Yet another "what the?" moment.
If you can read that now and it makes sense to you, please lay off the 'dew and get some sunlight.
Speaking of "what the?" moments, I seriously didn't understand a single thing you said. Are you sure you are responding to the right thread and quoted the right material? Are you not a native English speaker, because honestly, I couldn't follow one bit of your logic.
Let's try this again. I'm a casual WoW player. Some weeks I play 20 hours, other weeks I don't play at all (haven't played in 2-weeks currently). I'm a casual player, because I don't engage in the hardcore aspects of the game, like organizing Raids and collecting epic gear and whatever else hardcore guys do. Even though I'm on PvP, I don't even go out of my way to kill other players. Hell, I don't even find the effort of doing instances worth the reward, so I don't really do those either. Time has nothing to do with the casual-ness or not. Running around killing things and turning in quests is pretty casual...the content of the game, or what I chose to make of the game...not your arbitrary time limits.
Like the first guy said (and the guy I think you are confusing me for), by definition "hardcore" is determined by the placement along the bell curve.
That's what makes WoW such a great game (from a design aspect). It doesn't shoe-horn itself into just one thing or the other. There's a false dichotomy out there that a game has to be hardcore or casual...why not both? I realize that a lot of hardcore guys will leave, just with the perception that their beloved game could be considered anything BUT hardcore. Good riddance is all I can think of to say to them.
Wait, casual gaming is not measured on a bell curve (according to you), but IS measured on a time scale (according to you)? I think the bell curve would be more accurate than your completely arbitrary 10 hour cut-off! I play wow for 9 hours and 50 minutes a week--I'm casual. My wife plays 11 hours--she's hardcore? I don't buy it. The content of the game, not how much time you spend playing it, is what makes a game "casual" or not.
If you said you played a sport for 20 hours a week would you call that casual?
That's a dumb analogy. I sleep 50 hours a week. I'm a hardcore sleeper? I cook dinner and prepare meals for my family 20 hours a week...hardcore chef? If somebody played a sport casually (as in they were playing for fun, and they weren't in it for some sort of serious accolades) for 20 hours, then they just play sports casually a lot. When I lived in the UK, I could guess those guys in the Pub playing darts EVERY TIME I went there probably sink 20+ hours a week into playing darts, but they are still casual dart players.
Excellent post, but some genres of hardcore gaming HAVE gone away, only because the publishers don't see enough of a user base to justify the costs. Take the great Papyrus racing sim, Grand Prix Legends, for example. It was too hard for the "Tokyo Drift" crowd, and the huge jump in realism was too subtle for your average Need for Speed or Gran Turismo kiddies to understand. In short, EA can sell 50 million copies of a poorly developed, half-ass attempt at a racing sim because the car is easy to drive, but Papyrus is out of business because they made racing games for people who like racing.
World of Warcraft is nothing but a mind-dulling, reflex-destroying, life-consuming habit. It's kind of like a MySpace for kids that are 'too cool' for MySpace.
Uh, how do you explain the hordes (pun intended) of us 30-40 year old working professionals who play WoW then? I suppose what sets us apart from MySpace kids is that we've learned to balance family, career, responsibility and two WoW accounts (hey, our kids are always logged in, so we have to get them accounts too so we can play).
I don't have any stats, but I'd like to see how the WII is faring now days. When it first came out, it was the next "Tickle Me Elmo"--you couldn't get one, short of camping out in front of the store. Now stores have more than they can sell. I guess enough people bought one to realize the gimmick wears off quickly, and the games pretty much suck, relative to the same offerings on Xbox or PS, or PC even.
I've been playing WoW for three years, and this is EXACTLY right. I have 6 characters (between me and my kids) level 60 or higher, and we've never done an end-game dungeon, heroic, raid, or whatever those things are called. I wouldn't even know how to do any of that stuff. I just learned what tiered gear is. So yeah, it's a pretty casual game, if you ask me, but like every game, it has it's clicks of hardcore guys (like the guy who had a L80 Death Knight the FIRST DAY they released Wrath of the Lich King.
the rise of casual gaming means near-certain death for hardcore gaming
Kind of like the rise of 15-second music video snippets mean certain death of hardcore music videos. (Hardcore meaning playing the entire video...remember that? Anyone?)
