http://www.gameplayer.com.au/gp_documents/090116CasualHardcore.aspx

Note to Reader: I wrote the following right after a vigorous free-weight work-out in the gym. If I sound overtly aggressive below, I blame the testosterone high.

We’ve all played the odd game of Snake on a mobile phone, popped a few crystals in Bejeweled, or made ourselves look extremely silly playing games like Cooking Mama in front of the family, but the rise of casual gaming is becoming a concern to a small but significant sector of the gaming community: the hardcore.

Why are they significant? No answer. Is it because they are loud?

Before we even get onto the subject of what is or is not a casual or hardcore gamer – and whether such labels are useful – it’s indisputable that the popularity of casual gaming is changing the way games are designed. When Gears Of War 2 director Cliff Bleszinski informed the press that Epic was gunning for the casual game market it wasn’t met with universal praise; he would have caused less of a fuss by announcing Mickey Mouse as a central character. 

It is not indisputable. So-called ‘casual gaming’ isn’t CHANGING gaming; it is restoring it to what gaming is supposed to be. It is getting back to the roots of what built the games industry in the first place.

“Thanks to the success of Guitar Hero and the Wii, we have seen lots of new people play games, which is a great thing,” said Bleszinski. “So for Gears 2 we’ve made the tutorial mode more accessible, and our casual mode couldn’t be easy enough. We want casual gamers to get involved this time. Yes, it has blood and monsters, but it is also a story about loss and redemption.” 

I have played through Gears of War 1 via co-op. I asked about the game, since a friend had it, and he said he couldn’t beat the tutorial! (this should tell you something) So I said I will play co-op with you. It took quite a while to get through the tutorial. We even encountered a bug where he got stuck in midair. The tutorial was a nightmare because there weren’t many monsters and there was much 3d navigation. 3d navigation is a bad idea to throw at people when they start the game.

I can’t say anything about Gears 2, but the story about loss and redemption sounds as fascinating as jelly on a lampshade. Yes! That is exactly why newcomers will want to play Gears 2, because of loss and redemption!

”Hey Bob! Guess what? I need some LOSS and REDEMPTION!”

”Yeah, that is what I’m talking about! And you know what? There is this game called Gears of War 2 that is about…”

”…about loss and redemption?”

”Yes siree!”

”OMG! We must play this game immediately!”

Come on. How stupid do they think regular gamers are (regular is the ‘casual’)? You just have to laugh that they think the KEY to the ‘casuals’ is MORE CINEMATICS!

I mean, how could we ignore all those people playing Wii Sports for LOSS and REDEMPTION? I hear they also play Brain Age for LOSS and REDEMPTION. They even play World of Warcraft for LOSS and REDEMPTION. Haven’t you heard all those customers, when buying Wii Fit, burst out saying, “I need to have LOSS and REDEMPTION!” (OK, that one actually fits there haha)

On the surface this sounds fair enough, but then came the backlash: “I hate it when a developer makes a game that does better than it thought possible and reaches a broader casual market, then all of a sudden the developer thinks it needs to make its games ‘for a casual market’,” commented one irate forum poster. 

“It’s changing something that doesn’t need changing,” wades in another. “By making the easy setting too easy it risks putting off people who might not want to bother with harder difficulties. If it ain’t broke…” These were just two of the less vehement comments from a swathe of vocal gamers disgusted that one of their beloved brands is getting ‘dumbed down’. 

These ‘vehement’ comments have a great point: if your game sells well, why alter it significantly? There is absolutely nothing wrong with the sales of Gears of War.

But it’s not just Bleszinski who sees casual gamers as a new target audience. In an attempt to bridge the gap between the two extremes, Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux wanted Fable II to be accessible to gamers of all persuasions: “Maybe part of Fable is about this look; can’t we create a game that both of these people can play and enjoy?” he said at the recent Games Convention Asia. “You’ve got to give the core gamers all the carrots they love and casual gamers the accessibility that they want. And that’s what we tried to do with Fable.”

You know your industry is in trouble when the developers sound like politicians talking about balancing different interest groups.

Consider this: the Casual Games Association estimates that the sector has grown 20 per cent year on year for the last four years, so it’s understandable to see all the big publishers chasing the cash. From EA Casual to Ubisoft’s Games For Everyone, which includes titles like My Word Coach and Petz, the limited shelf space in game retailers has seen traditional genres like the FPS, driving sims, and the RPG under threat from fitness, pet grooming, and cooking titles. 

