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SoulMaster71
Many folk like to know beforehand what is to be set on the table; but those who have laboured to prepare the feast like to keep their secret; for wonder makes the words of praise louder.

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Gaming's Problems are Our Fault

Posted by SoulMaster71 - August 30th, 2010


We've all been there. Browsing our local GameStop or the video game aisle at a more generalized store, and we've seen them. Casual games. The Wii and the DS? Full of them, and the secret to the systems' success. Microsoft and Sony are moving in on that market, though the chances of their success in that area this generation are generally considered pretty low. We've long since seen or heard of Kinect and Move being revealed at E3, and we all at least understand that this is basic economics in action: there's a demand for certain products in long-ignored segments of the consumer base, and whoever satisfies that demand is going to make money. That being said, we also understand that this will eventually mean less space on the GameStop shelves for our games. But what we don't understand, fellow gamers, is that the major market differences between hardcore and casual gamers is largely our fault.

First, before we get any further, we gotta set definitions straight. A "gamer", for the purposes of this rant, won't be my usual definition of the term, which would be a member of the subculture centered around the video game hobby. That would be "hardcore gamer". "Casual gamer" would be someone who may own a Wii or DS, but doesn't focus on gaming even as a hobby. I'd usually lump them in with "non-gamer", people who don't play games at all or who only play on bad Flash game sites (uh, this one doesn't count since it's not completely awful), but the distinction needs to be made here. Hardcore gamers are by definition more dedicated than casual gamers. Usually, hardcore gamers are more likely to play longer, more deeply involving games, or else they play a lot of shorter, faster games while implementing strategies for victory. Casuals, for the most part, don't get so involved, don't know or use strategies, and generally don't pay much attention to games. The fundamental difference in attitudes on the hobby is the cause of much dissension among hardcore gamers, who are divided between those who are OK with the casuals and those who understandably feel like their own world, filled with their people, is being ripped out from under them.

Bit of a history lesson here, or another annoying nostalgia rant by some nobody with a Newgrounds account if you like that description better. Long ago, in glorious eras called the 80s and 90s, there were these wonderful places where anyone could game, hardcore and casual alike, each in their own ways. These amazing places were called "arcades", and for a long time, things were good. Granted their influence began to weaken after the NES and later the Genesis and SNES provided longer, more varied home experiences, but arcades continued to go strong until the late 90s. When I was a kid, arcades and arcade machines were nearly everywhere; I've visited four malls in my life, and three had full-fledged arcades, with the one that didn't having restaurants near the entrance that had arcade machines. Even if gamers weren't going to be in the same building as an arcade that day, the home systems provided games that could similarly be enjoyed in short bursts or in marathon sessions alike. Something like Super Mario Bros.? You don't need much time to go through a few levels there. Same with most of the games in the old days, aside from a few relative epics like The Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy. Sure, even the shorter titles got difficult quick if they didn't start out that way, but the casuals played as far as they needed to, and the games were often the same as ours.

Then something changed. Sometime in the 90s we all got obsessive about image. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the industry began pandering entirely to our tastes, leaving the casuals out in the cold. Children, women, whatever, if you weren't a male, ages 18 to 35, you were out. Some wiggle room if you were male, 12 to 17, and your parents didn't care about ratings. Sony's at least partially to blame, their marketing making gamers out of less-nerdy males in that age range when guys were previously expected to not play games openly lest they risk being considered dorks or fags and shoved in lockers. Gaming was previously "for kids", now it was more "grownup", and these more "grownup" gamers (whose tastes bear a surprising similarity to what I assume Beavis and Butthead's would be) demanded more "grownup" games that started getting real dark, not exactly a stylistic or setting decision that appeals to kids or women. But the trend of hardcore image trumping all else first showed up much earlier, when Nintendo's kind-friendly console monopoly was only starting to crack. Let's face it, people: Mortal Kombat wasn't really that good a game. The controls were moderately clunky, balance was nonexistent, and it was essentially a button masher. The only reason it succeeded was because we all wanted to look super hardcore awesome by playing the big violent game and ripping someone's spine out. That didn't shut out casuals by being too complicated. It left them hanging because it was all about violence and gore, and they wanted something that wasn't selling entirely on "edgy" image. And it only got worse from there, as grimdark settled into more and more games.