Certainly you'd be able to discern fresh, chef-prepared seafood over frozen fish sticks though. And certainly anyone with a brain cell would prefer fresh chef-prepared seafood to Long John Silvers? If not, you probably prefer Coors Light to a good beer as well.
Is Czechvar the same thing as Budvar? When I was in Prague, they only had three beers. Staropramen, Czechvar?, and Urquell. And as much as I love Oregon beers, nothing beats a Paulaner from the tap at an outdoor Munich beer garden in May.
I hate the "cost" argument. Last I checked, a 6-pack of piss beer (Bud, for example) was about $4. A fine microwbrew (Full Sail Ale, for example) is only $6. Are college students so strapped they can't afford $.33 per beer more? More importantly, it takes about 8 Bud Lites to get the same buzz you'd get from two Full Sail Ales.
I suppose I could turn this into a Mac - PC argument analogy. Since you can buy something like 24 CANS of Bud Lite for something like $10, and you can't buy good microbrew except in 6-pack bottles for roughly $1 a bottle, I "guess" you could say microbrews are expensive. But when compared to the similar packaging of Budweiser (6 glass bottles) they aren't really that expensive, you just can't get a small Army's worth of cheap, canned beer like you can from Budweiser.
Depends where you live. Here in Austin (not necessarily the beer mecca of America) I have more "microbrew" options than I do the standard piss-water Anheiser-Bush/Miller garbage. Of course, we also have loads of piss-water Mexican beer as well, but I'm perfectly happy as a Pacific Northwesterner living in Austin.
I love Germany and German beer, but why are they the only civilized nation that mixes their beer with anything??? You could argue we Americans mix our beer with water, or the Irish mix their beer with beer (black and tan), but the Germans put, Coke, Sprite, that horrible Orange/Coke concoction...whatever fizzy they can get their hands on and then stick it in their otherwise blissful beers!
The fine brewmasters of the Pacific Northwest (and California) would like to have a word with you. I'm willing to bet I can find more good beer from Portland, OR than I can the entire country of Finland.
At the 22:28 mark of the recording, gates says this about the 640k memory deal, which lead to the incorrect quotation of "640k ought to be enough for anybody":
"I have to say in 1981 making those decisions I felt like I was providing enough freedom for ten years, that is the move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time".
To boil and old, tiresome argument down, Gates spent a lot of time backtracking on his comment because he gave misleading/incorrect estimation of the lifespan of the 640k architecture.
*heavy sigh*...not this again. He didn't say those quoted words, but he did quip something about memory limits on 286/386 or whatever chips at the time. That's why I said it was "misconstrued". It's like saying Al Gore didn't say he "invented the Internet", (when he did say that, but didn't mean that literally).
I don't see that as a geek thing or a "marketing genius" thing. It's just an avoid-competing thing,
You'd at least concede that "avoiding competition" has nothing to do whatsoever about developing good tech, right? That's why Gates isn't a great geek, because the stuff he's good at has nothing to do with being a geek. Technology is merely the vehicle he used to forge his billions.
The reason Bill Gates made so much money in PCs is quite simple: He realized the market was made up of tons of folks that can't/won't learn how the PC works and just wanted to do the least amount possible to get their program to run.
If he realized it, then why didnt' he do anything about it? If anything, Microsoft has purposely engineered unneeded complexity into their systems, to keep the whole MSCE and other MS-centric certification industries running. By doing so, "professionals" will continue to keep implementing Windows solution (because they make money supporting them). It's genius, really.
It isn't "misattributed", because he did utter those words. It can be argued that they were "misconstrued", however, because people attribute meaning to the statement that wasn't the intent of Gates' statement.
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Yet another "what the?" moment. If you can read that now and it makes sense to you, please lay off the 'dew and get some sunlight.
