Hello Sean – first of all I’d like to thank you for your thoughtful responses to my emails, particularly the last one about innovation. I only recently decided to start email you, and I’ve learned a whole lot more from reading your responses. It’s amazing how much your view on gaming can change when you learn more and more about it.
Today I have a more personal subject to talk about, mainly about myself as a gamer. I am seventeen years old (eighteen in two to three weeks), which means that I first got to know gaming in a time where it was no longer the norm for families to play games together. When I grew up, games were meant to be cool and serious, and that’s the kind of gaming I would know as I got older. However, unlike the other kids I did not own a SNES. We were a Norwegian family, two parents and five children, and me and my brother would get our gaming dosage from the good old NES. While others were playing Super Mario World and A Link to the Past, I would be sitting at home with my brother and sister taking turns in playing Super Mario Bros. 3 and Legend of Zelda. We missed out on pretty much everything beside Zelda and Mario for the NES. We didn’t have the money for the SNES, and NES games were truly hard to come by.
Looking back, it was strange how different I was to other types of children, or “gamers” as we may know them as today. I didn’t sit for myself in my room playing the NES. I would probably have loved to get to keep the system all to myself, but this was a family system. My dad – and let me tell you, this is the kind of dad you would never expect to play games – would even play with us sometimes. I remember how I let him do all the hard levels in Super Mario Bros. 3, and when we reached the giant world I would snatch the controller from him. Kind of like my very own Super Guide!
We missed out on the SNES completely. I would play Super Mario All-Stars and Donkey Kong Country over at my friend’s house, when he let me. Sometimes we would play Super Mario Kart together. But that’s pretty much all I can recall about the SNES. All-Stars, Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario Kart. When I was about five or six, we got the Nintendo 64. This was the last time I ever saw my dad play a video game, before we got the Wii.
In my childhood, the Nintendo 64 is probably my favorite console. I was there to see the beginning, and I was there to truly witness the end of this “era” of gaming. This was the first generation of consoles that I truly felt I was a part of. But more importantly, it had four player multiplayer! Yes, this is the biggest reason why I loved the Nintendo 64 so much. Of course I loved games like Ocarina of Time and Banjo-Kazooie, but it must have been those four player multiplayer games that truly got me hooked on gaming. Those were the days when I was GLAD to be a “hardcore” gamer. GoldenEye, Mario Party, Fifa World Cup, StarFox 64, none of these games would have been nearly as great fun had it not been for their multiplayer. And the multiplayer wouldn’t have been nearly as fun had it been online.
I didn’t get the Gamecube before 2006. Between the N64 and this, we had the Playstation 2. And while I was once again thrilled by great single player experiences, I still felt that the best days were behind me. Multiplayer had become slower and less fun. Without more controllers, it was pretty difficult to get people to play together. No-one wants to sit and WATCH, afterall. With the Playstation 2 and only two controllers, I felt a sad decrease in fun with gaming. Yet, I kept playing games. I liked the single player games. By 2008, it had become a mindset that this was the kind of gaming we would be dealing with for the rest of our lives. More serious, more cinematic, more cutscenes! I had grown to just accept it. I didn’t feel truly joyful anymore, but I didn’t hate it either. I just accepted it.
As I mentioned I got the Gamecube in 2006, and in retrospect it was a pretty bad purchase. I learned afterwards that the Wii would be coming out, able to play Gamecube games. Yet, Gamecube it was, with Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. and Twilight Princess to accompany it. I then learned of the Wii, and it puzzled me. ‘What kind of controller is that?’ I thought, looking at the Wii remote in a gaming magazine. I saw a picture from Wii Sports. ‘What kind of game is that? Did Nintendo make this? Where is Mario?’ I had simply grown so used to the same old same old.
In my gaming years, all I saw were sequels and new versions of the same games. I was thrilled by the N64 because of all the new experiences. StarFox, Ocarina of Time, these were things I had never encountered before! Yet, towards 2007, all I saw was new versions of GoldenEye, new versions of Super Mario 64, new versions of Ocarina of Time, new versions of Final Fantasy VII, new versions of Fifa. I’ve heard loads of people criticize this. ‘What of Okami?’ they say, because they know I love Okami. But Okami was a new version of Zelda. ‘What about Shadow of the Colossus?’ they say. That too was a new version of Zelda. No-one bothered to bring up Nintendo games as ‘new’ and ‘truly innovative’, because we all knew that Nintendo games were the same old same old.
Yet, here I saw something I couldn’t quite fit with previous games. What on earth was Wii Sports a new version of?
In 2008, I learned of Wii Fit. ‘What on earth is Wii Fit?’ I thought to myself. ‘What kind of game is this?’ I finally decided to get a Wii. Curiosity overcame me. I heard nothing but ridicule and talk of ‘casuals’ with the console, but I had to have a look at this strange phenomenon. I had not been so curious about games since my first days as a gamer. And picking up the Wii remote, I was officially cut from all my instincts as a gamer. All I could do was swing this Wii remote like a baseball bat, or a racket, or a golf club. There were only two buttons. I was honestly freaked out.
Almost two years later, I find myself wondering what kind of gamer I am. I, like other core gamers, loved both Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy. I, like other core gamers, have found endless hours of fun in games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii. Like other core gamers, I find joy and satisfaction in playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare: Reflex. Most importantly, I have once again found the joy in multiplayer.
But what happens when a gamer finds himself truly enjoying games like Wii Sports Resort?
I have never been against ‘casual’ gamers, as I feel we should all be a part of gaming, but I have never looked at myself as a ‘casual’ gamer. At least, not like people use the term. I once heard someone talk about ‘casuals’, and a friend of mine asked if he was a casual gamer by the definition. ‘No’, said one of them. ‘You’re a teenager’. Are casual gamers put in age groups? Little kids and old people, are those the casual gamers?
