Are casual gamers ruining it for the rest of us?

[Dogsoup]

Don't know how to use the fucking pads to do a 10 button combo to kill a fucking goblin. I prefer to push "A" on my keyboard for "Attack" and then press a direction.

 

[hiver]

casual gamer arguments

:facepalm:

 

[Dogsoup]

When I play a rpg, I don't want to play fucking Mario 64 you idiot. I've got a keyboard, it means something: I can write sentences and push keys so that my character does the things I want him to do. You've never played any of the old school rpgs, it seems.

 

[Dogsoup]

In fact you're shitting all over "Fallout 3" but it's exactly the kind of game you want to play: a semi-FPS with stats and combos.

 

[hiver]

Im so stupid that i just went beyond retarded so far that my asshole and brain actually switched places

 

[trais]

When you're arguing with an idiot it's obvious he's doing the same.

 

[Seboss]

Nope. Publishers who can't see the difference between demographics are.

This.

 

[Witchblade]

trais wrote:

It's not casuals.
It's because with today's fancy graphics, motion capture, fully voiced dialogues, marketing and bribes for journalists etc. production of mainstream games cost millions of dollars, and thus games need to sell millions of copies to make at least some profit. And to do that, you need to make your game appealing for the widest audience possible.
As result we got dumbed down games so even casuals can play them and with twitchy combat for more "action" games. But casuals didn't caused the problem

Edward_R_Murrow wrote:

Nope. Publishers who can't see the difference between demographics are.

hiver wrote:

Compared to modern games they were mazes of complexity. Compare to kings bounty - basically a clone with many features taken out from what they cloned.

You see to modern devs even M&M was too complicated for their imagined audience of casual gamers.

The problem is, as i said in that post above that you didnt even read, is that this moronic movement of making games accessible is stupidly leading into making games easy by simplifying them so much they end up boring because of utter lack of any kind of challenge.

That.

 

[Angthoron]

Problem lies mainly in the Marketing Departments, I think. It's them that influence both the publisher side and the audience side the most. Through this, they can form an illusion of desire in the said audience by saying the right words at the right time, by flinging grand adjectives and buying up reviews. Through this, they can form an illusion of knowledge in the publisher; the publisher is led to believe that what's needed is some more casual-oriented games with short length, Patrick Stewart (Or at least Will Smith), explosions and PhysX.

This is then sent on to the devs, and off the devs go, making another Game of the Year that's forgotten until its sequel is released.

So basically, the marketing/product research teams are the biggest harm to the gaming, but since their actions net the publisher the biggest buck (and turn the future corporate drones into IQ80 morons), there's nothing that needs fixing there.

Pity really, as most casual gamers eventually want to expand to the realm of non-casual but get no chance to do so with the "current gen" games.

 

[hiver]

When you're arguing with an idiot it's obvious he's doing the same.

Thank you for that elementary school morale but i wasnt arguing. I was just insulting the fucker.

I didnt even enjoy it at the end, for obvious reasons. It was just something that had to be done.

 

[Rhalle]

Do they really think that people want more bite-sized and dumber experiences?

It's clearly agitprop direct from marketing, an excuse to make crap.

Fuck them.

 

[udm]

One very obvious thing they are missing is that accessibility doesnt mean easy.

So true. So true.

 

[Turok]

Developments whant invest little money and get high sun, casual gamers is a easy target for this.

 

[bozia2012]

To those thinking it's a shoop - it's not.

 

[Helton]

If they made games worth the time investment there wouldn't be nearly as many casual gamers. I'm a casual gamer now. Best game out this year makes me roll my eyes every five minutes, so why the fuck should I bother getting engrossed in the hobby anymore?

So, no, casual gamers aren't killing gaming it's the death of gaming that's creating casual gamers.

 

[Jaesun]

If they made games worth the time investment there wouldn't be nearly as many casual gamers. I'm a casual gamer now. Best game out this year makes me roll my eyes every five minutes, so why the fuck should I bother getting engrossed in the hobby anymore?

So, no, casual gamers aren't killing gaming it's the death of gaming that's creating casual gamers.

 

[MetalCraze]

Сasual gamers aren't killing gaming it's the death of gaming that's creating casual gamers.

Deep.

 

[mondblut]

I perfectly understand the billions of semi-literate PC users who like to waste their office hours playing solitaire or pinball or something.

What I positively don't understand is any of them bothering to *purchase* a game like these. Isn't bothering to look for a game not bundled with Windows too hardcore for a "casual gamer"?

As far as I am concerned, "casual gamer" is somebody who doesn't care about games in the first place, but just happened to get interested in a certain specific game for some superficial reason or another. Like my ex-girlfriend. She like totally loved Heroes of Might and Magic beginning with part 3, played all sequels and addons and user-made campaigns and shit to death... because she "liked pretty little horsies", she said. But for the love of god I couldn't get her remotely interested in any HOMM-like games like Age of Wonders or Disciples, let alone anything else. Nor even in Mount & Blade, because horsies there aren't pretty enough. She also loved Tekken and mastered it. And no other game has ever interested her. Go figure.

Bottom line: seeking some common ground with which to appear to all "casual gamers" is an excercise in futility. We hardcore gamers are 1000% more predictable, each of us knows exactly what he wants in his games and it should be done. An average non-gaming person's possible gaming interest is as predictable as molecular brownian movement.

 

[The Lord Of The Flames]

The differences between Hardcore and Casual are difficulty and complexity. Those two are not the same but are connected. Take Diablo and Oblivion as example. Both are relative simple games. Diablo however offers higher difficulty levels. Also their individual complexities are quite different.

