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Struggling To Bridge the Casual-Hardcore Game Gap
With the advent of the Wii and the upcoming motion control systems from Sony and Microsoft, console makers are expanding the gaming population to include vast numbers of casual players. Their problem now, according to this editorial at Eurogamer, is that there doesn't exist a broad selection of games between the simple, introductory titles and the complex, hardcore ones, which tends to limit how deep new players will venture into the gaming ecosystem. Quoting:
"... it needs software that spans the gap between the two camps of offerings which are emerging on Xbox 360 — games that encourage players of Dance Central or Your Shape to move upstream and explore. It's unlikely, perhaps, that they'll ever end up curb-stomping crinkle-faced nasties in Cliff Bleszinski's latest, but we're a long way past the point of the Xbox being all about shooting and driving, even if the public perception hasn't quite moved with the software line-up. The long-term challenge for the games market must, ultimately, be to emulate the success which other mediums have had in creating markets where consumers routinely and happily move between genres, and where franchises which would be pigeonholed as 'hardcore' in the games world nestle comfortably in people's DVD collections alongside those which would be dismissed as 'casual.'"
From most casual to hardcore:
Farmville, Mafia Wars
Plants vs. Zombies, Bejeweled, Tetris
Wii Sports, Cooking Mama
Mario games, racing and sports games
Serious Sam, Diablo
Assassins Creed, Halo
GTA, Rainbow Six
Dragon Age, Total War series
Where's the gap?
I absolutely disagree with you.
As someone who used to be hardcore into ID Software FPS titles, now that I am an adult with more responsibilities, it is harder to dedicate that much time towards finding a another freaking Intel Item, hidden obscurely in some level somewhere.
If I cannot play for 15-20 minutes and abort where I am at, without suffering huge penalties, I am not going to ever finish that game.
I am much more interested in quick games on my iPad, but wouldn't mind if they had a little more depth. Save the super hardcore games for the high school kids, but give us more than Poppit.
Truly? Let me know when they make a version can detect hand motions.
Hell, let me know when they stop faking Kinect demos.
I dunno man. The fact that there are 85 million Farmville players says something.
Balderdash!