Why is "Casual" bad?

[maxibonito]

well, what makes a hardcore gamer so differint to a casual gamer? i know loads of hardcore gamers who play for gamerscore, not for the actual game.

 

[Adzma]

I for one know that once companies get their hand into the casual cookie jar, and realise they can make just as much money from shovelwear that they do for core titles at a fraction of the cost, they no longer see the need to develop core titles anymore.

Nintendo is a perfect example. They only release Mario and Zelda games every few years now to prevent the core gamers getting shitty with them like they did after that ridiculous E3 with Wii Music and Wii Sports Restort etc.

 

[Candidus]

well, what makes a hardcore gamer so differint to a casual gamer? i know loads of hardcore gamers who play for gamerscore, not for the actual game.

I'm a hardcore gamer. I love complex systems, I love having to read the manual, I love games that have high barriers to entry and enormously high skill ceilings, games that require more than determination to master- they actually require a level of aptitude you either have, or don't have. Achievements are meaningless, gamerscore is meaningless, Dinging isn't even a reward- MMOs are worse than useless (until GW2 and TERA anyway, then we'll see).

 

[maxibonito]

thats just it. there is no set term for casual or hardcore gamer, and an example is the community of gamers within the small city i live in, where we consider a hardcore gamer to be unsociable, rude and all around not fun to be around. and thats one of the reasons why i would happily say im a casual gamer, for fear of being shunned. thats also why we need a new term for a gamer. one that includes element of all gamer catagories

 

[TheXRatedDodo]

I play the "hardcore" games casually.
Screw your classifications.

A lot of casual games have incredible amounts of depth compared to a lot of core titles. In its own field, stuff such as Bejewled takes just as much skill to get good at as something like Unreal Tournament in its specific field.

I don't even understand why people gotta have all these terms anyway. Gamer, casual gamer, hardcore gamer, etc goddamn gamer this that blah blah.
I am a person, I am me, I like to play games. I also like to listen to music, read books, watch films, take drugs, go for walks, spend time with friends and family, cook, create.
I am sure most of the population is this way, so why do we insist on pigeon holing ourselves into such silly little categories?


Just for good measure: the last 2 games I can say I really got lost in were Demons Souls and Wii Sports Resort.

 

[veloper]

Are you really so insecure you need acceptance from non-gamers, to play games?
Wouldn't you rather play better games?

I would rather video games be noticed as a competent medium

"Better" is your opinion. I happen to like casual games. Do I think they're better than hardcore games? No, but they're not any worse either. They're just games marketed towards a difference audience. Not better or worse

It's not wrong to enjoy casual games.
What is a shame is that the industry is making fewer challenging or deep games than before.
The core audience hasn't suddenly fallen of the face of the earth and yet almost everything gets simplified for a different audience.
One size fits all. It doesn't have to be this way.

Honestly, the industry might be making less challenging games, but I think it's still proportionate to the number of people that actually like challenging games. Only 3% of players completed a L4D2 campaign on the hardest difficulty. Only 1% completed Mass Effect 2 on it's hardest difficulty.

Depends on the genre.
The FPS genre is for the most part left intact.
Sure on consoles you get auto-aiming crap, but on the PC, shooters are still mostly good, if that is your prefered genre. Compare the original Doom was actually pretty easy on the death incarnate setting. So no issues with L4D or TF2, etc.

Mass effect 2 now... CRPGs used to involve number crunching and tactical positioning, now it's nearly all action-rpgs everywhere.
Only some small indies and some japanese devs still do true original thinking man's game. Knights of the Chalice on the PC for example, or the tactics ogre remake for the psp.

The RPG genre is probably the best example of dumbing down you can give me.
ME2 is basicly just a cover shooter with a slightly interactive story, marketed as an RPG. Good for what it is, but still nothing like old school.
There is definitely a big appeal for oldschool as the mediocre Dragon Age proved: sold more copies than ME2. Old BG2 fans were so desperate for something new and remotely like BG2, they bought it anyway.
There's nothing wrong with ARPGs per se, but there is a demand for SRPGs that is going mostly unnoticed.

