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Casual Gaming the New Hardcore
The Guardian Gamesblog has a post up discussing the reality that the realm of the casual gamer now has its own element of the hardcore about it. From the article: "Traditional hardcore gamers need only pop along to [a] Game [store] to get their latest fix. Either that or they can head over to an importer like Lik-Sang and take their fill of Japanese 2D shooters. Casual gamers must trawl the web for reliable shareware sites or friendly communities of like-minded chess fans. There are very few magazines addressing their needs, no one is interested. Now that is hardcore."
I don't have the time (anymore) to read up on games or even go out to the store to pick up a copy of something that looks interesting. I don't have the inclination (anymore) to download pirated games. It wouldn't do much good if I did, as I'm most interested in playing games like the original Myst or Warcraft. Some open-source games (The Battle for Wesnoth comes to mind) temporarily satisfy my need.
I'm lucky to have an hour a week to play games, and there are precious few games that seem to interest me anymore. I tend to lurk on Freshmeat, waiting for something nice and new, or (as I did this afternoon), spend far too much time just looking for old demos to download (no luck finding Black & White, which looks interesting; only Myst III---we'll see how that is).
When more of my time is spent looking for a game than actually playing it, I think less of my money will end up going to the gaming companies. My guess, though, is that they don't really care, since one "hardcore" gamer will make up for the loss of about 20 people like me.
Christian Jones
Medicine. Mathematics. Mediocrity.
IMHO what separates hardcore and casual is not the game they play. Is how they play it. Some example:
Hardcore = People who play wolfenstein and study tactics and play the same map 40 times.
Casual = People who play wolfenstein, enjoy it, try a new game.
i had a debate with this one guy about what makes a hardcore player..
i was convinced i was a hardcore gamer because i have a collection that makes EB jealous, and my best friends try to convince me that i should be renting them out...
but this guy, he says, because he only plays.. i forget what mmo it was, but we'll just say 'everquest'.. because he only plays 'everquest' and nothing else and has reached the level cap several times, he claims he was more hardcore than me. and he'd never heard of games like Harvest Moon, or Everblue 2. he'd heard of katamari damacy, and was convinced that since i played that and lots of other games, that I wasn't hardcore, but casual.
its not something i debate with people anymore. i have a love of games. he, well. he had a love ONE game. he is a hardcore everquest player, but I am a hardcore gamer. the fact that he couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that someone who loves ALL TYPES OF GAMES is just as hardcore as someone who eats/sleeps/breaths only one game, well... i don't really know where i'm going with this, but i don't claim the hardcore label for myself anymore, because i don't want to look like as much of an asshole as he did.
Crazy laguage, and it's whole context thing.
This article strikes me as a bit of a post-modern style wank, it's hardcore to not be hard core, you're a hardcore casual, casual to the core.
A hard core gamer is someone who games hard core, if you game casually and do it hard core then you're a hard core gamer. If you game a single game and game it hard core then you're a hard core gamer. If you game all games like they've never been gamed before you're a hard core gamer.
Why do people always assume everything is mutually exclusive. This is a non deterministic world people, there's overlap.
As an aside, this anti script image is getting difficult, I'm having trouble as a human figuring out what letters there are... Perhaps I should write some software to do it for me
Hardcore = People who play wolfenstein and study tactics and play the same map 40 times.
Casual Hardcore = People who play wolfenstein, enjoy it, try a new game, for at least 40 hours a week.
Casual = People who play a game when they have the time, which is usually not a lot, because they have a life.