Gaming is going to the casuals

[Dogstile]

I dunno. Did arcades kill off the old consoles? They were for the casuals of the time after all.

 

[sms_117b]

Sod the casuals, gaming is going to the masses!

have you tried an old RTS on hard recently? It'll kick your ass unless you've been playing it on and off for the last few years, on top of that every other (console) game is simple and geared at them, first they make college difficult for us and now they think video games are cool they're ruining them for us too, b**tards.

I'm not sure if I'm joking or not about this...

 

[randomuser642596]

I think this would be simply solved by pointing out the problem of supply and demand. Right now, there is more demand for causal and cheap games. Hopefully, the growing demand for "hardcore AAA titles" will be heard by developers and publishers. It'll all balance out in the end.

 

[Del-Toro]

Is casual gaming a threat to you?

Gamers ***** and moan about how they aren't taken seriously and then they allow this kind of thinking to exist in their ranks. First of all, we should be glad that the general public is beginning to take to videogaming positively and second, it's a fucking hobby, if you are genuinely threatened by changes to it that don't really effect you than you deserve to have your enjoyment of that hobby destroyed.

I bet stamp collectors don't have to deal with this bullshit.

Actually, with the advent of electronic communication, less and less people are actually sending letters, meaning there is less demand for stamps, and so less supply. Which does piss off many collectors. Seriously, there was this thing on the news about it. Yeah, I live in NZ. We don't get much news happening out here.

That doesn't really suprise me, and I can't help but wonder if the remaining stamps won't rise in value as they become an ever scarcer item. I guess it depends on what poeple will pay for it.

The idea I was trying to get accross was a disdain for the exclusivist mindset that has "the casuals" set up as "the enemy". It's probably not harmfull to the industry, bitter, fat 16 year olds being bitter fat 16 year olds rarely is harmful to industries, but it does poison our discourses wether it's pseudo-intellectualism that makes gamers look like idiots who don't realize they are idiots or this kind of knee jerk hostility towards the other that makes us deserve our reputation in the first place.

I kind of doubt that this kind of thing exists in the stamp collecting world.

 

[MrGalactus]

Why is this a problem? Developers like Rockstar wont stop doing what they're doing. I doubt they care about their profit margin as much as the quality of the games they make. If they did, they wouldn't have used that wildly expensive face capture technology for LA Noire.
Casual gaming is on the rise, but that doesn't mean core gaming is on the decline.

 

[Mark Flanagan]

Casual games are the gateway drug into gaming. The pot to the AAA industries crack.
As such I'm a big fan, more people that game in even the smallest way validates the industry as a whole.

Also Dance Central rocks.

 

[Twad]

Hardcore, casual. Just labels for "flavors" of fun.

I just want to have fun.

 

[Domehammer]

Casual structure gaming around life and Hardcore structure life around gaming. The real problem is people equate casual to being dumb as a rock gamers with no attention span that want simple easy games and hardcore as people who want super hard difficult complex games.

 

[Joey Wonton]

One or the other will succeed.
Then it'll get boring and the other will succeed.
It could just be down to fashion.

Pray to the mighty god of gaming, Rulkune. And sacrifice a goat in his name.

 

[F4LL3N]

There's no money to be made off angry birds. Isn't it one dollar? They'd need to sell a billion copies to match 10 million sales on a 'normal' game. Same with all the other casual games. Even a $10 game would need to sell 10 times more copies than a $100 game. Which is not likely since any decent game sells atleast 2 million copies (well known games that is).

Not to mention consoles sell 10's of millions of units. Last time I checked Xbox 360 and PS3 were reaching towards 50 million and Wii was around 85 million. I wouldn't use the Wii in your argument, as they take a considerably larger budget and time to develop games than an iPhone's. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will ALWAYS continue to make new and powerful consoles. They aren't going to stop to develop cheap iPhone games.

Finally. There's still heaps of games being developed. The three new consoles haven't been out that long and there's thousands of games and 100's of millions of units sold. So that's hardly an indication of game developers switching to cheap casual games.

 

[starwarsgeek]

Did that spark a little bit of annoyance?

Yes it did. It's pretty obvious that the giants aren't going anywhere, and it's annoying to see people arguing that more variety and accessibility is bad for the medium.