Can you honestly say you are short on really difficult games to play? If so, I envy the amount of free time you have because it seems to me that there are plenty of challenging games out there to keep one interested, even if you limit yourself to just one genre.

Most games these days I breeze through wihtin a couple evenings. Fast food is nice once in a while, but sometimes you want something more solid. Envy my free time.

Also, I don't really think there are less deep games than there were before. As I mentioned above, it's perfectly possible for a game to be both casual and deep at the same time.

Occasionally it seems the cheap/indie stuff marketed as casual, is actually deeper than the mainstream stuff.
Plants vs Zombies is a pretty decent game, even if the campaign mode is easy.
Fable3 now is a mindless fart that happens to have been made with a big budget. Puzzle quest has more depth than such newfag turds as Arcania and Fable3 and PQ is basicly bejeweled with shortcuts.

Casual games means to me games that are easy to master. I prefer the opposite.

 

[Candidus]

thats just it. there is no set term for casual or hardcore gamer, and an example is the community of gamers within the small city i live in, where we consider a hardcore gamer to be unsociable, rude and all around not fun to be around. and thats one of the reasons why i would happily say im a casual gamer, for fear of being shunned. thats also why we need a new term for a gamer. one that includes element of all gamer catagories

Hardcore gamers are unsociable when it comes to discussing and participating in games if *you*, who is approaching them, are not a hardcore gamer yourself. Someone who once owned a chemistry set can't walk up to a team of scientists and expect to have any sense of camaraderie; the principle for casuals and hardcore gamers is the same.

I only want to associate and compete with people who are invested in the *same way* that I am. Our culture is not your culture, because your values and mine are mutually exclusive. If I'm considered rude by some chumps I don't know and don't care for because of the exclusive way I socialise and enjoy games, more's the pity. Is anyone afraid of being shunned by those they have nothing in common with?

I make no apologies, and neither should anyone else. There's just no pretending all gamers are the same, or that finding one word to represent us all will make the factions come together. The differences are as clear as the difference between night and day, even if they're difficult to articulate in fullness with all the facets and exceptions.

 

[boholikeu]

Anyone who is an advocate of casual gaming, try this neat little trick: Set up your webcam to record your face while you're playing a "casual game." Then do it, for as long as you like. Come back the next day, and watch the recording of your face while you were playing your casual game. If you played JewelQuest for two hours, try and force yourself to watch the whole thing. The further in you go, the better it gets.

How would it be any different from recording yourself playing Mass Effect for 2 hours? Most people revert into a blank "gamer face" when they are playing something.

okay, here's where i'm confused. What makes a casual gamer? someone who doesn't have a 'hardcore' console, like PS3 or xbox360? someone who plays farmville or another kind of facebook game? someone who plays the Wii more often than anyother console?

Because from my experience as a young gamer growing up i have experienced many differint meanings of it, and thus think that there should be no line seperating a 'casual' gamer and a 'hardcore' gamer.

I'm sorry, but trying to pretend there is no line here is like trying to pretend that people don't actually come in different colours.

The problem is there is no clear line. In this thread alone you can see a number of different definitions for what is "casual".

Just look at your own definition:

I'll try to give you some examples of casual behaviours, preferences and game types:

A Casual will abandon a game which excludes those who cannot grasp complex mechanics (Supcom)
A Casual prefers to already know the controls of a brand new game; ideally, all games control alike. Perky annual IPs and most indy games are a good example.
A Casual plays for achievements, for gamerscore, for the DING-YAY rush. Not specifically to achieve a high standard of ability.

Of the above, two could apply to "hardcore" players just as easily.

EDIT: this often means there's a low skill ceiling; maximum aptitude is controlled in some way or another- WoW is a great example, as a game which controls the maximum contribution of individuals to fights using time (GCD), automatic targetting and so on as equalizing measures.

