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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 thought the defination of a casual gamer was someone who played games merely for a few hours of enjoyment each week on any genre. A hardcore gamer whose speaciality lies in puzzle and logic games is nevertheless a hardcore gamer. since did one have to play an FPS to qualify as a gamer?
As a casual gamer myself, I drift from game to game, site to site - it's not about being hard-core anything, it's not about finishing the latest FPS release faster than anybody, it's about passing an hour or two with some distracting entertainment.
Period.
The only thing remotely hard-core about it is a stubborn refusal to commit to anything more than finding a fun game and playing it for only as long as it remains interesting.
A really good (read:attempting to be objective) central reference site to sites/games worthy of trying out would probably be a worthwhile addition to the bookmark list.
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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.
The term hardcore seems to be in a phase of shift. Originally, when games weren't quite as popular, it was fairly easy to assume someone who spent lots of time and money playing video games was a "hardcore gamer". Now that the causal gamer market has exploded, this is no longer a valid metric. "Hardcore gamer" now tends to mean people who are conisours of gaming. People who play games because they are fun and of a high quality level rather than the latest marketing fad. The term "harcore gamer" is now more akin to the term "film buff".
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
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.