Warning: foul language is below.
Note for any confusion: the italics below is the emailer. The red is Yahtzee’s words but the italics red is a reader’s comment Yahtzee is quoting.
Yahtzee, of Zero Punctuation “fame”, wrote in his most recent article
(http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/6340-Extra-Punctuation-Call-of-Juarez-Bound-in-Blood.2)
the following rant.
Anyhoo, I have Wii Sports Resort and think it’s a very fun little game. Certainly not one for the uber-hardcore crowd, but if they had their way, Marior [sic] would be a dull as dishwater space marine and Link would wear gritty chainmail and be covered with blood.”
– JacOak, from the Wii Sports Resort comments
Well, you’re pretty much describing Zelda Twilight Princess there, but otherwise, fuck you. ‘Hardcore’ doesn’t mean ‘Halo-playing twitchy fourteen-year-old douchebag.’ ‘Hardcore’ gamers means the gamers who get into it. The gamers who have gamed since 256 colors were a distant wet dream. The gamers who follow all the hype and who want games with depth and innovation. The gamers who read websites like this one and ultimately the gamers who give a shit. Hardcore gamers are the ones who want the Mario and Zelda games Nintendo can’t be bothered with anymore because they’re too busy making popcorn nothings like Wii Sports Resort for their new ‘casual gamer’ friends.
Casual gamers are people who buy a Wii because the TV told them to and play it for about an hour before going off to mow the lawn or watch Days of our Lives or whatever else normal people do with their time. And pandering to these insipid fucks is only going to bite Nintendo in the arse when the Nissan iFurby or whatever the next tech trend will be lures them all away. Because after that they’ll have nothing but a broken gimmick and all the long-term hardcore players they betrayed. Hope it was worth it, guys.
After three years of the Wii, after five years of the DS, you’d think the hardcore would have settled down by now. But no, they seem just as wound up as when Brain Age came out. Remember how I told you about some Atari gamers, to this day, still hating on the NES for ‘destroying gaming’? I wonder if that is the future for our hardcore friends. Will they be like this five years from now? Ten years? Twenty?
Yahtzee shouldn’t assume that all ‘Expanded Market’ gamers are brand new gamers. There are many who are returning to gaming after not just years but decades. So yes, they would quite remember when 256 colors was a big deal for gaming. Many would even remember programming their own games when it was more commonplace to do so.
What is interesting is the comment that Yahtzee is responding to. The comment didn’t seem to warrant such a response. All it said was that Wii Sports Resort is fun to all except, perhaps, the hardcore. But if gaming was left to the hardcore, Mario and Zelda would be completely different than what they are today. If gaming was left to the hardcore, gaming would have gone in reverse. I think it is THAT sentiment that set him off.
Don’t you know that the hardcore are the epitome of all gaming sophistication and that they are the ones driving gaming forward in all ways? It is fine if the ‘hardcore’ do not like Wii Sports Resort and other games. But what is going over the line is their attacks on gamers who do like those type of games. Their hostility isn’t contained to the games, they are attacking other customers! Saying ‘casual’ is just a polite way of saying ‘retards!’
What I find interesting is that the hardcore like to attack “casual games” and savage “casual gamers” who are all ‘stupid’, but when someone makes a comment against the hardcore, implies that they might be stupid, they go complete bonkers! Talk about being thin skinned. Hardcore dish it out, but they can’t take it. They haven’t even had to endure a fraction of the constant condenscending insults that the “New Gamer” has had.
The next article coming up will be full on mockery of the hardcore. They’ve earned it.