Sorry, but you are simply wrong here. WoW employs the GCD because otherwise every move would spammable. Such a system wouldn't be based on "skill", it'd be based on who has the lowest latency.

Unless you think button mashing is a skill.

The auto-targetting bit actually makes me think you might be trolling. What non-FPS influenced RPG hasn't had auto-targeting of some kind?

I'm a hardcore gamer. I love complex systems, I love having to read the manual, I love games that have high barriers to entry and enormously high skill ceilings, games that require more than determination to master- they actually require a level of aptitude you either have, or don't have. Achievements are meaningless, gamerscore is meaningless, Dinging isn't even a reward- MMOs are worse than useless (until GW2 and TERA anyway, then we'll see).

Having a high barrier for entry is just bad design. You can have a totally complex, deep game without requiring a player to read a 300 page manual first.

Are you really so insecure you need acceptance from non-gamers, to play games?
Wouldn't you rather play better games?

I would rather video games be noticed as a competent medium

"Better" is your opinion. I happen to like casual games. Do I think they're better than hardcore games? No, but they're not any worse either. They're just games marketed towards a difference audience. Not better or worse

It's not wrong to enjoy casual games.
What is a shame is that the industry is making fewer challenging or deep games than before.
The core audience hasn't suddenly fallen of the face of the earth and yet almost everything gets simplified for a different audience.
One size fits all. It doesn't have to be this way.

Honestly, the industry might be making less challenging games, but I think it's still proportionate to the number of people that actually like challenging games. Only 3% of players completed a L4D2 campaign on the hardest difficulty. Only 1% completed Mass Effect 2 on it's hardest difficulty.

Depends on the genre.
The FPS genre is for the most part left intact.
Sure on consoles you get auto-aiming crap, but on the PC, shooters are still mostly good, if that is your prefered genre. Compare the original Doom was actually pretty easy on the death incarnate setting. So no issues with L4D or TF2, etc.

Mass effect 2 now... CRPGs used to involve number crunching and tactical positioning, now it's nearly all action-rpgs everywhere.
Only some small indies and some japanese devs still do true original thinking man's game. Knights of the Chalice on the PC for example, or the tactics ogre remake for the psp.

The RPG genre is probably the best example of dumbing down you can give me.
ME2 is basicly just a cover shooter with a slightly interactive story, marketed as an RPG. Good for what it is, but still nothing like old school.
There is definitely a big appeal for oldschool as the mediocre Dragon Age proved: sold more copies than ME2. Old BG2 fans were so desperate for something new and remotely like BG2, they bought it anyway.
There's nothing wrong with ARPGs per se, but there is a demand for SRPGs that is going mostly unnoticed.

I wouldn't say the genre has been dumbed down so much as the focus just went from SRPGs to ARPGs. They are simply different subgenres. I admit a SRPG fan probably has it pretty hard right now, but well, so do fans of adventure games, economy/city building sims, etc.

It comes in cycles though. For a while there was a dry spell of RTS games, 2D platformers, and shmups, but they seem to be making a comeback now.

ME2 is basicly just a cover shooter with a slightly interactive story, marketed as an RPG. Good for what it is, but still nothing like old school.

Depends what "old school" you are talking about. ME2 has more in common with pen and paper RPGs than most tactical RPGs do.

Most games these days I breeze through wihtin a couple evenings. Fast food is nice once in a while, but sometimes you want something more solid. Envy my free time.

I do. Heck, if I had that much free time I'd probably make my own hardcore SRPG to play. =)

Also, I don't really think there are less deep games than there were before. As I mentioned above, it's perfectly possible for a game to be both casual and deep at the same time.

Occasionally it seems the cheap/indie stuff marketed as casual, is actually deeper than the mainstream stuff.
Plants vs Zombies is a pretty decent game, even if the campaign mode is easy.
Fable3 now is a mindless fart that happens to have been made with a big budget. Puzzle quest has more depth than such newfag turds as Arcania and Fable3 and PQ is basicly bejeweled with shortcuts.