Oh boy! The Casual Games Association! How can I become a member of that club? Is this the opposite of Hardcore Games Association?

I am OFFENDED (emphasis added, in case you didn’t notice) that no one has made a Hardcore Games Association to counteract this blasted Casual Games Association (and what the hell type of association is that, anyway? Clubhouse for poor flash game makers?)

http://www.casualgamesassociation.org/

Actually, if you go here you will find the website for Casual Games Association which apparently does conferences, industry research, and a magazine! Well, I formally announce that I am founding the Hardcore Games Association and that instead of doing conferences, it does decrees, instead of industry research, it creates industry demands, and instead of a dorky magazine, Hardcore Gaming Association has secret agents scattered throughout the Internet forums and comments boards that sound like this: “WII IS GIRLY MACHINE!!1!! XBOX 360 IS DA MAN MACHINE!! EEH KE KE KE KE KE!!11!!” “ONLY SHOVELWARE IS ON DA WEE!” “NINTENDO ABANDONED REAL GAMING!”

You have to love that not only does an organization like Casual Gaming Organization exists, but that it, too, cannot define what the hell a ‘casual’ game is, yet it can somehow estimate that casual games have grown 20% over the last year.

I did some poking around and here is the CGA’s definition of ‘casual gaming’:

Developed for the general public and families, casual games are video games that are fun and easy to learn and play. The games are platform agnostic, meaning they can be played via the Internet, PC and Macintosh computers, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo DS, Wii and even mobile phones and PDA. They’re nonviolent, arcade-style games that involve puzzles, words, board and card games, game show and trivia. Popular games are Mahjong, Tetris, Solitaire, Bejeweled, Cake Mania, Mystery Case Files, and Luxor.

In other words, Atari Era games. They should just write that instead of that mumbo jumbo paragraph that attempts to include the kitchen sink.

I am so much on the cutting edge that after I wrote the above, I read their definition of the difference between hardcore and casual:

Think of Atari and games such as Pacman, Space Invaders, Frogger and Donkey Kong. Casual games have maintained the fun, simplicity, boundless creativity that characterizes arcade-style games. On the other hand, enthusiast games also termed core games, such as Grand Theft Auto, Doom and Mortal Kombat, have been developed using high-end technology that appeals more to younger audiences. Using movies as an analogy, casual games would be Friends or ER and enthusiast games would be Reservoir Dogs or Silence of the Lambs.

Hello Game Industry! Why don’t you do something sane and just refer to ‘casual games’ as ARCADE type games? It would be so much simpler.

Doom and Mortal Kombat are arcade type games. Mortal Kombat became famous in the arcade. Doom, while a PC game, was based on arcade action.

Just because there is violence in the game doesn’t make it non-casual. Arcades were full of gun games as well as fighters. Defender is a ‘casual’ game, but it is hard as nails, so difficulty is no indicator. Most of the arcade games are impossible anyway.

It appears these commentators are beating around the bush to NOT explicitly say that ‘casual gaming’ is GIRLY GAMING and ‘hardcore gaming’ is BOY GAMING. Look at the definition they use again and replace ‘casual’ with ‘girly’ and ‘hardcore’ with ‘boy’ and note how they fit. Does Epic really think girls are going to play Gears of War 2 because of LOSS and REDEMPTION? You’d be surprised how insane publishing suits can be.

My gut instinct tells me that the last line, in the paragraph quoted above, indicates the FAQ was written by a woman. I mean, how many guys you know would use ‘Friends’ or ‘ER’ or even ‘Silence of the Lambs’ as examples? I know men watch them too, but these are female loved shows. A man would use the movie ‘300’ or the latest Batman movie as examples. Just a thought.

And good God, I cannot stand this CAG. Back to the article.

Craig Holland, the CGA’s marketing director, highlights the level of migration there’s been: “From tracking our attendance at the Casual Connect shows over the last three years, we can definitely see an influx of developers and publishers from the big-budget core game side of the games business. There is a lot of activity in this area, though we have not made an attempt to quantify it or track the migration numbers of developers who have left core to now focus on casual. 

