Secret to the “Casual”

“Casual” gamers have been referred to in a way as if they are ‘retarded’ gamers. While they are the ‘downmarket’, this also doesn’t sufficiently explain what is going on with these new gamers. Demographic stereotypes also won’t solve the issue. What is the secret to the so-called ‘casual gamer’?

On another unrelated paper, someone, with great authority, said to me, “You are writing it for casuals.”

“WHAT did you say?” I demanded.

“You wrote it for casuals…” he repeated. “Instead of using a formal tone, you novelized it. You inserted dialogue. This helps people learn the content.”

But let us take this idea further. With books, we know there are tons of ‘literature’ and elitist type books where the author is attempting to create ‘art’. However, the best sellers are made for ‘casuals’ and lack ‘serious’ literary writing. From the elitist view, these best sellers are ‘dumbed down’ for people. From the consumer’s point of view, they just want a good story to perform a job such as something to occupy them while riding a plane or on a beach. They have nothing against the ‘literary’ books except the prose is so thick, and so many obstacles of the author trying to use countless ‘symbols’, that the story is difficult to get at.

A better analogy exists for college students. You find there are two types of professors: those who focus on the students learning and others who are interested in enthroning themselves. In other words, those who are focused on users and those who are focused on themselves. This creates two wildly different teaching styles.

The user centric teacher will use games, dialogue, riddles, anything that engages the users and answer their issues correctly. This teacher gets rated highly by the students.

The teacher focused on himself/herself will teach in a boring, drawn out lecture. Such a teacher will begin the class by telling how smart he or she is, all their degrees and accomplishments, and other qualifications. This teacher is focused on how everyone else thinks of him/her. This teacher also might act, superficially, like the user centric teacher by doing dialogue, riddles, and all but it is not because he/she is focused on the user. The teacher is doing it because it was required of him/her.

What is funny is that teachers, focused on themselves, end up with worse student evaluations than the user-centric teacher. It is funny because these teachers who are focused on themselves believe they are way smarter than these idiotic user-centric teachers. And it is true that they are. But being smarter is not the same as teaching better. And for book writers, writing better is not the same as telling a better story. Publishers everywhere are choking on ever-flowing slush piles where wannabe writers display their ‘brilliance’.

Ironically, you can combine the two. Academics write many, many books. None of them are read. Why? They are so steeped in academic style as the masses don’t want to slog through that. Their content is also not what people care to know. After their ‘brilliance’ fails to create a best-selling book, they just declare that the masses are ‘idiots’ and that those best-selling books are written in a ‘casual’ style (written in a retarded way, dumbed down, for the masses).

Let’s apply this gaming. Disruption does divide the consumers in numerous parts (Undershot, Overshot, Non-Consumer), but everyone in the industry only talks about two ‘groups’: casual games versus hardcore games.

Take a standard ‘hardcore’ game. Here, we find the focus of the game was made to focus on the developer/publisher. It is the “Look at me! I am so cool!” We begin seeing long, drawn out cinematics. We see an ‘epic story’ with a overly long introduction (and these ‘epic stories’ are really garbage, but every developer thinks he/she is a creative genius). And there is a long tutorial to ‘teach’ the ‘stupid’ user of the amazement that will come from the game. With these ‘hardcore’ games, the developers strut like peacocks as if they were rockstars or movie directors. “Look at me! Look how cool our game is!” A big red flag is when the designer attempts to make the game into ‘art’. Instead of making a fun product for the consumer, they are focused on making ‘art’ which is another way of saying they want to display their ‘brilliance’.

The user focused game is very different. Since the game doesn’t attempt to be ‘art’, the industry snarls and calls them ‘non-games’. The entire game revolves not around the ‘design’ or ‘story’ but around the user and the user’s reactions. Miyamoto tests games by watching users’ faces. “I try to make people smile,” he says. Many companies do the same, but the difference is that there is a feeling that the game is the developers’ baby and everyone believes their baby is the most beautiful. They are unwilling to hack it to bits, to take it apart or take it back to the drawing board. Publishers are unwilling to do so because they have financial quarters to meet. Only a devoted user-centric company, such as Nintendo or Blizzard, are willing to delay a game significantly ‘until its done’ or even destroy the project entirely. Other companies say, “They can do that because they have the money to delay.” But both weren’t always big. In order to delay games until they are properly finished, perhaps these companies need to focus on smaller games, ones that they can financially afford to finish correctly.

