Our friends, the Hardcore Gamers, who bitterly protested the Wii and DS and who also went on a crusade against the NES and Gameboy (though most of you might be too young to remember) successfully persuaded Nintendo and their investors that ‘the lack of hardcore for the Wii and DS is a PROBLEM.’
So Nintendo designed the Wii U around the hardcore. It had the Batman game, it had Nintendo Land for the hardcore Nintendo fans, it was omg HD, it had sequels to Gamecube games.
The reason why the Wii U is bombing so much is because of the hardcore gamers. Not despite them.
Likewise, these hardcore gamers declare themselves the reason for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3’s sales numbers. Yet, the games that are selling the hardware are not ‘hardcore’ games. They are games like Halo and Call of Duty that are selling to young kids.
The hardcore gamers are the poison of gaming. In all the decades of gaming, my experience has always been excited to find a very fun game. It is like a lost paradise.
Above: This is what a great game feels like.
However, this wonder doesn’t last long. The Hardcore Gamers eventually find paradise and destroy it with all their crap.
Above: This is what a game series looks like after the Hardcore Gamers move in.
I am sure the reader is skeptical and thinks I am exaggerating. Here are examples of Hardcore Debasement going on. The reason why the games get debased is because gaming is ultimately about people. Debased people turn things debased. It is like the wrong people moving into the neighborhood and all property values drop. The Hardcore are the rot.
Look at this! It is Starcraft 1! What a fun game. All those times on Big Game Hunters were a blast.
Since Starcraft 2 multiplayer was designed around the hardcore gamer, the game is virtually dead. All this E-Sports crap is really just crap. It has sucked the fun away from the game. Blizzard is trying to undo their ‘hardcorification’ of SC2’s multiplayer with the expansion, but it is probably too late.
World of Warcraft was an incredible game. Yet, look at how much it has fallen and how much stigma has risen around its players.
The paradise was short lived until the hardcore moved in. Raids, mounts, pets… STATUS…. no one plays the game for fun like they did. It is a giant E-Peen contest. The hardcore are just driving everyone away.
Here is Diablo 2. A fun game. The hardcore moved in and decided they were the definers of everything of how the game worked. Blizzard agreed and made Diablo 3.
Diablo 3 was designed for the hardcore gamer. No wonder it turned out so shitty.
I can go through example after example of franchise after franchise. From the rise and fall of Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Master of Orion, the shmups, the FPS, RTS in general, adventure games, Internet gaming, and on and on. The hardcore gamers are more like locusts. They just devour and destroy wherever they go. Debased people debase everything around them.
I blame the collapse of the arcades on the hardcore gamers. The rise of ‘competitive gaming’ with Street Fighter 2 and the fighter games didn’t make the arcades rise but destroyed them. Some current arcade shops are smart to not allow those fighting games because they know it ‘attracts the wrong type of gamer’.
There is a line from a TV show I remember (I think it was the Tudors). A character displayed a fantastic ability to play a game well. The other character replied, “Playing well at a game shows a life wasted.” And this is so true. However, no one wants to believe their life is wasted. So the person will just dig their hole deeper and say how much ‘culture’ they have, how much ‘sociability they have’, and so on. Consider how a hardcore WoW player acts by raiding everyday. Instead of logging off and going outside, they just keep raiding more and more into a downward spiral that ends in depression and life destruction.
Wherever there is something wrong in gaming, there is almost always hardcore gamers behind it. Despite Nintendo’s heroic efforts in the Seventh Generation, the frontier of gaming is currently being pushed backward as gaming retreats from society. Since hardcore gamers don’t have any money (because they have no jobs), you would think their terror over gaming has come to the end. But no. Games have to be given away for free in order for the hardcore gamers to continue playing them.
Cicero ended every speech to the Roman Senate with the phrase, “Carthage must be destroyed!” I will do the same with my blog posts.
Stop blaming executives, ‘the times’, and everything else. We know who is causing the destruction of gaming. The hardcore must be destroyed!