But hardly a day goes by when the games press does not mention some core developer that announces it is working on a new casual game.” So, are self-professed hardcore gamers right to be concerned about the influence that casual gaming is having on their hobby? 

Craig Holland is in the wrong business. He should have set up CGA to be ‘Popular Game Trends Association’, and he would be busy forever. It is a shame we never saw a Cinematic Game Association. Perhaps they were the CD Game Association or even 3d Game Association. And that would be after the Blast Processing Game Association or the Platformer Game Association (renamed from ‘Rip-off Super Mario Brothers Association). A ‘Popular Game Trends Association’ would be infinitely in business. What is Craig going to do when the ‘casual’ trend dies out and developers realize ‘casual gamers’ aren’t retards who buy content-less games like they think?

It is like a gaggle of Birdmen migrating to a location in the market they think is warmer. Let us watch them get burned.

Jim Sterling, who writes a blog at Destructoid, summarises the paranoia that hardcore gamers have of the ‘casuals’ thus: “It’s just a shame that most of what they’re playing can barely qualify as videogames.”

That bloody NES! How dare it have non-games like Duck Hunt, World Track Meet, and that childish Super Mario Brothers! Why doesn’t it have REAL video games like the cool stuff on the Amiga! Yeah!

(No, Amiga fans, don’t open up an email window. Amiga is not the point of the comment above, relax.)

Historically there have certainly been many examples of once great, feature-laden games getting diluted to appeal to a wider audience, especially from PC to console: Baldur’s Gate to Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance; the Total War series to Spartan: Total Warrior; Civilization to Civilization Revolution; the list could go on. But what’s notable now is that, with the PC market shrinking, publishers are increasingly stripping features from games to appeal to the masses from the outset. 

PC market isn’t shrinking; it is just transforming.

I wish they would go on with their ‘casual gaming’ examples. They could throw in Halo in there, since that was originally going to be a computer game. In fact, you can throw in every FPS since they have been altered by having two waggle sticks (yes, thumb sticks waggle) instead of awesome blossom mouse.

The ‘hardcore’ games getting diluted into wimpy, lame, ‘casual’ games charge is right on, but the target is all wrong. This transformation of hardcore to casual isn’t occurring because of the Wii, it is occurring because of the Xbox 360.

Xbox 360 is ‘casualizing’ traditional PC games. You can even play RTS games on your Xbox 360! How perverse is that?

This would make the ‘hardcore’ the true blue ‘casual gamers’. It would also make the Wii gamers the ‘traditional games’ since that is what the console markets have originally been about if you look at the Atari 2600 and NES and 16-bit machines and even the arcades.

It’s not to say that something like Civilization Revolution isn’t a good game, but more that in a bid to make it more accessible it has arguably lost some of the depth and complexity that made it such a seminal title. 

Civilization 4 on the PC has EXCELLENT sales. I don’t know how Civ Revolution can be made an argument for ‘casual’ dumbing down. Rather, it is the result of normal PC game being mutilated and chopped apart to fit the casual consoles (which would be Xbox 360 and PS3 who play dumbed down PC ports on their TVs while they pretend they are on the cutting edge.)

Chris Swan, head of Blitz Arcade, underlines the change of focus for many developers in the modern marketplace: “There are quite a few rules that you can apply to a game’s design if you want to appeal to the casual gamer. Some examples are to focus less on having a huge wealth of distinct game mechanics and making the player take lots of risks and to instead put more emphasis on the aesthetics and story.
Applying these kinds of rules should make a game a lot more welcoming and appealing to the casual gamer, requiring less of a tutorial and reducing their risk of failure, while still retaining the same underlying design concept.” But Swan, and many developers we spoke to, rejected the notion that accessibility necessarily equates to a loss of depth. 

Yes, Chris, that is exactly the change you need: more aesthetics and more story. In other words, more graphics and more cutscenes. No one has ever tried that before! Go for it, Chris! Everyone knows that ‘casuals’ flocked to Brain Age and Wii Sports because of their aesthetics and story.

“Yes, we typically try to make our games as accessible and mainstream as possible without alienating the deeper experience,” counters Phil Wilson, producer at Realtime Worlds. “It’s what we attempted to do with Crackdown and, on the subject of free-form urban action games, it hasn’t done Rockstar North any harm either!” 