Meanwhile, games also started to demand more time from gamers. Again this was due to demand: hardcore gamers wanted more cinematic games, games that had more in the way of plot than just a paragraph or two in the manual and a single-screen ending. But the longer and more plot-heavy these games got, the more they could no longer cater to casual interests. Go, dust off that old N64, put in Ocarina of Time and start a new save. Tell me how long it takes even just to get out to Hyrule Field. Guys, this is the game generally considered the all-time greatest. Final Fantasy VII supposedly sold the Playstation, but how long did it take to get out of Midgar, much less to the end of Disc One? Like casuals can stick with a game for that long, they weren't even that dedicated when it was Mario! And this was the generation's dominant direction. Casual gamers were driven out of console gaming and into the handheld market, or worse, out of gaming entirely and onto bad Flash sites. And us? We didn't notice. We had our epics, and later our sandbox games. And we were generally content, not noticing that an entire market segment had basically been disappearing and stagnating since 1995.

Someone noticed. Nintendo noticed that game companies' pandering to the base, combined with the base's own ever-increasing demands, was raising costs and reducing the potential base to the point where it would no longer be viable. The actual base in Japan, apparently, was already shrinking. Nintendo themselves decided to make a console to bring back the base, and to keep expanding and capitalizing on the still-larger handheld demographic. You know the results of that, if you've been paying attention at any point in the last three years or so: the Wii outsells the other two consoles, the DS outsells everything. Which leads me to my point: we're the reason they have to specifically make consoles for the other 2/3 of the population, and why that stands out so much. Who demanded darker, edgier, eventually gorier games? Us, all the way back to the day we put our quarters in the Mortal Kombat machine. Who said games' lengths should be in the double digits in hours, that they should contain so much? We did, and a shorter game that casuals could enjoy got a bad reaction unless it fit certain genre and gameplay criteria. The casuals left, and while our gaming tastes changed theirs didn't. A wedge was driven between hardcore and casual gamers.

And it's not like I have a solution either. I'm just one guy, at a computer, nothing that can do anything but type up a half-assed rant about how we're now feeling the pain of our screw-ups. I still like my games long, hard, and heavy on the plot. While I have little patience for excessive gray-brown "real" in games, give me pretty instead of gritty and I fangasm all over every screenshot. Not that pretty and dark are necessarily incompatible: see The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Of course, the graphical obsession probably turns off casuals too, since, let me be one to say it, they couldn't really tell between a PS2 and PS3 game. Or between the Xbox and the Xbox 360. More graphics = more development costs, meaning players have to pay more (which turns off casuals because they don't have enough interest to put a shitload of money into gaming).

Hey, maybe that's a start to bridging the gap. Games are real expensive other than budget titles on the Wii, DS, possibly PSP, right? Well, the graphics sure aren't completely integral to console or especially handheld games. And while I feel some games need and deserve a lot of plot, for some other kinds of games excessive plot or even too many collectible items is just padding to casual players. I still love a longer game, but some people just don't have the time for it. Reduce length of mainstream games, cut back graphics, make the subject matter more kid-friendly, we might stand a chance of not seeing our hobby-subculture annihilated by the hobby's mass expansion and resultant changes.

Someday I hope to see gaming be like film: something for everyone, and few or none questioning the medium's artistic potential. The hardcore gamer would be like the film buff, with the casual as the average moviegoer, and works made to cater to both, or to each individually.


Comments

Hell yes brother, games aren't as satisfying these days. It really is amazing how a 64 game like Ocarina of Time can consistently be as fun for me over the course of 12+ years. I've probably beaten it 4 times and master quest once. It has so much that new gen games don't right now. Depth of story, character, levels, and sub-plot(back story). All of these essential depths were executed flawlessly in this game.

Don't get me wrong...There are many great games now that are just so visually stimulating it leaves me agape, but that's not what I care about! Like Final Fantasy XIII(13), It looks so beautiful, but yet, there is so much lacking in the story and characters, I can't even finish the game yet because it's so....boring I guess...I would even go as far as saying that FFIV and VI (4 & 6) each had more depth than XIII.

Good games are amazing stories that pull you into their world and you KNOW that you are a part of that world. The games today don't have that sensation. I feel foreign in many newer games, I feel less involved and more like an audience, taking a back seat to the slow, linear progression of these amazingly visually stimulating games. It's strange and not right.

