Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Casual Gamers Not So Casual

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the gameaholics dept.

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."

7 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Not Surprising by Gnostic+Ronin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  2. The Casual Combination by Lance_Denmark · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I'd have said that casual was a combination of time spent, money spent on games and how generally important games are to a person. If you end up playing two hours a night five nights a week but go out on the weekends and don't think about gaming, I'd say you're casual. Also you can usually identify a 'hardcore' gamer by their willingness to 'play until it gets better'. After criticising a game for being shite from the offset I'm often told 'You have to play for a bit for it to get better' and you are usually talking to a pretty hardcore gamer there.

    Nope there is more to it than time alone.

  3. Re:Gamer? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Gamer? by vertinox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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)
  5. Re:Gamer? by The-Bus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  6. This came up on the WoW boards a lot... by CaseM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...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.

  7. Re:Gamer? by ClamIAm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?