 

[neilsaccount]

Did that spark a little bit of annoyance?

Yes, but not for the reason you were probably hoping. It gets really tiresome to see people constantly bemoaning 'the casuals'. I like how you snuck that phrase in as well. Makes people who enjoy casual games out to be some sort of enemy - some kind of autonomous threat who are out to get you and ruin your hobby.

I can understand passion about the industry, but really, stop being so insecure about it.

I say this in every single topic that runs to this tune: Gaming is growing. It's naturally going to spread its wings. New companies will pop up to deal with different kinds of audiences. Gaming isn't just 'our' thing any more and people will either accept this as another stage in the mediums evolution or continually ***** about it by clinging on to childish labels like 'hardcore' and 'the casuals'.

Conventional AAA titles you can sink dozens of hours into are not going anywhere, no matter how many copies Angry Birds sells.

Ehhh...seconded!!!

 

[Velocity Eleven]

there will always be a market for the varying types of gamer, trends change over time but things generally wont get completely eradicated

 

[octafish]

Define casual, I consider anyone who doesn't play MFSX or rFactor a casual. (I'm a casual gamer by this definition) No-one deserves the name "core" or especially "hardcore" more than someone with a Flight Yoke, intsrument panels and Rudder Pedals.

 

[DrDango]

casual games are an easy introduction to games and are increasing the gamer population some will go hardcore later the others will stay casual and the extra hardcore audience will demand hardcore games. what companys will do is the thing that gets them the most money and the only thing that we control is what we choose and not to choose to buy

 

[mannaroth]

Dark Souls shall come! Casual gaming will DIE!!!!!!!

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

I'm not sure I'm worried so much about the 'casuals' as I am about the 'masses'. I also don't think GTA can be a 'hardcore game'. When it came out GTA3 was far removed from more aptly titled 'hardcore' games, and drew in a large following, which is what got that ball rolling in the first place. I was in university at the time, and kids would stop in all the time to play 5 or 10 minutes of it. These same kids would simply walk by if they saw me playing Xenosaga, Tekken or Tony Hawk even.

I dislike when development choices like those that resulted in Dragon Age 2 happened. 'Dragon Age 1 was too complex for -some people-, let's make 2 much more -streamlined- in hopes it'll draw a larger crowd'.

Did it? Probably. But as a big fan of the first I'm none too pleased.

 

[The Breadcrab]

If anything, embrace the casual gamers. We should be grateful that our hobby is being more accepted in society and that people other than hardcore gamers are interested. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a casual gamer in the same sense that there's nothing wrong with a casual movie-watcher or music-listener.

 

[Triskadancer]

I sigh every time I see a topic like this, but not because I'm angry at "the casuals."

Let's say the big-name devs do start making casual games. Consider this- cheap, easy to make, addictive casual games that sell a bunch of copies will help fund their bigger, risk-taking games. If the company has something they can fall back on for profit, they've got more room to experiment with the other games they put out.

That's just one way to refute the "casuals are ruining our hobby!!1!1one!" panic.

 

[TheDooD]

Gaming circles really never change it more or less what they have time to play and what they like to play. The problem is the publishers and PR yes men dictating what games are worth you're time. I give ya an example BF3 and MW3 are hyped extremely yet to me both are gonna be boring as all hell because I'm sick of "realistic" military shooters. Then there's Uncharted 3 from the beta seems like it better have a very good story or I'm gonna skip it completely. The shooters I'm looking out for are RAGE and Armored Core 5. I'm looking forward to Id's plans in Rage to make every enemy faction in that game fight uniquely. I'm wondering how deep will the team based combat and customization will be AC5.

I've also noticed that really hyped games are played by a lot of people but I keep thinking do they really enjoy it? Or is it because they have friends that play it. Are they just in it trying to be cool and say "yeah I played said game." Casuals gamer is basically an everyday gamer that plays every now and then. Which is a lot of people now I'm a casual gamer because I really don't have time to game like that. Light is more accurate to what "casual gamers and games" are labeled as. Yet even then most "casual" games have an high level of mastery. look at Tetris, Pac-Man, Missile Command, Asteroids, and Galaga. by there extremely easy pick up and play gameplay they're basically "casual" games. Yet the fact most can't "beat" these games makes them more hardcore then any AAA title and MMO.