Those of us strong in the ways of gaming have felt this decline for a while, but I didn't imagine it would happen so fast. It's sad too because there aren't like any original game ideas. The last one I played was Okami for PS2 and that was great. Other than that it's sequels and remakes.

You're missing the point. Did you jump right into Ocarina of Time, your first time picking up a controller, and know what to do? Probably not. I know I played for years before getting into anything with more than a lame excuse for a story. Point is, you need to get into gameplay before you get into story. The new gamers, the casuals, they're beginning to get into gameplay. They're a long way from story, if they're even going to get there (the kids will, the old people and moms not so much). The slide into epics like Ocarina of Time was part of what divided "hardcores" and "casuals" in the first place.

I'm not going to deny the greatness of FFIV or especially FFVI. I'm currently in the middle of FFIV Advance, grinding for my trip to the Moon. And yeah, it's pretty good. You know what else it is? Pretty high up the gaming ladder. Come on, you think the Wii Sports crowd would be able to stick with a game that long? That's why I suggested moving the goalposts on required length, at least outside the RPG and action-adventure genres. Final Fantasy XIII, I haven't played. A lot of gamers have come out about not liking it, for one reason or another, but the complaint from the casual end would be that it's too long. Also, last price I saw of it was more expensive than some casuals would like to pay for a game, even used. Like I said, development costs are bit high due to graphics and length.

Good games don't have to be amazing stories. Some games, Zelda and Final Fantasy come to mind, are best when heavy on the story. But can you imagine a plot-heavy Mario? Or Sonic? Even Metroid has plenty of fandom disagreement about its rise in plot. Really, different games are played different ways, and while we may prefer one style or another, that doesn't mean it's superior. To casuals, both the "visual stimuli overload" games and the "enormous 50-hour epic" games are near-unplayable because they don't have the time or dedication to get into them.

But yeah, we're low on new IPs outside the casual stuff. At least I never hear about them. I never see them advertised, I rarely hear anyone talking about games outside the long-running series, and as such I'm not exposed to anything new in my gaming experience. It's probably because of development costs being passed on to the consumer, which means nobody buys something that isn't a sure winner because that would be $60 down the hole.

In the future I may like to use the AIvin-Earthworm account for the means of a humorous animated parody.

Ah, that one. I had some plans for it once, but they fell through. We can discuss it through PM, if you'd like.

Well said, bro. Well said.

Thank ya!

Indeed, well said. I used to be deep into gaming, but not anymore. Not with school and that stuff..

Same happened to me with anime. I was totally into it in like 2008, but not so much now. I'm trying to get back into it, but... It's been like forever, I haven't even seen any in about a year. Damn TV Tropes, dragging me back into watching wrestling.

Wow, I actually agree with something. (which is rare) While I do like and get into newer games such as Fallout: New Vegas, and other recent games, I still do play my Nintendo 64. My most played game I would have to say is Ocarina of Time followed closely by Majora's Mask. They were great games even on an older system. Heck, I like them better than the newest game in one of my favorite series. This article thing is right-on. Keep up with the good ones ^^

There's definitely room for every genre: JRPG, WRPG, Action/Adventure, casual party game, shooters both first-person and third-person, and even sports. But focusing on one genre at the expense of all others leads to situations like the current one, where those who for whatever reason generally dislike the genre are pushed out and are only brought back in at the expense of those who had stuck with the hobby. And yeah, I'll admit that Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time are my two favorite games (unless I like Twilight Princess more during a given week). But the often platformer-heavy and relatively casual-friendly world that existed around OoT and Final Fantasy VII changed to more resemble those games, then to be like Grand Theft Auto, then it became Halo or Call of Duty. You and I aren't among them, probably, but there are people who haven't the time to play through a game of Zelda length, who are outright offended by the subject matter in GTA or COD. Games for them were kinda shoved out of the limelight for a few years, leading to the major shock when the Wii brought them back in droves.

I didn't read it but you are probably right.

I think I was right about it... But now I can't be entirely sure, and I probably never will be unless someone, most likely Nintendo, really bridges that casual/hardcore gap. I think if anyone is interested in doing so it's Nintendo, but whether or not they will succeed with this WiiU thing has yet to be seen.

Hey how you doing buddy?

Me? I've apparently spent the last year, four months, and 20 days dead. But I'm #1, so why try harder?