Email: Those hardcore gamers

Dear Malstrom/Oil baron,

 

Thank you for your last several weeks talking about the hardcore gamer. I think it is sad that the “gamer” label has been taken over by the Dorito-bros and Mountain Dewds and gamers like me are ignored because we have left the market out of boredom. 

 

When I play a game, I play to have fun. Simple as that. When a hardcore gamer plays a game, they are looking for an opportunity to form an opinion that they can pass on to others. The more hardcore a game is, the more they flock to it. The more complicated (or convoluted) the gameplay or plot is, the more eager they are to dissect it for their fellow bros. It is similar to a movie buff who fancies themselves a film critic. Their logic is “my opinion becomes validated the more movies I watch”. Same goes for hardcore gamers. They believe the more games they play, the more complete a perspective they have on the videogame market, and therefore their opinion on matters carries more weight.

 

But like you said in your blog, that’s the big joke. To me, the person with the best opinion is someone who has the guts to say “I didn’t like that game” or “I don’t like that console”. At least they have standards. The hardcore aims to love everything the game journalists tell them to love. They would feel like they are “missing out” if they don’t play every single blockbuster hit, hidden gem, underdog, and indie surprise that comes their way. 

 

For a while you said “…and that’s why the hardcore must be destroyed”. Maybe it is time for a more positive message like “a real gamer doesnt waste time with crap games” or “a real gamer gets off the couch” or  something like that.

_______________________________________

A good analogy came to me to how to describe the hardcore gamer. When lands were first pioneered, such as a city by the coast, they were populated by the people with heart for adventure. Some generations later, their descendants have a similar if lesser degree of that pioneer stuff. But eventually, all these idiots begin moving in because that coast is ‘pretty’ and they will be ‘cool’ if they live there. I’ve seen this constantly where the prettiest places in America (at least) get populated by the biggest morons. You have to go to the boonies or to an ugly area (like a swamp) as these idiots would never move there.

The hardcore did not exist at the beginning of gaming. PONG’s success was about attracting the Wii Sports crowd, not the hardcore gamers. Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong all were not ‘hardcore games’. But the hardcore did get a foothold in games like Defender. Of course, the hardcore think the only type of game that should exist is the hardcore game. After Street Fighter 2, the hardcore really took over the arcades. Every game began to be made for the hardcore. This caused the arcades to collapse.

Just look at any game franchise. The last games of a franchise tend to drift toward the hardcore before collapsing.

The hardcore gamer is the Sunset Gamer. They prefer a mature, sustaining innovation. They cannot handle radical newness. The hardcore gamers missed Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda when they came out. The hardcore gamers missed Wii Sports and Wii Fit when they came out. The hardcore gamers largely missed the eruption of Minecraft. When the first RTS games came out, where were the hardcore? If you look at the only viable RTS game out now, Starcraft 2, it is designed and revolved around the hardcore hence everyone saying the RTS genre is a ‘sunset genre’. The people who played WOW then are different from the people who play WOW today. The MMO genre is said to be a ‘sunset genre’ for similar reasons.

If you keep making games for the Sunset Consumer, your industry will become a declining one.

I’ve always been a Sunrise Consumer or a Sun-Noon Consumer. I prefer the morning and high noon of games and their franchises. It is why I keep talking about the early Mario games as opposed to the latter ones, why I talk up Mega Man 2 instead of Mega Man 9, and why I keep mentioning ‘Springtime’ games such as Warcraft 2, Command and Conquer 1 or Red Alert, Wii Sports, Wing Commander, Unreal Tournament, and so on and so on. Some series found a way to have constant springtime. One example were the Ultima games (3-7 + Online) which I attribute to Origin using a completely new game engine for each game (which was not done by anyone else). Blizzard games used to be good at this too until Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 (where they began focusing on the hardcore).

Imagine you and I are standing on the sands of the Roman coliseum and in the stands are full of toga wearing Game Industry people wondering how we’ll interact with their creations. Whatever comes through those gates at E3 has a high probability of being Sunset Games for their respected genres. Call of Duty: Ghosts seems to be more of a sunset game.  This is also why Nintendo cannot sell hardware with Gamecube sequels or games like Nintendo Land. All of those games are Sunset. Even NSMB U is a Sunset Game as it brings nothing new, content wise, to the table. Games that sell hardware are Sunrise Games such as Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and games that attract new players as opposed to holding on to experienced gamers.

As for the oil baron, I wish I knew how to invest and build businesses in the Oil and Gas industry. Due to how most oil companies are nationalized, the ‘businessmen’ range from the normal entrepreneur to Russian oligarchs to the mass murdering tyrant in the Middle East. I’ve noticed many of the mover and shakers tend to be descendants of high profile politicians. Some might immediately assume Bush or right-wing politicians, but I’ve seen more left-wing ones. For example, the grandson of FDR is betting his life on a new carbon dioxide way of breaking apart shale rock to get to the oil. (This technique is too expensive for now but might be viable one day once the water route of fracking has taken its course.) It is not a normal industry. There are many ‘rough characters’ involved.

I’m still at least a year out from being sent out and doing my engineering work (where-ever on Earth these guys send me). I’m at the age where you say “F*ck it!”, and you stop caring if you die. Whenever I walk into an office environment, I want to smash it to bits. I don’t feel like a man in those job environments. I don’t want the fracking daily commute where you sit all pretty at a computer, sing the company song, and ‘be the happy corporate group’.

People assume money flies out of everyone’s ass in the oil industry. The truth is that it is very expensive and very dangerous to obtain the oil. The reason why money seems to appear fast is because this is an incredibly fast industry (and one that everyone needs as everyone needs electricity and transportation). The true reason why the oil worker makes a ton of money is not because money flies out of the oil industry’s ass, it is because the oil worker is working 12 hours a day, everyday, no weekends, no vacations, and often no breaks in the tour. And that is the normal. I know guys who have 150 hour work weeks (“Doesn’t that mean they would only have 2 hours to sleep?” Yes, it would). The ‘fat salaries’ are obtained through overtime. The oil worker’s life is work and has no outside life, no social life, and is living on the field. People on the outside only see the paycheck size and don’t consider everything else. All things considered, I think the oil workers are underpaid if anything. Wages go up astronomically when you factor in hazard conditions such as working in a nation with high rate of radical Islam. Do you wish to risk your head being cut off? A big reason why the oil companies are investing like a vengeance in North America is because they are sick and tired of dealing with Muslim nations. If any industry knows what it is like dealing with radical Islamist, it would be the oil industry not just because they work in those global areas. It is also because the oil industry is populated with veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

One gamer I know personally made an astute observation that the industry is ‘a ton of heavy metal’ and is like Command and Conquer: Red Alert. Minus the tanks and weapons of course.

The red spreading over the map would be Radical Islam. It is why the oil companies are leaving the oil rich nation of Nigeria. They don’t want to deal with that shit.

And no, I have yet to find a ‘Tanya’ in the industry. I’ll keep my eye out for her though! :)