, and I have the satisfaction of beating the challenge that any given game presents. Farmville may be challenging in a sense, but you can't ever "beat" it.

So who's really smarter here? Either? I do know that personally I value the time spent in the console games I play more than the time I spent trying out games like Mafia Wars or Farmville. It was readily apparent to me that both games I mentioned would not satisfy me and in fact, were designed in a way that would leave me continually unsatisfied. That is the whole point of those games, it's the way they keep you engaged. There's always that next level, that next tier of gear, the next boss in the hierarchy. I don't see how subjecting oneself to that form of "gaming" is inherently better than any other sort. Sure, it's free if you choose not to pay, but there are scads of players that do invest not only time, but money into these "free to play" games.

Does this mean we need a third category? The smart Farmville player, the stupid Farmville player and the inferior to both "hardcore" gamer?

 

[Ca3zar416]

Talk about someone else. I'm the bitter fan that curses the "core" gaming public for not buying creative games like Killer 7 or Persona 4, instead opting to be the 9 millionth person to buy the next CoD. I really don't wish I was a Casual player.

I have to completely agree here.

 

[Dastardly]

... Of course not, but the people who are only just getting on the bandwagon now and giving their disposable income to the Nintendo advertising machine doesn't make them better then us.

I do apologize for that misunderstanding. Let me address the above quote, which I feel is both the central thesis of what you were saying (and also one of the main points I think got misinterpreted from the article):

The author seems to be of the mind that a lot of developers are beginning to think that casual gamers are a better target audience. Now, that doesn't mean Blizzard or Valve are switching to casual. It means that new developers coming into the business are finding that their chances for success are greatly improved by going after the casual gamer.

The more hardcore gamers expect an epic scale (read: expensive to make) game every time, and if given the choice they'll tend to buy things very similar to what they've bought in the past. Furthermore, their opinions are older, and more strongly formed... which means they are often inflexible. So, the future developers of the world tend to shy away from that mentality and will start "small" with casual games to build the NEXT audience-cohort like the one you've described...

 

[Smokescreen]

" Many unique games - Killer 7, Okami, Psychonauts, Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom, to name but a few - have fallen by the wayside due to the hardcore gamer's inherent skepticism. "

What?

Those games are CONSTANTLY touted as being awesome and ones that people should play/pay attention to and who is prompting this?

The hardcore. There is no evidence in this article to suggest that it is the casual gamer who is taking risks on new IPs. They are playing videogames that do not match what people thought of is videogames, that's all.

There's some interesting ideas here but I don't think this article executed them well.

 

[Muphin_Mann]

Your own reaction should, if you take just a moment, serve to prove that point--even if you disagree with how the point was presented.

Correlation doesn't imply causation, and you're making assumptions you really shouldn't. My mind is very open and i certainly did consider the truth behind the article. It didn't last. Using debatable facts about piracy to prove a point about casuals, assuming certain things are true without proving them to be so, generalizing a lot more than he should, using a deliberately inflammatory point of view even though it wasn't needed at all and so forth.

But surely my calling of bullshit means i'm too closed-minded to accept his totally valid points. Logic 101.
Ironically enough, i'm not even the demographic he's targetting with this - i'm just pointing out he uses shock value to give him credibility rather than solid reasoning.

I beg to differ.

A:No it doesnt, but causation is simply that. Game developers ARE catering to casuals who are more willing to buy innovation. Its all over the place in this gaming community.

B: His facts about piracy may be debatable, if he presented them as facts. He even acknowledged that some soccor moms might pirate games, but in the end it requires knowledge to pull of major game piracy, which the more hardcore gamers often claim casuals lack. Somehting i myself have seen many times and am guilty of. So are we all wrong about casuals lacking serious software knowledge? If so we are being unfairly elitist. If not, then we must be the ones responable for most piracy, since they lack the no-how to pull it off more often than not.

Cossibly. You calling bullshit on his totally valid points does strike one as being closed-minded. As evidence supporting that idea i would like to point out that his points were actually rather valid and your calling of bullshit on them suggests your regecting logic as a blanket policy. Especially considering you did so without offering any counter-fact more oslid than his (real stats on soccer moms commiting piracy VS core's) or alternative explanations (Why else are the game developers acting like they do? Why are cores not playing good games that casuals are?).

Financial concerns might be one side of the coin, but let's not also forget time investment. A Farmville player (we'll keep using it as an example) might not be paying money for their game, but they are paying in time. Sure, so is the person who pays $60 for a game, but most traditionally released console titles are finite, i.e. they have an end. As far as I know, Farmville does not. There is no end goal or end state to the game. You simply grow and maintain your farm ad infinitum.