Diablo has a isometric view. As result you only need one mouse button to move and attack. You can bind a second attack to the second button. The menu can be opened per mouse click. If you want to you can play Diablo with the mouse alone. To successfully navigate Oblivion you need four movement keys, and your mouse button to attack. Possibly you need to jump. Another key is needed to open the inventory.

Diablo's Inventory is designed for the computer and one can move object around however one likes. Compare this to Oblivion's inventory where everything is in categoric and alphabetic order. In my eyes the Diablo system is the better one and the more complex one in terms of user interaction.

Diablo also has the more complex skill system. It offers classes, passive effects and more diverse magic (as far as I remember it was some years ago for both games). The influence your stat/skill progression makes on the difficulty is also bigger. Both games however lack in terms of interaction with NPCs.

But given the more complex underpinnings of Diablo, why is it more popular than Oblivion can hope to ever be? The answer is in how the relative complexities are represented. Diablo's controls scheme makes it easier to manage the inventory and skills. Oblivion's obsession with "immersion" results in a barrier to player's that are not willing to deal with the complex controls. This may sound stupid, because: "How hard can it be to move character through a 3D world?" It is however not as easy as many think. Most of us grew up on 2D games. Those can be jump and runs, turn based RPGs, strategy games or whatever. When we moved on to 3D games we already mastered several control schemes and completed man games. We were prepared. Newer players aren't.

The fact that 2D games are easier to navigate is quite ironic, given how Bioware and co are moving to 3D games in the name of "immersion". They will lose (potential) sales in the long run for dumbing down their games. It also means that gearing Gears of War towards a casual market doesn't work, not because the game difficulty but because of the controls. Developers lower the difficulty and remove all gameplay complexity and the result are games that bore hardcore gamers and miss the casual market. They just don't get what matters for what target audience.

The isometric view is just better at allowing you to manage game complexity. Both casual games and games like Fallout are isometric because of this.

People who criticizes the new Prince of Persia also miss the point. Yes it might be a bit to easy for those who already played similar games, but the lack of punishment doesn't change anything besides removing the need to quicksave every time you do a jump right.

 

[Xerxos]

What I have to say about this: Get your fucking casual out of my RPG!

 

[BehindTimes]

Bottom line: seeking some common ground with which to appear to all "casual gamers" is an excercise in futility. We hardcore gamers are 1000% more predictable, each of us knows exactly what he wants in his games and it should be done. An average non-gaming person's possible gaming interest is as predictable as molecular brownian movement.

Yes, you might be more predictable, but how many hardcore games did you purchase last year? I'm not talking about how many you played (rented, borrowed from a friend, bundled with hardware, acquired a more illicet way, etc), but how many did you purchase?

In the end, what is made comes down to money.

There are more casual gamers. As the article stated, casual gamers will most likely not play hardcore games, but hardcore players will play casual games. And over the past few years, women gamers have increased significantly. Not stating that they are all playing casual games, but when there's a rise in casual games being sold, and women gamers, I'll make an assumption that there's a correlation. And the games are cheaper to make, so they can sell for less, and still require few gamers to make a profit. If you make a game that costs $10 million, if you sell at $60, you're probably talking about needing to sell at least half a million copies to break even (you have to take into account how much the stores take out of the percentage, etc). With the casual game, if it cost $50k to make, and you sell it at $5, to break even at the same percentage of profit as the hardcore game, you'd only need to sell 30000 copies. And most people notice the $60 they spend for a game, but $5 is disposable income. Now, in the end, they might actually spend more than $60 in the same time that they would have devoted to the $60, but it's not about the actual reality in terms of money, but the perception. And being a less complex game, you can make more of the games, and faster, so you can make more money in the same time period than had you gone after the hardcore market. And most games are financial failures. So, if you're planning to fail, which would you rather fail at? The $50000 failure, or the $5000000 failure?

Besides, it's just a cycle of life. The people who are complaining today are the casual gamers of yesteryear, who people such as myself were complaining about ruining games when the games we liked to play were dumbed down, and ruining those genres. And I use to be the person people complained were ruining their games, and the people who are the new demographic today, will be complaining about a new generation of gamers tomarrow.

It's not that casual gamers are ruining gamers. It's not that games are being ruined. It's just that the current demographic that most of you are in are becoming irrelavent when it comes to the almighty dollar.

 

[BethesdaLove]

jews

 

[nomask7]

jews

That is deep. It's the materialistic bazaar mentality that they spread which is killing true games before they are even born. But it's also the stupidity of gamers or goyim that is partly to blame. They wouldn't be so easy pray if they weren't so dumb. The truth is, the eugenic solution is the only long term solution available to humanity at this point. Remember, it hurts only once (it only hurts one generation). The next billion years of human history will be 1000000000000x better for it.

 

[Unradscorpion]

jews

That is deep. It's the materialistic bazaar mentality that they spread which is killing true games before they are even born. But it's also the stupidity of gamers or goyim that is partly to blame. They wouldn't be so easy pray if they weren't so dumb. The truth is, the eugenic solution is the only long term solution available to humanity at this point. Remember, it hurts only once (it only hurts one generation). The next billion years of human history will be 1000000000000x better for it.

Well, if it brings Troika back...

 

[racofer]

jews

That is deep. It's the materialistic bazaar mentality that they spread which is killing true games before they are even born. But it's also the stupidity of gamers or goyim that is partly to blame. They wouldn't be so easy pray if they weren't so dumb. The truth is, the eugenic solution is the only long term solution available to humanity at this point. Remember, it hurts only once (it only hurts one generation). The next billion years of human history will be 1000000000000x better for it.

Well, if it brings Troika back...

Agreed.