Casual games means to me games that are easy to master. I prefer the opposite.

Part of my whole point is that it's not casual games that's the problem, it's poorly made casual games (aka shovelware). There are good and bad casual games just like there are good and bad hardcore games, and just because a game is accessible or has simple mechanics doesn't mean it can't also be very deep.

Heck, Go is probably one of the deepest games in existence (according to some game theory geeks anyway), and it's also one of the easiest to pick up and play.

 

[Smagmuck_]

I'm a casual gamer!
But I hate Farmville... It's all about Robot Unicorn Attack: Heavy Metal. >.>

 

[Candidus]

Having a high barrier for entry is just bad design. You can have a totally complex, deep game without requiring a player to read a 300 page manual first.

X3:TC called, it would like a word with you. Streamline anything about this game, do something to make the manual less important, and you'll take something away from this nigh perfect game.

A game can be too complex for the average scrub and still be brilliantly designed.

Supcom: Forged Alliance to Supcom 2: Babby's First Economy is another example of eroding a high barrier to entry and making the game absolutely rubbish in the process.

 

[Midnight Crossroads]

Casual gaming is fine when it doesn't encroach on other gamers. There's a lot of casual gamers getting into video games now, and games are changing to reflect that. Suddenly, people aren't frightened away by images of rampant misogyny and excessive violence (some of the reputation earned, mostly overblown.) They think games are cute, quaint things to do with the family. Game systems are starting to come out of the dimly lit rooms where asocial gamers play for hours on end alone, and instead become center pieces of the living room. Parents chat with each other as their children play MarioKart in same room. The shelf is stocked with games such as WiiFit and WiiSports. Sometimes the parents join in with their kids.


Games seem to become less focused on giving out visceral, challenging, and enjoyable experiences, and have more to do with giving out things the entire family can do together. Sure, most big games are still marketed to people like me, but I, frankly, don't want to share if it means making concessions. It's a change in identity which leaves me at a loss. A relic in a new age of gaming.

 

[jawakiller]

i think casual games are for people who want an easy game. should we hate them for this? no but that doesn't mean we have to like them either. wouldn't force unleashed (both 1 & 2) be considered a "casual" gaming experience? it's just as easy as farmville.

 

[boholikeu]

Having a high barrier for entry is just bad design. You can have a totally complex, deep game without requiring a player to read a 300 page manual first.

X3:TC called, it would like a word with you. Streamline anything about this game, do something to make the manual less important, and you'll take something away from this nigh perfect game.

A game can be too complex for the average scrub and still be brilliantly designed.

Supcom: Forged Alliance to Supcom 2: Babby's First Economy is another example of eroding a high barrier to entry and making the game absolutely rubbish in the process.

X3:TC still isn't designed as well as it could have been. They could have included a real tutorial campaign that slowly unlocks features as the player progresses. Forcing players to read a manual nowadays is just lazy design. It's much more interesting to learn about something in game than reading about it through some dry instructions.

Now before you call me out and say something like this would "ruin" the game, keep in mind that such a tutorial would be completely optional, and "advanced users" would still be able to read the boring manual and start the game with everything unlocked normally. A tutorial campaign would not take anything away from veteran players or simplify any of the games mechanics. It would merely make the game more accessible, which as I stated before, is one of the most important aspects of design.

Now, to be fair, I only played the vanilla version of X3, so some of these things might be present in TC, but based on the reviews I read this wasn't the case.

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

Cause they aren't a gamer.

They're a person who plays games. I, for one, dislike being compared to them because of that fact. They don't look much into it and it means next to nothing for them. In the respect of gaming, a casual "gamer" and I am the opposite. That's why I find it kinda annoying to be held as an equal by both being called "gamers."

 

[Candidus]

X3:TC still isn't designed as well as it could have been. They could have included a real tutorial campaign that slowly unlocks features as the player progresses.