Exactly. Pure bliss.
Sarcasm aside, the point of time works against the core gamer. Some of us buy games and set them aside on finishing. $60 for between 10 hours (modern fps) and 100 hours (rpgs) of play. A farmville player (just using that as the base example still) could play free for that 100 hours, and then play more.
All games are time sinks unless you find away to get paid playing them. Spending more time on them is what most all players want. Farmville players want a bigger farm. MMO players want more areas and loot and levels. RPG players want expansions and party members. FPS players want more maps.
If farmville stops being fun, the player stops playing. Same with all games. You arnt shackled to them. But with no end he doesnt have to feel like he was cheated out of his money via the game ending too soon.

To oversimplyify, i will present it like this:
WoW is a complex and lavish time sink that will suck away your life and cost you hundreds of dollars (60+30+30+30+30+13+13+13+13...).
Black Ops (for variety) is a moderatly complex and aciton packed time sink that will suck away your life and cost you hundreds of dollars (60+10+15+15+15+15...xbox live fee)
Farmville is a simple and idiotic time sink that will suck away your life and cost you a variable sum of money as your own discrecion. (0+variable+variable+variable)

I dont play farmville because i view it as simple and idiotic. But in terms of cost VS time you can play it does have its perks.

 

[ryukage_sama]

Starting from the title, this article is trolling many of its readers into demonstrating aggressive, intolerant behavior. It was meant to break some people of their superiority complex, but the author's attempts to antagonize certain gamers are part of the problem.

I don't think that I'm better than THOSE gamers; I think that my GAMES are better than their GAMES.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

I think the definition of hardcore gamer in the article is one who only plays Halo, CoD, and Battlefield or one of any other generic FPS.


1st: One of the biggest questions I have is why is a soccer mom's ignorance a blessing. Yes they won't have any incoming bias about games but is that necessarily a good thing. Aren't ignorant buyers just as likely to be taken in by flashy advertising? Isn't it possible a soccer mom might think "Sonic! what a cute little blue critter. This game looks like it might be fun." without realizing that the Sonic franchise is notorious for turning out terrible games.

2nd: I will say that free games can be a blast. I love to play League of Legends and I think it is an amazing free game. I also know that I have had much thoughtful experiences with console games than free games. What about the wonder of exploring Rapture in Bioshock or running across the rooftops of Rome in Assassin's Creed? Although we are paying $60 for games like these, don't these games have a more lasting emotional impact on us. It seems to me that you are arguing that chips are better than a 4 course meal because a chip gives you instant satisfaction but which one is more nourishing?

3rd: I don't think casual gamers are any more open to new concepts or design than the average gamer. What I think is that the casual gamer market has not been saturated in the same manner as the "hardcore" gamer market has been. I think once you get enough "angry bird" clones or "cut the string" knock offs, casual gamers will become a much more selective audience that is lest like to jump on a game because it is new.

 

[Muphin_Mann]

Missing all my points and twisting the meaning of my words doesn't make for a good april fool's joke. But at least you tried.

Your "points" if you can call them that were glaringly obvious from your first post on. The part that reads like a bad joke is what im quoting, where you dont even bother trying to apply any actual logic, statistics, or alternative arguments to oppose either my point or that of the content article and instead reduce yourself to pettily demeaning my pointing out of the flaws in your arguments because you are either unwilling or, more likely unable, to counter them.

Go back to your first post on this thread and re-iterate it, with hard facts or at least reasonable counter arguments or alternatives to support why you think the article is wrong or overly slanted.

Or dont. I cant make you. Im not afraid to acknowledge good points when they come up, like Evil Alpaca's third point that casuals dont suffer the same level of oversaturation to jade them. Or Ryukage who i wholeheartedly agree with to the extent that games like Farmville are trash from an artistic or immersion perspective.

 

[Haydyn]

Hahahahahaha! I guess all the douchebags who say James Cameron is the best director of all time based entirely off Avatar who can't name a single other movie he directed are better than people who have actually seen his other work. Happy April Fools Day everybody.

 

[Wolfenbarg]

First thing's first, you really need to make a clear indicator for what types of casuals you're talking about, because that makes a huge difference in the points you're trying to make. The people casually playing Farmville or Wii Fit aren't the same people casually playing Call of Duty. 'Core developers' care deeply about how they can tap one of those markets, while the other is already being strip mined as much as it can be. Anyway, now that that has been said.

