Recently, I have come to the realization that only certain genres have become popular in Western Culture. Shooting and sports games are becoming mainstream, not RPG's and RTS's. PC and less popular genres still are not considered mainstreams, and why I think that being a "gamer" still carries a stigma. Do you agree with this, your thoughts on the matter?
Poll: Shooters are becoming mainstream, not video games.
- Thread starter Connor Mulhern
- Start date
It depends on the game. I don't think ANY game put out by Atlus will be too easily put on the 'Meh' list. I think ALL of the CoD games WILL. It's all a matter of opinion, perspective, and taste.
People are easy to please I guess?DeadlyYellow said:
EDIT: Oh wait you meant as in there cant just be one genre because it would be too boring?
K, I'm kinda confused now....
As far as a marketing drive i can see where your coming from. Last time is was in my local EB is noticed a sad sad thing, Of all the advertised games for the "mainstream" consoles with posters up on the walls were all FPS of one form or another. Maybe rednecks in m,y town love them some CoD multiplayer so maybe i just live in a bad marketing area. 
The shooters of today are a darned plague.
Unless it's Team Fortress 2 or Counter-Strike.
Classic games, both of them.
~Tom<3
Unless it's Team Fortress 2 or Counter-Strike.
Classic games, both of them.
~Tom<3
bumppenguindude42 said:
also, i know quite a few people who are just on the line of being mainstream and hardcore gamers, the ones who play minecraft but find other games nerdy, its quite odd
Shooters are games.
Thats like saying that in the 1950's Rock n' Roll was not considered music, despite it becoming main stream rather quickly.
Shooters are popular because they allow us to interact with a world alot more than most genres, thats what is popular right now, them being the closest to actual virtual reality.
Thats like saying that in the 1950's Rock n' Roll was not considered music, despite it becoming main stream rather quickly.
Shooters are popular because they allow us to interact with a world alot more than most genres, thats what is popular right now, them being the closest to actual virtual reality.
It really depends, and even better, shooters or sport games became "Gateway Drugs". No, just kidding, but what I mean is that if someone starts playing say Call of Duty 20 hours a week, eventually he might wanna try something else, for instance a fighting game, and find he loves them. Basically it opens up a lot of exploring, and he might even end up playing RTS games on a PC. For instance, most of my non-geek friends (With some serious 'help' on my side are now really hyped about Diablo III) So yeah.
TL;DR Maybe Shooters are the most mainstream kind of game right now, but that helps people who otherwise not play at all try our medium and maybe even fall in love with geekier games.
TL;DR Maybe Shooters are the most mainstream kind of game right now, but that helps people who otherwise not play at all try our medium and maybe even fall in love with geekier games.
I don't think that is what he means. I actually agree with him on a level. Shooters and social games are mainstream in that they are more accepted in pop culture. Guitar Hero and Rock Band were even acceptable for a time. But RPGs, strategy games, simulation games, etc. are not. CoD made shooters acceptable because it became a pop culture icon through other mediums. Halo never really did this for some reason, maybe CoD had a lot more product placement or something but the fact remains. A lot of facebook players don't even consider facebook games "video games". They actually separate them in pop culture as something else. iPhone games and social games are seen as something else. Pop culture claims a video game is something played on a home console. CoD counts as a video game in everybody's eyes but oddly, many CoD fans will say they "aren't really gamers, they just like CoD."Strain42 said:
Society or pop culture is the one saying that these aren't video games, not the OP. Liking video games is "weird or pathetic" to pop culture. But liking shooters or facebook games is deemed acceptable, thus they must not count as video games. The general public isn't that bright. By doing this they can still look at RPG, strategy, and adventure fans as weird and pathetic or psychologically repressed in some form. Hypocrisy is grand isn't it?
I'm beginning to think you're a bit out of the social spectrumSvenBTB said:
.Final Fantasy was NEVER-NEVER-NEVER Mainstream, it's much too FANTASY and corny to be so, the sporty-jock people have swamped the gaming market only AFTER Call of Duty Modern Warfare 1 was released, then continued to do so.
To further prove this, at College I talked to one of my friends who doesn't really play games and I told him about Starcraft 2 and thought I was lying at the complexity of said game, which he then told his friends and they were quite bemused with the idea.
When I talked about Oblivion I was laughed at with scorn by a few people, because it has Elves, Magic and Role playing. They sort of shrugged their shoulders at Fallout 3 and laughed at the sci-fi RPG Mass Effect 2.
In conclusion, shooters are the only real genre in which the non-gamer audience is really interested in, they want quick fast fun, they do not want tactics, progressive difficulty, grins or complex thinking, they only play it for quick fun in which they can blow away a few hours.
I think you're right regarding cod, that's mainstream, a lot of other shooters aren't but are getting there such as Battlefield .
However you're wrong by saying shooters are mainstream, what you should be saying is how some franchises are more mainstream than others, ever wonder why that 'call of duty' is tacked on the front cover of MW2 but nowhere else in the game?
However you're wrong by saying shooters are mainstream, what you should be saying is how some franchises are more mainstream than others, ever wonder why that 'call of duty' is tacked on the front cover of MW2 but nowhere else in the game?
I think the problem of the OP statement lies in the fact that it was the rise in popularity of shooters, that also brought a rise in the use of the term gamer (Because as I recall, I cannot remember anyone before 1997 being referred to as a gamer. More that there was just no really accepted term.
As for Shooters and sports games being what is mainstream, I dunno, can you really think that and be able to look at something like WoW? Starcraft? Mass effect/Dragon Age, (Do you count driving games as sport games?) Gran Turismo, Farmville, Plants vs Zombies, Minecraft etc etc etc and think these games are not at widespread acceptance levels?
As for Shooters and sports games being what is mainstream, I dunno, can you really think that and be able to look at something like WoW? Starcraft? Mass effect/Dragon Age, (Do you count driving games as sport games?) Gran Turismo, Farmville, Plants vs Zombies, Minecraft etc etc etc and think these games are not at widespread acceptance levels?
Is what you are saying this: if one plays shooting games or sports games one will be considered normal by society, and if one plays other types of videogames one will be regarded as a weirdo?Connor Mulhern said:
If that's what you're saying I think it's patent nonsense. If some people think of people who play games as odd, or as wasters, I don't think it has anything to do with the type of game they play.