You know, the word tutorial just wasn't being connected with the word 'design' in my head. You're quite right about that, I suppose a comprehensive tutorial would have been a harmless improvement to X3's design.

I retain my stance on Supcom though. Going back to something I said earlier, about playing to achieve a standard and for no other reason... In Supcom FA, balancing your economy with your military efforts, while leaving enough spare to upgrade a mass extractor at a time and *gradually* escalate was the mark of a competent player, but the intensity and volatility of that process meant that competent players numbered about 15% of the player base. And yet, the design was absolutely flawless.

Supcom 2 is, in my opinion, a game for not-very-gifted-gamers who like to smash toy cars against each other without being fettered by additional concerns. The ceiling of skill is catastrophically low. Achieving a high standard of play there is just meaningless; I look at my friends list as I write this, and I see a lot of people who'd laugh if I used the name Supcom2 and the phrase 'high standard of play' in the same paragraph.

The game was pillaged of everything that was good about its predecessor for the sake of "accessibility", which is the byword for casuals.

On the topic here, "why is casual bad", it's bad because *that lesson has been learned* now. Any developer in the foreseeable future will avoid creating another Supcom FA because the casual majority responded a little better to the much simplified sequel. It's happening across all genres. The featureless grey paste that gets barfed out as 'appealing to core players' these days is a sick, sick *joke*. It's just more casual fodder.

I don't blame the casuals, as I've said before, you can't play what you don't like. I just wish there were a lot fewer of them, so that developers would forget about them and start catering to me and my lot again (it'd be ideal if we could morph casuals into core gamers until we had a 50/50 ratio). I'm understandably disappointed that I'm always backtracking through my collection for things to play, and rarely looking forward to something.

 

[JourneyMan88]

Casual gaming has brought us slow, inaccurate and inconvenient game controls.

No, lazy programmers do that.

M$ and Nintendo did that.

O really, corporations as an entity make controls what they are without any human intervention? No programmers, artists or developers work on games to make them what they are? I thought actual people had a hand in that. (my mistake)

 

[Chibz]

You know, the word tutorial just wasn't being connected with the word 'design' in my head. You're quite right about that, I suppose a comprehensive tutorial would have been a harmless improvement to X3's design.

I retain my stance on Supcom though. Going back to something I said earlier, about playing to achieve a standard and for no other reason... In Supcom FA, balancing your economy with your military efforts, while leaving enough spare to upgrade a mass extractor at a time and *gradually* escalate was the mark of a competent player, but the intensity and volatility of that process meant that competent players numbered about 15% of the player base. And yet, the design was absolutely flawless.

Supcom 2 is, in my opinion, a game for not-very-gifted-gamers who like to smash toy cars against each other without being fettered by additional concerns. The ceiling of skill is catastrophically low. Achieving a high standard of play there is just meaningless; I look at my friends list as I write this, and I see a lot of people who'd laugh if I used the name Supcom2 and the phrase 'high standard of play' in the same paragraph.

The game was pillaged of everything that was good about its predecessor for the sake of "accessibility", which is the byword for casuals.

On the topic here, "why is casual bad", it's bad because *that lesson has been learned* now. Any developer in the foreseeable future will avoid creating another Supcom FA because the casual majority responded a little better to the much simplified sequel. It's happening across all genres. The featureless grey paste that gets barfed out as 'appealing to core players' these days is a sick, sick *joke*. It's just more casual fodder.

I don't blame the casuals, as I've said before, you can't play what you don't like. I just wish there were a lot fewer of them, so that developers would forget about them and start catering to me and my lot again (it'd be ideal if we could morph casuals into core gamers until we had a 50/50 ratio). I'm understandably disappointed that I'm always backtracking through my collection for things to play, and rarely looking forward to something.

Honestly, I think you missed what casual gaming is by a fairly large margin. It's this.

Spoiler

Also, I'd be a casual gamer according to your rant due to being a (primarily) retro gamer.

 

[veloper]

Casual gaming has brought us slow, inaccurate and inconvenient game controls.

