Owyn_Merrilin said:
veloper said:
The industry seperates the CORE from the casual.
Games are designed and marketed towards such audiences that companies recognize as casual (for them are kid's games, party games, many wii titles, etc.) or core.
Hardcore doesn't come into it and is a seperate thing that doesn't really get catered to.
Funny thing is how everyone has atleast some idea of what casual means, but many love to deny there's a diffference.
Anyone here on the Escapist boards with more than just a few troll topics to his or her name is CORE, not casual. Too late to deny you have much interest in games now.
You know, that might explain why I remember hardcore being something people commonly self identified as well over a decade ago, rather than something recently cooked up by marketers, as a lot of people around here like to claim it is. They may be getting the idea of a core audience member confused with the idea of a hardcore gamer.
To end the confusion, whe should first make the clear distinction between the audience, the play and the game.
First there's the split in audiences, which is how the money flows:
1. core audiences - for examples we need look no further than these boards (triple-A budgets go here)
2. casual audiences - may occasionally play simple games while other hobbies always come first
Then there's the varying interest in play between:
hardcore play (example: top ladder Starcraft players) to
casual play, when you're NOT interested in a challenge or getting better at a certain game (can still be a CORE audience member, but playing for example, a different game genre) and anything in between.
Finally there's the games, which are the hardest to categorize:
1. casual game - always easy to to learn and often easy to master aswell and usually intended for casual play by a casual audience
2. core game - a game marketed at a wider audience, including core audiences and will typically have higher production values(fancy graphics, voice-acting, etc)
3. hardcore game - a game that just happens to be compatible with hardcore play (challenging gameplay; winning requires skill, not just grinding or luck; a learning curve that takes skill and practice to master).
The distinction here is trickier because a hardcore game is often marketed as a core game (ex. Starcraft 2). Hardcore players are too small in number to seriously cater to and still make money. RTS games and fighting games come closest to being hardcore genres, but they need core players to buy the game.
The audience, the interest and the game don't fit into neat casual/core columns and that's where the whole argument springs from.
Hardcore RTS games can also be played casually (usually the campaign mode).
RPGs for the core audience are nowadays almost always designed around casual play (but with the small difference that the campaigns still require some prior RPG experience or a small tutorial to learn and a "hard" difficulty setting to master).
Sometimes a core game(big budget, triple-A and marketed as such) only allows easy, casual play, so you cannot blame anyone for calling it a "casual game". Fable 3 is an infamous example.
Coming full circle, a hardcore or pro SC player who has no interest in playing anything beside SC and maybe mess with some iphone games to pass the time while travelling, belongs the casual audience. He's a hardcore SC player, but not a hardcore gamer.