The 8-bit Era is very useful as most of today’s current franchises began there and the era was a ‘Shift’ just as this cycle is. ‘Super Mario Brothers’ was not made so Miyamoto could make himself famous. It was to make a fun game that even children could play. ‘Legend of Zelda’ was not made to create high art. It was made to make Yamauchi money. And this is done by creating a different gameplay experience.

The so-called “Hardcore” games are broken games. They are obsessed about enthroning the developer/publisher. Sophisticated gamers, just like sophisticated readers, like this because they are on the same mission as the developer/publishers: the desire to make gaming more ‘sophisticated’. ‘Sophistication’ means the same as it would in the ‘literary’ sense: to make gaming into ‘high art’ (whatever ‘high art’ is. People just want to play a freaking game).

This is why the industry has gotten the concept of motion controllers all wrong. They see motion controllers as a way to make their gaming even more sophisticated. That is not how Nintendo is using it, and if Sony and Microsoft say, “Aha! Nintendo is not using motion controls ‘properly’ to create a more sophisticated game! We will show them!”, they are going to be in a for a world of hurt.

Traditional controllers have always been extensions of the console themselves. The first ‘controls’ were on the console themselves. Then, they became attached via wires. And this continued, as well as adding more buttons and sticks, until they are now wireless. But just because they are wireless doesn’t mean they have stopped being ‘extensions’ of the consoles.

What if controllers were extensions of the Human body? There is nothing more natural than the body so it would make sense, for a user centric company, to design controls not around ‘motion sensing’ but around the body’s movement. Wii Sports became such a hit, such a shock, because it showed gaming being used by people’s natural body movements. It became such a ‘killer app’ because it was entirely user-centric. Wii Sports wasn’t made so the developers can display their ‘brilliance’ or create ‘art’ in video games.

But time has a funny way of generating art. The pixel-ated ‘Super Mario Brothers’ is now considered to be highly ‘artistic’ yet it wasn’t seen that way when it came out. Even blocky ‘Tetris’ is considered to be ‘artistic’ and that game has no real ‘art’ in it! In order to make ‘artistic’ games, one needs to make classics. And to make a classic is make a user-centric game. Gaming’s libraries are full of ‘high art’ games, all of them forgotten. Every now and then, one appears on the Virtual Console where the future, of today’s users, complains about them and want the ‘non-art’ games, the user centric games, the classics, to appear.

Instead of seeing it via ‘hardcore’ and ‘casual’, a better way to look at it is ‘focused on making the creator look good’ type games and ‘focused on making the users look good’ type games. People love Wii Sports because they feel as if they have become good at tennis, bowling, and baseball even if they are in a retirement home. This is why ‘hardcore’ games end up ‘broken’ in the long run while the so-called ‘casual’ games end up being seen as ‘fixed’. Mario Kart Wii is a great example of this. While reviewers growled that the game has been ‘casualized’, many Mario Kart fans realized that it had been ‘fixed’ (with, perhaps, exception to the Battle Mode) because the stupid issues have been fixed. However, not all of them. If the ‘Blue Shell’ was fixed, reviewers would probably complain the game has been dumbed down further for ‘casual’ users while players would realize it is being ‘fixed’.

Here are red flags to know that your game is broken:

Does it have a tutorial? If yes, then your game is broken. The best games don’t have tutorials. ‘Super Mario Brothers’ and ‘Legend of Zelda’ had no tutorial and no tutorial ‘stage’. Mega Man did not have a ‘tutorial’ until a tutorial stage appearing in Mega Man 7 (and they wonder why the series went downhill). Tetris had no tutorial. People want to play the game, not be forced to act out a manual. If your game *has* to have a tutorial because it is too complicated, then your game is the problem. Simplify it until you don’t need a tutorial. Wii Sports doesn’t even have a tutorial. It will simply give a ‘reminder’ of how to do stuff only if you mess up.