But it’s here where the lines between what is and isn’t a casual game become blurred. By dumbing down the easiest difficulty setting in Gears Of War 2 to the point where anyone’s mum can play it, did Epic really make its opus a ‘casual’ game? Is a casual game defined by how simple and accessible it is? Or is a casual gamer someone who plays for a few minutes at a time? Perhaps a casual gamer is someone who only plays ‘social’ games? 

An article on ‘casual gaming’ and, near the end of the article, they admit they have no clue on what the hell ‘casual gaming’ is. Haha

All of these definitions are problematic. Habbo Hotel is, to some, the epitome of casual gaming, yet many of its fans play it for longer than the most hardcore World Of Warcraft players. Guitar Hero is one of the industry’s best-known social games, yet it requires incredible dexterity and mental fortitude to really connect with it. Tetris is regarded as one of the industry’s most simple titles, yet some designers have pointed out that it would probably never be commissioned today because it cannot be completed. 

“These terms are becoming a bit hard to pin down,” agrees Jason Kapalka, chief creative officer of PopCap Games. “Is someone who spends dozens of hours a week playing something like Solitaire or Bejeweled or online cribbage a casual or a hardcore gamer? 

‘Hardcore casual?’ There is definitely still some distinction between the two, but it’s getting less meaningful, especially as hardcore gamers go. We at PopCap know from experience that hardcore players also play casual games, whether that’s Peggle or Geometry Wars or some Flash games. Casual players are perhaps less likely to pick up Call Of Duty. Everyone plays casual games these days, but not everyone is into the hardcore games.”

The article has now begun going in circles. Instead of trying to define hardcore or casual, it now uses ‘hardcore casual’!

Phil Wilson makes an excellent point that the terms are useful but only as they apply to you personally, at any given time: “I think we have to be really careful with those terms; they certainly don’t describe distinct types of people. I consider myself a hardcore Mario Kart player, but that doesn’t mean I do anything other than curl up into a foetal position when faced with the likes of Ninja Gaiden! Personally, I see it more as a description of how an individual approaches a particular game at a particular time. That’s how we use the terms at Realtime Worlds when planning range and depth of experience.” 

Think about the cross-pollination of ideas and gaming experiences on the Xbox 360 alone and it’s clear to see that the two extreme positions can sit very nicely next to each other without breaking into a fight. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more ‘hardcore’ console than the 360, yet it offers a huge range of bite-sized casual games only eclipsed by the selection on the PC. 

You know what I notice most about these ‘casual gaming’ articles? They rarely mention Nintendo and Blizzard, the two gaming companies that have consistently tapped into the expanded market. If they mention Nintendo, it is only to turn Nintendo into a Pandora.

Effectively, the article ends here. However, there is an Xbox 360 ad that follows. Let us observe!

“It was initially a bit of a risk for PopCap,” adds Kapalka. “Would someone who spent $400 for an Xbox want to use it to play Bejeweled? As it turns out, though: yes. I think what became clear was that there was enormous interest from the ‘hardcore’ XBLA community in these smaller, bite-size games, whether it was Zuma or Geometry Wars or even Uno. It was just that prior to XBLA there wasn’t really anywhere to find such titles. You couldn’t make a game like Geometry Wars and put it on a shelf for $100 next to Halo.” 

The broader question is not whether hardcore gamers enjoy casual titles – they clearly do – but if casual gamers can be brought into the fold without damaging the existing hardcore experience. Indeed, developers are now turning the question on its head, arguing that the rise of casual games is actually benefiting game design across the board. 

Seen from this perspective, Peter Molyneux’s comments about bridging the gap between the casual and hardcore audience makes a lot of sense. Done with sensitivity, a game can be both deep and accessible; the two terms are not mutually exclusive. 

Jonathan Smith, creative director at Traveller’s Tales, believes this: “True challenge comes when a player is provoked into learning something new. Some games, though, fit so closely within generic expectations, following so predictable a progression tempo, that players familiar with the patterns and systems of similar games can move through them half-asleep. 

There’s a conventional ‘balanced’ path in many games, as an endless tutorial, which drip-feeds the player with novel opportunities at a more-or-less steady rate over a long period of time, and that loses the sense of unpredictability, danger, and self-motivated reward that provides the most memorable gaming experiences.”