What about hardcore gamers? What are they? 16 to 25 year olds? Does that mean I’m a hardcore gamer? But listening to the ‘hardcore’ today, I cannot bring myself to believing so. ‘Achievements!’ someone yells at me. I have never cared for those. If there had been an achievement for minor accomplishments in games, I would probably have been annoyed. It doesn’t really make a difference to me if a small screen pops down in the corner and tells me that I’ve claimed the Master Sword in Zelda, and rewards me for it with imaginary money, or gamer points I suppose. Maybe that’s what gamers are measured by, gamer points. 1000 and above, you’re a hardcore gamer. Below, you’re a casual.
‘Cinematics!’ I hear. I recently played Uncharted 2, and the cinematics kept interrupting me. Everywhere I went, a cutscene would suddenly occur and halt me in my progress, either having me falling through the floor or the wall crashing before me, forcing me to find another way. Cinematics have never gotten me hooked on a game. You only ever want to see them once. Imagine if people played through Super Mario Bros. 5 to see cutscenes of Mario jumping on Goombas or Koopalings? They’d never want to play the game again after they’d seen it.
So here’s my problem: I don’t seem to fit into the category of ‘casual’ gamers, and I don’t seem to fit into the category of ‘hardcore’ gamers either.
So what kind of gamer am I? I need to know!
You’re just a gamer. There are no ‘types’ of gamers. You either play video games or you do not.
The way how this all started was when the DS came out. When the DS put out games like Brain Age and Nintendogs, the gamers at the time called them “non-games” because they do not have the traditional form of games. These “non-games” multiplied but they were still called that on the DS.
Then the Wii came out.
Wii had a meteoric launch. Wii Sports couldn’t be called a ‘non-game’ since Tennis, Bowling, and Baseball are actual sports. Yet, people were at a loss at all these new people the Wii was selling to. So they called these people “casual gamers”.
“Casual gamers”, just as “non-games”, is actually a label intended to insult. “Casual games” for “casual gamers” is a nice way of saying “stupid games” for “stupid gamers”. Note that “casual games” was also used in the PS2 Era to describe people who bought the hardware to play games like GTA 3 or Madden. The same definition applies in that “casual gaming” described to Madden players was people’s nice way of calling them stupid and calling Madden stupid. But compared to games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit, GTA 3 and Madden are now considered ‘awesome quality games’ compared to the ‘garbage’ of Wii Sports and Wii Fit.
The “hardcore” label is conveniently defined by themselves. These gamers define themselves as brilliant and having fantastic taste (and wouldn’t define themselves that way?). This is where the ‘hardcore’ came from.
It is important to note that the ‘hardcore’ are the ones who are labeling people ‘hardcore’ and ‘casuals’. The so-called ‘casuals’ are too busy playing games or doing something in real life to run around the Internet giving labels to gamers.
‘Hardcore’ is nothing more than a psychosis rather than a group of gamers. From wikipedia, psychosis means:
literally means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a “loss of contact with reality“. People suffering from psychosis are said to be psychotic.
People experiencing psychosis may report hallucinations or delusional beliefs, and may exhibit personality changes and thought disorder. This may be accompanied by unusual or bizarre behavior, as well as difficulty with social interaction and impairment in carrying out the daily life activities.
This matches our ‘hardcore’ friends quite well. When a gamer suffers from the ‘hardcore’, they are the ones throwing a tantrum in 2005 when Brain Age was in their best seller charts. How Brain Age threatened them, I do not know. When Wii exploded on the scene, we witnessed depression among the ‘hardcore’ as they snapped and bitterly attacked the little white console.
Ironically and against the pattern of console history, the Wii’s big sales success did not translate to third party games to be moved to the Wii. So you think the ‘hardcore’ would be satisfied with this. But they are not. They have grown even more irrational. Wii Fit is “evil”. Wii Play is “evil”. What is most shocking is how the successor to Super Mario Brothers, NSMB Wii, is savagely attacked by many of them. I’ve noticed that their attacks have really exploded since we got word on Mario 5’s stellar sales.
Also, bizarrely, the ‘hardcore’ desire gaming to not be about gaming. They want gaming to always be like another entertainment form especially movies. They want there to be as little differences between movies and gaming as possible. Why they want the future of gaming to be nothing more than watching Blu-Ray movies while twiddling their thumbs, I know not. This could explain why game companies try to appease the vocal hardcore that gaming becomes less and less relevant to the masses (and enters decline). Remember when Final Fantasy wasn’t a movie? Yeah.
Here is how you determine if you are a hardcore or not:
Do you hate motion controls?
Do you hate Wii Sports?
Do you hate Wii Fit?
Do you hate Super Mario Brothers 5?
Do you hate people who play these games?
Do you despise Grandma gamers?
Do you believe that graphics and online are the only worthy elements of gaming?
Do you believe that local multiplayer is obsolete?
Do you believe Nintendo is destroying gaming?
Do you think that epic story is the most important part of games?
What about texture mapping?
If you answered yes to the above, you are suffering from the ‘hardcore’ psychosis. If you hate other gamers because they play different games than you, you are a hardcore.
You don’t sound like a hardcore at all. Anyone who is not hostile to the Expanded Audience is not a hardcore. The hardcore believes the ‘Expanded Audience’ is the biggest threat that has ever come to gaming.
PS- Your email shows how much you loved Giant World in Mario 3 as a kid. I think everyone loved Giant World. A crying shame there was no Giant World in Mario 5. Maybe for Mario 6?
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