Speaking of "what the?" moments, I seriously didn't understand a single thing you said. Are you sure you are responding to the right thread and quoted the right material? Are you not a native English speaker, because honestly, I couldn't follow one bit of your logic.
Let's try this again. I'm a casual WoW player. Some weeks I play 20 hours, other weeks I don't play at all (haven't played in 2-weeks currently). I'm a casual player, because I don't engage in the hardcore aspects of the game, like organizing Raids and collecting epic gear and whatever else hardcore guys do. Even though I'm on PvP, I don't even go out of my way to kill other players. Hell, I don't even find the effort of doing instances worth the reward, so I don't really do those either. Time has nothing to do with the casual-ness or not. Running around killing things and turning in quests is pretty casual...the content of the game, or what I chose to make of the game...not your arbitrary time limits.
Like the first guy said (and the guy I think you are confusing me for), by definition "hardcore" is determined by the placement along the bell curve.
That's what makes WoW such a great game (from a design aspect). It doesn't shoe-horn itself into just one thing or the other. There's a false dichotomy out there that a game has to be hardcore or casual...why not both? I realize that a lot of hardcore guys will leave, just with the perception that their beloved game could be considered anything BUT hardcore. Good riddance is all I can think of to say to them.
I think that might have more to do with the cost than any technical merit? By that explanation, the Wii DEFINES casual gaming.
Wait, casual gaming is not measured on a bell curve (according to you), but IS measured on a time scale (according to you)? I think the bell curve would be more accurate than your completely arbitrary 10 hour cut-off! I play wow for 9 hours and 50 minutes a week--I'm casual. My wife plays 11 hours--she's hardcore? I don't buy it. The content of the game, not how much time you spend playing it, is what makes a game "casual" or not.
If you said you played a sport for 20 hours a week would you call that casual?
That's a dumb analogy. I sleep 50 hours a week. I'm a hardcore sleeper? I cook dinner and prepare meals for my family 20 hours a week...hardcore chef? If somebody played a sport casually (as in they were playing for fun, and they weren't in it for some sort of serious accolades) for 20 hours, then they just play sports casually a lot. When I lived in the UK, I could guess those guys in the Pub playing darts EVERY TIME I went there probably sink 20+ hours a week into playing darts, but they are still casual dart players.
I value the time I spend with my girlfriend far more than games, so it's a fair trade. :)
Until you marry her and then she starts nagging you about playing video games.
Excellent post, but some genres of hardcore gaming HAVE gone away, only because the publishers don't see enough of a user base to justify the costs. Take the great Papyrus racing sim, Grand Prix Legends, for example. It was too hard for the "Tokyo Drift" crowd, and the huge jump in realism was too subtle for your average Need for Speed or Gran Turismo kiddies to understand. In short, EA can sell 50 million copies of a poorly developed, half-ass attempt at a racing sim because the car is easy to drive, but Papyrus is out of business because they made racing games for people who like racing.
World of Warcraft is nothing but a mind-dulling, reflex-destroying, life-consuming habit. It's kind of like a MySpace for kids that are 'too cool' for MySpace.
Uh, how do you explain the hordes (pun intended) of us 30-40 year old working professionals who play WoW then? I suppose what sets us apart from MySpace kids is that we've learned to balance family, career, responsibility and two WoW accounts (hey, our kids are always logged in, so we have to get them accounts too so we can play).
I don't have any stats, but I'd like to see how the WII is faring now days. When it first came out, it was the next "Tickle Me Elmo"--you couldn't get one, short of camping out in front of the store. Now stores have more than they can sell. I guess enough people bought one to realize the gimmick wears off quickly, and the games pretty much suck, relative to the same offerings on Xbox or PS, or PC even.