No, lazy programmers do that.

M$ and Nintendo did that.

O really, corporations as an entity make controls what they are without any human intervention? No programmers, artists or developers work on games to make them what they are? I thought actual people had a hand in that. (my mistake)

industrial designers =/= programmers
Programmers play a limited role in the making of a wii mote for example.

 

[Candidus]

Honestly, I think you missed what casual gaming is by a fairly large margin.
Also, I'd be a casual gamer according to your rant due to being a (primarily) retro gamer.

I disagree on your latter point- actually, I'd say it depends.

Whether or not you're a casual depends entirely on your frame of mind. If you're a casual, you might well play real core games, but I doubt you'll see the point of such harsh barriers to entry and consistent, punishing difficulty. Your mindset of playing for fun, taking pleasure from little achievement dings and all that stuff will probably lead you to play accessible games with variable difficulties and standardised, easily recognisable rules and mechanics.

If you play games in order to achieve a standard of ability, then you're probably already aware that you don't *play* those games. If reaching your maximum personal aptitude is where your reward comes from, and if it's not enough to get to the credits without performing up to your own expectations of excellence... I can think of a *lot* of NES games that catered for and even *required* just such a disciplined, perfectionist mentality- retro gaming is attractive to me for those reasons.

As for the former point, that I'm mistaking what a casual is... My problem isn't with the husband or wife who stays at home and plays farmville, that's true. I guess you could call them 'core casuals', but I'm talking about the sort of people the often-maligned-by-me Supcom 2 was made for. They probably don't even realise or believe they *are* casuals. What a horrific thought.

 

[boholikeu]

X3:TC still isn't designed as well as it could have been. They could have included a real tutorial campaign that slowly unlocks features as the player progresses.

You know, the word tutorial just wasn't being connected with the word 'design' in my head. You're quite right about that, I suppose a comprehensive tutorial would have been a harmless improvement to X3's design.

I retain my stance on Supcom though. Going back to something I said earlier, about playing to achieve a standard and for no other reason... In Supcom FA, balancing your economy with your military efforts, while leaving enough spare to upgrade a mass extractor at a time and *gradually* escalate was the mark of a competent player, but the intensity and volatility of that process meant that competent players numbered about 15% of the player base. And yet, the design was absolutely flawless.

Supcom 2 is, in my opinion, a game for not-very-gifted-gamers who like to smash toy cars against each other without being fettered by additional concerns. The ceiling of skill is catastrophically low. Achieving a high standard of play there is just meaningless; I look at my friends list as I write this, and I see a lot of people who'd laugh if I used the name Supcom2 and the phrase 'high standard of play' in the same paragraph.

The game was pillaged of everything that was good about its predecessor for the sake of "accessibility", which is the byword for casuals.

On the topic here, "why is casual bad", it's bad because *that lesson has been learned* now. Any developer in the foreseeable future will avoid creating another Supcom FA because the casual majority responded a little better to the much simplified sequel. It's happening across all genres. The featureless grey paste that gets barfed out as 'appealing to core players' these days is a sick, sick *joke*. It's just more casual fodder.

I don't blame the casuals, as I've said before, you can't play what you don't like. I just wish there were a lot fewer of them, so that developers would forget about them and start catering to me and my lot again (it'd be ideal if we could morph casuals into core gamers until we had a 50/50 ratio). I'm understandably disappointed that I'm always backtracking through my collection for things to play, and rarely looking forward to something.

I haven't played either of the Supcom games, but if it's as you describe then I would agree with you that the second game was poorly designed too even if it did sell better. Rather than cutting out features that fans of the previous game loved they should have focused on streamlining the UI and presenting the more advanced features in a way that all audiences could understand them (IE through an optional tutorial like what I mentioned above). Had they done that they could have appealed to both the casual audience and core gamers like you.

Simplification is just the lazy designer's answer to accessibility. In reality a game can stay complex as long as the material is presented well enough.