Does it have long cinematics? If yes, then your game is likely broken. The problem with cinematics is that it takes control away from the player, and is just an excuse for the developer to show how  ‘awesome’ he/she is, how ‘artistic’, how ‘creative’, and how he really should be ‘directing movies instead of making stupid video games’. Cinematics are more about “Let’s strut our stuff” than being about the game. “But Malstrom! They add to the immersion!” In the beginning, they were a fun novelty. Now, they are a nuisance. It is better to hold ‘events’ rather than ‘cinematics’ to advance a story. An ‘event’ would be using the gameplay engine to show the changes.

Too much damn text. Video games are a visual medium. Even the wordy adventure game yielded to imagery. Role playing and adventure games get away with having text but not too much. Even they are primarily driven by images. So many games today have way too much damn text in them, especially at the beginning and is outside the already stupid tutorial and ‘cinematic intro’. If gamers want to read brilliance, they would read a book. What is interesting is that established writers, when asked to make a video game, rely much on interaction because they know that is the differentiating factor between gaming and books.

If your game isn’t fun in one minute, it is broken. No one cares about your later stages, the ‘story’, or how wonderful you think you are. Imagine reading a novel where the author spends page after agonizing page glossing over how wonderful the setting is, how descriptive the characters are, and other garbage. The reader will likely throw the book out and say the author doesn’t know how to tell a story. The same is true of game players. They will turn off your game and think you don’t know how to make games. And they won’t even care what reviews your game got. It is not unlike the original Rad Racer NES game where you have a minute to get to a ‘post’ and, if you arrive in time, you are granted another minute. Consumers will only grant you a minute or two for you to show your game is fun. If you waste that on tutorials, cinematics, wordy introductions, or on some stupid ‘build up’, the player will shut off your game. Games need to be consistently fun as well. Most players, even hardcore ones, abandon games in the middle of them despite a fun early part.

The exceptions to the above are when games are the first to do it. When cinematics, huge intros, and all were ‘brand new’, games could get away with them because they were ‘surprising’. Most of these ‘features’ are now included so the developer/publisher can ‘show off’.

What is more amazing is that while user-focused is acknowledged about being the ‘right way’, many companies who attempt that route end up back where they started, back to the “creater-focused” mindset. The ‘tutorial’ is a good example. The ‘tutorial’ is put in to ‘help’ players, to ‘ease’ them into the game, to clear up ‘misunderstandings’, to get their toes ‘wet’. Publishers think including tutorials means they are being user-focused. Actually, they are still creator-focused because the measurement of success is the user, not the creator. Users don’t demand these boring ‘tutorials’, but they are thrown in because publishers feel they are awesome if they do so, they feel like they ARE special. Again, it is creator-focused.

Birdmen, those who mistake superficial elements of the disruptor to be disruptive, really do believe they are user-focused by ‘dumbing down’ the games, but they are actually ‘creator-focused’. “Look at me! I am making ‘casual’ games! I am sooooo special!” the birdmen cluck. Yet, the companies who do have major traction with this new audience, Nintendo, Blizzard, among others, never say they are making ‘casual games’.

Iwata explained all of this in a parable of the king and the slave.

