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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."
In general parlance, could someone who plays in increments of less than 15 minutes be considered a 'gamer'?
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.
I think of myself as a gamer, but the reality is between work and family I don't have the time to play as much as I want. I'll play a game of football, do a mission on Halo, or play SSBM with the kids maybe 3 times a week. I, too, would be considered a casual gamer, but I am not in the least interested in the "casual game market," nor would I likely put casual in my descriptor.
I'm reminded of a point made in regards to creative writing: write something you want to read. Not something you think others would like to read, but something that you would enjoy reading. Maybe gameshops should work more towards making games that they enjoy than trying to capture a certain market segment.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
A 2 hour game of poker would be considered casual by many.
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.
People who have casual sex rarely break the 15 minute mark.
Interesting. Indeed.
Titties!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
...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
These days, most of my gaming is what I'd call casual: I pick up games that can be completely played in 5 minute blocks.
Now it just so happens that I'll likely get hooked once I start and play a good dozen of those blocks and find an hour has gone by - often longer still. But, if I knew I had to invest an hour to even try, I likely wouldn't pick up the game in the first place.
So, yes, casual gamer play sessions are often much longer than one five-to-fifteen minute block. But, no, that doesn't mean you can create a game that requires those longer average play times and still capture the same market. It's a false conclusion based on completely missing the low barrier to entry aspect and fixating on average playtimes.
In short: Casual gaming isn't about short play times. It's about the ability to play for short sessions and thus having a low barrier to entry that then leads to those longer play times.
And with that, I'm off for just one more game of sudoku.