I've been playing WoW for three years, and this is EXACTLY right. I have 6 characters (between me and my kids) level 60 or higher, and we've never done an end-game dungeon, heroic, raid, or whatever those things are called. I wouldn't even know how to do any of that stuff. I just learned what tiered gear is. So yeah, it's a pretty casual game, if you ask me, but like every game, it has it's clicks of hardcore guys (like the guy who had a L80 Death Knight the FIRST DAY they released Wrath of the Lich King.
the rise of casual gaming means near-certain death for hardcore gaming
Kind of like the rise of 15-second music video snippets mean certain death of hardcore music videos. (Hardcore meaning playing the entire video...remember that? Anyone?)
The last Radler I had was in 1990. They still drink that crap? Why, oh why, would you pollute some of the world's finest beer with Coke products!!!!!!
Certainly you'd be able to discern fresh, chef-prepared seafood over frozen fish sticks though. And certainly anyone with a brain cell would prefer fresh chef-prepared seafood to Long John Silvers? If not, you probably prefer Coors Light to a good beer as well.
Is Czechvar the same thing as Budvar? When I was in Prague, they only had three beers. Staropramen, Czechvar?, and Urquell. And as much as I love Oregon beers, nothing beats a Paulaner from the tap at an outdoor Munich beer garden in May.
I suppose I could turn this into a Mac - PC argument analogy. Since you can buy something like 24 CANS of Bud Lite for something like $10, and you can't buy good microbrew except in 6-pack bottles for roughly $1 a bottle, I "guess" you could say microbrews are expensive. But when compared to the similar packaging of Budweiser (6 glass bottles) they aren't really that expensive, you just can't get a small Army's worth of cheap, canned beer like you can from Budweiser.
Depends where you live. Here in Austin (not necessarily the beer mecca of America) I have more "microbrew" options than I do the standard piss-water Anheiser-Bush/Miller garbage. Of course, we also have loads of piss-water Mexican beer as well, but I'm perfectly happy as a Pacific Northwesterner living in Austin.
I love Germany and German beer, but why are they the only civilized nation that mixes their beer with anything??? You could argue we Americans mix our beer with water, or the Irish mix their beer with beer (black and tan), but the Germans put, Coke, Sprite, that horrible Orange/Coke concoction...whatever fizzy they can get their hands on and then stick it in their otherwise blissful beers!
but we Finns have the best beer in world
The fine brewmasters of the Pacific Northwest (and California) would like to have a word with you. I'm willing to bet I can find more good beer from Portland, OR than I can the entire country of Finland.
the proof is in the taste. If YOU like it, it's good beer.
Blasphemy. Take your poor taste (pun included) back to St. Louis or Milwaukee, or wherever you honed that horrible taste in beer!
"I have to say in 1981 making those decisions I felt like I was providing enough freedom for ten years, that is the move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time".
http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/media/1989%20Bill%20Gates%20Talk%20on%20Microsoft.html
To boil and old, tiresome argument down, Gates spent a lot of time backtracking on his comment because he gave misleading/incorrect estimation of the lifespan of the 640k architecture.
*heavy sigh*...not this again. He didn't say those quoted words, but he did quip something about memory limits on 286/386 or whatever chips at the time. That's why I said it was "misconstrued". It's like saying Al Gore didn't say he "invented the Internet", (when he did say that, but didn't mean that literally).
I don't see that as a geek thing or a "marketing genius" thing. It's just an avoid-competing thing,
You'd at least concede that "avoiding competition" has nothing to do whatsoever about developing good tech, right? That's why Gates isn't a great geek, because the stuff he's good at has nothing to do with being a geek. Technology is merely the vehicle he used to forge his billions.
The reason Bill Gates made so much money in PCs is quite simple: He realized the market was made up of tons of folks that can't/won't learn how the PC works and just wanted to do the least amount possible to get their program to run.
If he realized it, then why didnt' he do anything about it? If anything, Microsoft has purposely engineered unneeded complexity into their systems, to keep the whole MSCE and other MS-centric certification industries running. By doing so, "professionals" will continue to keep implementing Windows solution (because they make money supporting them). It's genius, really.
It isn't "misattributed", because he did utter those words. It can be argued that they were "misconstrued", however, because people attribute meaning to the statement that wasn't the intent of Gates' statement.
Mod up funny...wait...what...where am I?