Iwata	It makes me remember the story you told us before, when you came to HAL Laboratory. The story of “the King and the Slave”.
			Itoi	The story that it’s the King who needs to be educated, right?
			Iwata	Yes.
			Itoi	(to the staffs) This is a good one.
			All	(laugh)
			Iwata	Seriously, it’s a good story. It’s about the relation between the creator and the customer. The king isn’t the creator. He’s the customer. The king is free to say anything about what is given to him, that it’s boring, or that he doesn’t understand it, or even decline the offer. He has the privilege of being super selfish. The slave has to think how to satisfy the king, how to make him happy. Mr.Itoi’s point was to understand that the job of the slave is intellectual and interesting.
			Itoi	The same can be said about relationships, the one who makes the approach, and the other.
			Iwata	The initiative lies in the other.
			Itoi	Exactly. The one who takes action can never take the initiative. For example, when you ask someone to perform a task for you, you have to think about whether you’ll take it if it was offered to you. When you work for someone, it usually involves hard work. People work hard because you think it’s worth it, and that’s the only way people will put in their full energy into it. So you always have to think, “will I accept this job if it was offered to me?” You need that point of view. If the creator’s not aware of that point of view, he starts to misconceive that he is the king. If the consumers don’t act as king, the creator is deprived of the opportunity to improve. When the creators don’t improve, the customers will get easily bored of what they get. And that’s the end of it. It seems that this malignant cycle seems to be increasing. The consumers get bored very easily.
			Iwata	The speed of things getting out of date has become extremely fast.
			Itoi	If you just keep on responding to the customer’s requests, you’re not going to come up with something with quality. What Nintendo has been doing since they came out with DS is to keep bringing something new to the kings, who were tired of games that were a mere extension of traditional and conventional ones. Plus, Nintendo made it so that the kings understood it. It’s just amazing, what you did.
			Iwata	Thank you.

It is not that the user is king, it is the non-user who is really king. Malstrom is king. Other non-gamers and former-gamers are kings. The companies are the slaves. Many think it is the other way around. They think the companies are the kings and we, the consumers, are the slaves. That whatever they make, we should buy because of their ‘brilliance’. This is why I strongly dislike when gamers say, “We must buy this game to show our support.” Well, it’s not my fault someone’s game doesn’t sell

Western game developers are notorious for thinking they are the ‘king’ when their role is actually that of the ‘slave’. From Epic’s Mark Rein declaring “Next Generation doesn’t start until we say so,” to the insane budget of Grand Theft Auto 4, western developers have become ego-maniacs. And this what Next-Generation to them is all about, having an ego trip. Developers and publishers think it is “so cool!” to make a big, high budget hardcore HD game. They can get away with this for now. However, investors will come knocking. When the Wii exploded out during the launch, many, many investors called the publishers demanding, “What are you doing about the Wii!???” You can be certain that such calls forced EA to bring Wii development from Canada to more in the major studios. While they are showing the outward signs to investors that they are ‘doing something about the Wii’ (and yet making excuses that ‘core games don’t sell on the system!’), eventually investors will realize that western developers heart and passions are intertwined about their HD high budget hardcore games. Then, I suspect the hammer to fall once more on them.

It just shows how history is repeating. NES also didn’t get western developer support outside of the licensed and shovelware ‘kids games’ type junk. But the NES install base grew, and grew, and grew, until investors were so fed up with these publishers ignoring the phenomenon that they began threatening to remove company presidents. And yes, western publishers kept insisting the NES was a fad then. (So if the reader happens to be a game journalist, realize it is not so much what the developer or publisher ‘wants’ to work on, you must consider the investors’ wrath as well.)

The secret to the “Casual” is a change of mindset from being “look how awesome I am” to “look how awesome the new customer is”. Thinking that these new customers are ‘retards’, that they are ‘beneath you’,  is really thinking that ‘I am so awesome’. But how can a company who thinks ‘new customers are retards’ compete with a company that thinks ‘look how awesome these new customers are’? The latter will always run rings around the former. Also, the publisher/developer does not have any control whether his/her game is ‘high art’ or a ‘classic’. Time determines that.

Let me tell you about the greatest “Casual” Writer of all time. To be ‘high art’ was to demand plays to take place in three days in play-time (because that is what the Greeks did). Tragedy and Comedy were separate, distinct, different forms. There could be no cross-over. Robert Greene, the esteemed, most professional, and most ‘artistic’ writer of his time, complained about this casual writer being… Well, I will let him speak for himself:

“…there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger’s heart wrapped in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you…

This ‘casual’ writer broke the Greek traditions because they didn’t make sense to the viewers, wrote to make money, and combined Tragedy and Comedy in the same play. This meant tragic plays were full of comedic moments and comedy plays were full of tragic moments. Who was this ‘casual’ writer who ‘destroyed’ his industry?

Shakespeare.

Today’s ‘casuals’ are tomorrow’s classics.