Developers aren't willing to take risks because of the cost of development, not the movements of their audience. People don't jump on those new ideas because the big developers are too afraid to touch them, and if you don't have a triple-A or close quality game with big ideas, then the market won't move in that direction, at least not in this stage of gaming's life cycle. That's why things like XBLA are so exciting. The cost of entry for developers is falling through the floor, and within a few years we will see a plethora of interesting games that make a tidy profit and explore new ideas that the triple-A arms will rip off wholesale. It's shady, but it will lead to much better games.

Also, what new ideas are casual gamers more interested in? Something that caters to their passing interest? Okay. So why bring up games like Killer 7 and Psychonauts as if casual gamers would be interested in them? Heads up, they wouldn't be, and they won't be the next time games like that are released. Do you really think a company like Bethesda cares about the movements of people obsessively playing Farmville? I don't think so. As I said earlier, they're more interested in people casually playing games like Call of Duty, because unlike your Wii Fit audience, those people can actually make the core gaming market move drastically.

 

[Rane2k]

It´s not enough that the article insulted me in many ways. No, it appears in my RSS feed for the third time now, always reminding me of this piece of trolling.. :-(

 

[Sylocat]

*sigh*

Some good points, buried beneath a layer of vitriol designed to provoke flamewars in the comments without actually contributing anything to the article. It's like, you had some really good ideas, then said to yourself, "Let's see, how can I get more pageviews... I know! I'll make some inflammatory generalizations!" and lost sight of the message you were trying to convey. And yes, I "get" that it's supposed to be over-the-top and sarcastic, but it doesn't work.

I'll skip the lengthy rant about "I don't hate Zynga because they make 'casual games,' I hate Zynga because they make BAD casual games," because it's been said too many times (although, given Zynga's history of installing malware on their players' computers, they might not be the best example to pick anyway).

So has the point that you seem to be overlooking advertising (which, make no mistake, is the BIGGEST factor in hard-copy game sales), but I suppose that would just be more whining from the butthurt hardcore gamer, huh?

 

[nebtheslayer95]

As long as the "core" gamers still get games which they enjoy, why should they care if casual get games? Interesting article, but I don't completely agree...

 

[FightThePower]

I agree that the Casual audience gets too much unnecessary hate thrown at it, and I agree that any given hardcore gamer is not 'better' than any given casual gamer but your arguments were pretty terrible, if I'm honest.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

As much as I do have an inherent dislike for the casual gaming audience, I at least know that this is irrational and there's nothing really wrong with them. I consider myself a "core" or "hardcore" gamer and I do not at all fit the stereotype that this article tries to set for me. First of all, if I see a game from an obscure developer that looks interesting, I get interested in it. Every hardcore gamer I know is just the same. As far as I can tell, the writer was making a extremely uninformed and narrow minded generalization. Of course when a game comes out from a company I like I'm obviously going to have high expectations from it, and why not? They've made good games in the past, it's reasonable to assume that their new games will also be good.

Secondly, I completely disagree with the article's statement that we should become like casual gamers. The phrase "ignorance is bliss" comes to mind at this point. Casual gamers have much less exposure to the gaming industry so simple games like farmville appeal much more to them, there's less of a learning curve to get into it. As you play more games, however, you'll want more complex stuff, games with gripping storylines, good gameplay and immersion. I'm sure that I'd find games more fun if I enjoyed every single game that came out, but if people did that there would be almost no improvement in games. Not to mention that I actually have a personal taste in games, I can't suddenly say, "Farmville is a free game and easy to get into therefore I shall start liking it as of now."

Wow, it's pretty evident that I hate farmville.

Basically what I'm trying to get at is that casual gamers are fine, if they want a simpler gaming experience then power to them, and hardcore gamers are also fine. I don't care how efficient it would be for me to completely change my interests but that isn't going to happen. I'm perfectly content playing games like Shadow of the Colossus, Mass Effect, Dragonage, and no amount of backwards logic will change that.

 

[thenoblitt]

in all honesty this just comes off as pretentious and i can never believe anything that comes off as pretentious

 

[benvorbeck]

I really enjoyed reading this article and the comments and evrything in it is true but for good reason. I am a hardcore gamer myself and yes it true that we complain and ***** about casual gamers.
I think the fear we(hardcore gamers) hav is that most developers main ineterest is just making money and that they lack in passion and skill to make deeper and better games.
We think if we dont complain about casuals and making a point about it, developers will just do what they want and produce less good games.

So i say : lets fight for the art of gaming and look down upon casual gamers !!!