Core gamers do not exist: A more accurate breakdown of the customer base

The game industry largely uses the terms 'core gamer' and 'casual gamer' to segment and target its potential audience. I will summarize why this is embarrassing and propose a more cynical (and useful) approach to categorizing different types of gamer.

The industry categorizes gamers largely based on how much time they spend playing. Casual gamers are labelled as playing less often and for shorter durations.

From what I have observed, the adoption of the moniker 'core gamer' started as largely a rejection of the input of 'hardcore gamers'. Second generation game developers didn't like the high standards present in the feedback of the hardcore audience. They took a path of ignoring the existing audience while attempting to replace it with one that was less discerning. Technically, the industry recognizes the existence of a third 'hardcore' type of gamer, but actively ignores it out of spite.

I don't think I need to go into why that model is horribly inaccurate. But it is worth pointing out how sad it is that such a large industry doesn't have a better way of thinking about its customers. Some sophistication exists around spending habits (ie. 'whales' in free-to-play games and pre-order bonuses), but that is limited to extracting more revenue from existing customers, not what motivates interest.

I propose the following model.

CUSTOMERS:

• Polyluderes (connoisseurs)
  play everything that meets a personal bar for quality and novelty
  
  
• Secutors (followers)
  follow trends, buy what their friends are playing, motivated by not missing out
  
  
• Genreists (narrow)
  will only play a limited number of genres or franchises
  
  
• Backseat (non-gamers who buy games)
  actively dislike challenge, prefer walking simulators, story heavy experiences, also known as soyboys, journalists, and girlfriends
  
  
• Facile (women)
  demand low challenge, will happily substitute gaming with another form of diversion, play hidden object games/romance stories/ad-driven phone games

NON-CUSTOMERS:

• Commentators (streamers)
  drama-driven and click-driven personalities, easily bought for a microscopic portion of the marketing budget
  
  
• Semi-Pro (dreamers)
  young people chasing the dream of turning gaming into a job, will play one or two games for thousands of hours
  
  
• Activists (sjws)
  actively ruin games to virtue signal for retarded ideologies, commonly found in low-paying game journalism careers

Note that in this model we clearly label which groups have a worthwhile amount of disposable income to design and market a game to, and which ones do not. If you are confused as to why this doesn't align with who the industry is catering to these days you are not alone.

You could argue that certain studios have more sophisticated ways of looking at the core/casual model, but I'd argue that this model explains things that those models cannot. For example, why Puzzle Quest was much more popular with boys than girls. Using this model, it is easy to see that the match-3 mechanics that normally appeal to the Facile gamer had enough depth and challenge layered on top to appeal to a different audience.

In conclusion, this disparity in models explains some of the industry's missteps and it's what I would use to inform game design and marketing. Feedback welcome.

 

Man, my wife is the most hardcore gamer out there I guess because she plays phone games constantly.

 

GAMERS RISE UP
DO NOT LET THEM PIT US AGAINST EACH OTHER
THEY OPPRESS ALL OF US AND ARE NOW TRYING TO TURN US ON EACH OTHER
WE ARE THE MOST OPPRESSED GROUP OF PEOPLES, DO NOT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT

 

I'm gonna do what we call a pro gamer move
N

 

Where do I fit in?

 

They targeted gamers. Gamers.

 

this is like modern time eugenics, "big head must be smart".

 

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Have

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sex.

 

Fortnite players are the real core gamers, everybody else is irrelevant

 

This is your future

 

Connoisseur is a nice way to describe my trash taste and lack of self control coupled with too much disposable income.

 

Well, while it's better then hardcore-softcore-whalecore scale I do have to ask: why do you try separate Gamer Type (customer) and Public Role (non-customer) into exclusive categories? Surely the gaming streamers are also gamers (or non-gamer depending on their content), to some degree: PewDP is some mix Secutor and Polyluder while Sseth is more of a Nostalgic Genreist with some family friendly wholesome comedy. Question is what about their audience? Do they buy games, do they buy games which are featured on the streamers channel and do they value the streamers opinion? Pretty sure that some games got a big addition of customers after reviewed/shown on some channels while when a famous feminist critic recommended some game only crickets and tumbleweeds took notice.

Also the Activists are mostly trendchasers, same people who love extreme modesty and non-violence today was probably loving the 2005-2015 tv when every show was trying to be filled with darkness, blood and tits or as they called it "mature, adult entertainment".

 

All I watch on Youtube is videos about PC gaming, RPGs and FPS games, etc. Yet all the ads I see are for mobile games, usually city builders and "strategy" titles.

 

Asking these questions makes you more sophisticated than the typical industry analyst. The reason I called out those non-customers is because I see the industry catering to them with detrimental game design. You will always find individual exceptions to a model (it is by definition a simplification) but the primary point is that catering to those groups is foolish because they do not purchase a meaningful number of games.

Streamers are a very small group, and the notable ones receive games for free.
Profitable e-sports activities spring up around popular games, not vice versa.
SJWs don't buy games, they complain about them on twitter.

Certainly there are follower groups that can be influenced by these people, but it is important to remember that you should be catering to the tastes of the followers, not the buzz-creation mechanism. If a game can be fully enjoyed by watching a Twitch stream, it will not sell to those watching. The full-retard version of this is investing money in creating game features that only apply while streamed to an audience.

 

You forgot:

Matriarchdors - People who have little time to actually play the games they buy.

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Because they're on your mom.

 

Agreed, the eSportification of fighting games and RTS didn't seemed to help, keeping politicians and activist happy is meaningless unless they are known gamer demographics (pro-tip: they're not) and with streamers you need to be carefull.

Esport and Activist can be ignored almost completely when talking about marketing of an unknown/new game. With streamers, one need to realize that different streamers have different audience, which in turn have different buying patterns. PDPs was mostly kids who could buy something cheap and "lolzy" to play with friends or some trending game (like every horror game around his popularity 201X) but would not spend money on walking sim which could be experienced completely on YT, like that dragon-cancer game. Other channels will have review of old games, from good old xbox360 time of classical games, or some niche genres and have much smaller audience but also higher rate of sold copy/viewer if your game click with them.

So what most gaming studios should do is not just looking att streamers number of viewers but instead analyze amount of gamers from total viewers and their typer according to your Customer types, three smaller channels where most viewers are Genereist and Polyluders beats one megachannel where most are non-gameres and Secutors. Unless you really sure your memefriendly game is the memest of them all, unlike every other challenger.

 

You forgot about the coomers.

 

I prefer to be called a Gamer American.

 

Coomer is an actual target audience now, it is ridiculous. Any game with slightly frivoulously dressed women in the thumbnail or screenshots has a few dozend threads on steam asking wether there is nudity or patches in there. And if the Dev answers no its always "A shame, saved me 20 bucks" I bet if you catered to those coomers you could easily double your sales as a niche game. Maybe Witcher 3 was only so successfull because you see tits in it?

:thinking:

 

You made Disco Elysium's fans mad, I bet they felt included in the category facile. We could consider them the women in the codex, hahaha.

 

You mean you have 4000+ hours clocked in each Halo and Call of Duty game?

 

Genreists that play dating sims and JRPGs.

 

Yeah, fuck it, white people really deserve to die off.