I told you tutorials were dumb long ago. Legend of Zelda didn’t have a tutorial, and everyone got it. If it did have a tutorial, the game would have been much less.

”Welcome Player! There is a single octorock before you! Let us try slaying it with your sword. Press A to swing your sword and the D pad to move near the octorock.”

”Good job! Now we are going to practice in how to go into a cave. First, spot a black square at the edge of a mountain. That is the cave. Use the D pad to walk into the black square. Then you enter the cave! Now you try… Good job! You have successfully entered the cave!”

This is an interesting twist because so many so-called hardcore games fail to offer anything truly new after the first level. Seen in this way, challenge isn’t about testing a player’s reflexes but giving them opportunities to explore their environment or experiment with new weapons or equipment. The LEGO Star Wars games are among the most accessible available, but they have tremendous and underestimated depth in terms of experimentation and exploration. 

LEGO games are big sellers to kids for a reason.

Anyway, these stupid tutorials exist because publishers think they reduce ‘risk’ of new gamers becoming frustrated. Rather, it raises the risk of new gamers becoming bored. And in entertainment, boring is the worst sin of all.

Fable, Tiger Woods, the Metroid series, and the Burnout franchise are just a handful of games that have benefited from this approach, largely brought about by the influx of mass-market gamers to the fold. Of course, it’s important to keep some games as tough as nails, or at least have hard difficulty settings, but the notion that deep and difficult equate to the same thing is a complete nonsense. 

Tiger Woods, maybe. Metroid, Burnout, and Fable? Haha, they are not mass market. At least, not by Nintendo terms.

Besides, it’s just silly to expect Microsoft and Rockstar to abandon Halo and GTA, or for other publishers to wind down on the mega-budget blockbuster games, when they regularly bring in an estimated $170m and $310m on their launch day respectively. Few industry insiders believe that casual, social, mass-market – or whatever you want to label them – games have had anything but a positive impact on the market. 

In fact, the roots of such titles as Guitar Hero and Rock Band date back to the previously incredibly hardcore niche of Japanese Bemani rhythm-action titles like Beatmania and GuitarFreaks. A more level-headed assessment is that casual games are expanding the market and opening up new gameplay innovations – touch screen, motion-sensing, augmented reality – that will also improve hardcore games. 

Nintendo said the same thing back in… oh… 2004!? It must work like this:

Early 2004: Nintendo: “This touch screen will not just expand the market, it will open up new gameplay innovations.”

Later 2004: Industry: “Go, go, PSP! LOL at DS! Stupid mutant handheld!”

2009: Industry: “This touch screen will not just expand the market, it will open up new gameplay innovations.”

It is not correct to say that the game industry disagrees with Nintendo. Rather, the game industry agrees with Nintendo… just many years later.

2005: Nintendo: “The new controller is a motion controller.”

2005: Industry: “Stupid Nintendo! Bahahaha! That will never sell! Nintendo is going to exit console business!”

2012: Industry: “The new controllers are motion controllers…”

Surely the drive to offer choice and reach out to new markets is beneficial to all? “Choice is what’s affecting the market,” concludes Dave Perry. “Remember when the market was just Sega and Nintendo? It’s no surprise that when you give people choice, they like that. If you love helicopters, then a great helicopter game like iCopter comes out on your iPhone, then bam, there goes your money and you are happy. You don’t care that you’re not playing the latest PS3 blockbuster because you got exactly what you wanted. 

I like the helicopter comment. I’ve been railing that customers absorb games for content, not for ‘innovation’ that game journalists splatter platitudes about all day. There are many ways to make a helicopter game, but the content is what matters. While the gameplay of, say, Contra was fun, the content of being Rambos shooting soldiers in a lush forest was what attracted young boys to play it.

That’s the nature of entertainment in general these days: people are much more focused on finding what they want, in the way they want it. In the past they had limited choice, so they went with what’s available in the local store. With the internet, and with Wi-Fi and 3G phones, you can have what you want when you want it and yes, that will change things

This is funny. Has there ever been a time when people did not know what they wanted? How on earth did they have ‘limited choice’ in the past? The ‘normal’ games of the 80s are considered the ‘casual’ games today.

God, someone shoot me. 2006 wants their articles back. But perhaps this is a sign that the core industry literally is years behind. So expect articles in 2010 asking whether Wii Fit is the gaming apocalypse.