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Casual Gamers Not So Casual
Next Gen is reporting on a study indicating that casual gamers actually play quite a lot, putting the term 'casual' under a microscope. From the article: "'Our survey has determined that mainstream audiences dedicate a substantial amount of time to gameplay — not just in 15-minute increments as previously thought,' said Loren Hillberg, executive VP and general manager of commerce at Macrovision."
Doesn't surprise me. Other than RPGs, I think I'm pretty casual. And I usually end up playing a few hours. What makes you hardcore is when you do nothing else.
15-minute increments
... RPG's usually take longer than that in between save points ... what games were they thinking? Pacman & Frogger?
What game nowadays can you play in 15 minute increments? Absolutely no sports games
Nope there is more to it than time alone.
Is there a difference between someone who plays a game for two hours (120 minutes) straight versus someone who plays eight times at 15 minutes each (120 minutes) during the course of the day? You obviously never the experienced the joy of doing multiple loads of laundry and playing a game for 15 minutes between loads.
It's not about how long you play for, it's about how dedicated and obsessed you are with gaming. It's about your taste in games, what games you play, what consoles you own, how long you've been playing, the variety of gaming experiences you've had, and many other factors. It's not just how long you spend playing that determines whether you're casual or hardcore.
In general parlance, could someone who plays in increments of less than 15 minutes be considered a 'gamer'?
Actually, I think they got their definitions backwards.
Could a peice of software be considered a "game" if it takes more than 15 minutes to play before you start to enjoy it?
I think that is what is meant by causual gamer. You pick up a game and in 90 seconds you are enjoying yourself and not after 90 minutes of hack and slashing... Oh and don't forget that if you can't simply save and put the game down without loosing enjoyement in 15 minutes of you decided to quit (ie save points, having to remember what exactly you were doing, and where you were going) then it isn't a casual game either.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
There's a lot of games which take less than 15 minutes a day to play. One example is Nation States, which takes less than 5 minutes a day to play. Something non-gamey, like Brain Age, doesn't require much more than a few minutes either.
I've read a lot of comments on handhelds that like their instant-on/resume feature (specifically, the DS and the PSP) so they can play games while "on line at the bank" --- now, I'm not jubilant about the service at my bank but even when it takes a long time I'm in line for no more than 5 or 10 minutes. So clearly there's people who buy these gadgets to play for minutes at a time. A review I read for Tetris DS lauded it for the ability to be online and playing someone else within 60 seconds. Heck, I bet you can get in a Halo 2 game in or two in 15 minutes.
If you look at older games there's a lot of games which can be satisfying in 15 minute increments. Take Geometry Wars or Bejeweled for example. Games that you find on XBLA or other compilations.
Or, if we're talking table top games, stuff like Checkers or Othello or Backgammon or any number of simple card games. Not every table top game needs to be as long as complicated as Risk or Settlers of Catan or Monopoly.
It sounds insincere and hackneyed but gaming is about passion. If you like gaming for gaming's sake (not just to pass the time a la MS Solitaire) then it doesn't matter if you only play half an hour a day or 3 hours a day.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
...but at the end of the day the difference between "hardcore" and "casual" I settled on wasn't necessarily how long a person played, but how hard it was to save/quit/get out when you had to put the game down.
This applied specifically to whether or not a person could raid in World of Warcraft, but I think it applies to gaming in general - it isn't that "casuals" wouldn't play for 4 hours at a stretch, it's that they couldn't commit to a playing schedule and actually keep said commitment consistently enough to a) not piss of the other raid members and b) not upset Significant Others.
Just try playing WoW for 15 minutes, and see how much you can do...
.4 gold per stack of 20. Obviously, there's money to be made buying it at .4 and selling it at 1, and it doesn't take but 5 minutes to log in, check on the current price of linen and several other items subject to the same fluctuation, buy some if it's cheap, and list some for sale if it's expensive.
Surprisingly, a lot, especially if you like to play the market to get rich. The auction house is great for folks who just want to log on for a couple minutes. I doesn't take long to search through items looking for underpriced stuff that you can resell for a profit or seeing if the market is ripe for listing your goods. You can make quite a lot of money keeping an eye out for obscure rare items that many players don't realize is a component in an epic high level recipe. For example, Black Diamonds are quite rare, and on my old server, you could get 40 gold for one easily (40 gold isn't a fortune, but it's a pretty good chunk of money). With some regularity, one would drop for a player unaware of its value who would happily part with it for 5 gold. 35 gold profit right there, and nearly no time spent.
Likewise, there are items whos value fluctuates greatly from day to day, especially with low level crafting components. Linen cloth is a great example. Linen is a critical component for building your tailoring skill. Every few days, some rich player will create a new character who they want to be a tailor, and they'll wind up wiping out the linen market, driving the price way up. When there aren't any on the merket, you can easily sell linen for 1 gold per stack of 20. After this happens, the supply will gradually replinish and the price will go back down, usually stabalizing at around
In addition, many (nowhere near all, but many) of the quests all the way from level 1 to 60 can be completed in 15 minutes. Also, most quests can be done in as many sitting as you want, and you can log out anywhere, so if you have a quest to kill 20 harpies, nothing's stopping you from killing 10, logging out, and then killing the other 10 next time you log in.
No, you can't do everything in WoW in 15 minute chunks, but 15 minutes is certainly long enough for you to accomplish something. In fact, the stuff that only takes 15 minutes tends to be the most productive per time spent! It's easy to spend 4 hours raiding and walk away with nothing but a high repair bill, even if you're playing your best. Spend four hours over a couple weeks playing the market, and (assuming you're careful) you're likely to walk away with a bundle of cash.
Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
Could a peice of software be considered a "game" if it takes more than 15 minutes to play before you start to enjoy it?
Could a piece of video be considered a "movie" if it takes more than 15 minutes before you start to enjoy it?
Could a piece of text be considred a "novel" if it takes more than 15 minutes before you start to enjoy it?
Could a piece of metal be considered a "tool" if it takes more than 15 minutes before you learn how to use it in a way that makes it useful?
My observation on Casual Gamers, in MMORPGs atleast - is quite often, many of them seem to put in more time into the game then the 'hardcore, uberguild-raiding type'.
/played. My friend, was level 35 with around 50 days /played time.
/very/ well and very efficently. They were more like robots then players.
I'll use myself, and a friend as an example.
- We both started playing EQ at the same time, and for the first month of play we stayed pretty much neck in neck in terms of levels. We'd duo allot, goof around, have fun, explore. Somewhere along the line, I got bitten by the 'power-gaming bug', and ended up taking off in levels past him.
We started to play together less and less as our play styles started to differ. A few months passed by, and I was level 50, farming items in Lower Guk and raiding Plane of Fear when I had the chance. I was level 50 with around 32 days
IMO, he was a 'casual gamer', not because of time invested, but because of how he chose to spend his time playing the game.
Many 'uber-guilds' in EQ had the reputation of playing '24/7, having no lives, etc, etc'. While there may of been a few individuals in the guild like that, that wasnt the norm. With the exception of new expansions or new level caps, in which many people would take a few days off work to max out as fast as possible. The typical play routine for many of my guild mates was
- Logon about 30 mins before a raid was to start, play for the duration of the raid, and then logoff directly after. If it wasnt a raid day, they wouldn't logon.
Trying to find more then maybe, 10 or so people from the guild online at once outside of raiding time was pretty damn rare (with the exceptions of a new expansion).
To me, casual gaming isnt so much the time invested, but HOW you use the time that you invest while playing. Some of the most hardcore power-gamers I know played the least, but just played