Hardcore to Be Pushed Aside This Console Generation?

Gamasutra asks questions directly of analysts on a semi-regular basis, in a feature they call 'Analyze This'. This week they quiz analysts about the rising influence of casual players, and what this means for the dedicated hardcore gamer. The ubiquitous Michael Pachter: "I think some portion of family growth will come from aging of original Xbox owners, who will have families of their own and will likely play games with their children. I also think that newer features on the Elite, like the 80GB hard drive, will encourage more family activities, like downloading TV shows and movies. In essence, I don't see [Microsoft] trying to cannibalize the Wii audience, so much as to trying to offer an alternative with the Xbox 360 as the home media center. I don't think that there is any real threat to the long-term survival of the Xbox 360."

Who's hardcore?

[seebs]

I maintained a personal branch of Wine so I could have more function keys in World of Warcraft -- Linux supports more function keys, so I remapped them into modified keys WoW could handle. I've learned programming languages to work on games. I semi-regularly put in 16-hour days of gaming when I'm looking to destress. I have not one, not two, but THREE game-playing devices with me everywhere I go.

I could give a shit about another "40-hour" FPS, but surgery or hypnotism would be involved.

The Wii is the best thing to happen to my console gaming experience in years. The PS3 is utterly irrelevant to me as a gamer. Yeah, yeah. Cue the people claiming I just can't afford one; I've had one since last December. I run Linux on it. The games are just more derivative crap. The total interesting play time of every PS3 game I've seen put together can't come within a full working week of what I've gotten out of Wii Sports Tennis alone. Paper Mario is the first platformer since the Genesis Sonic era to do something I haven't already gotten bored with.

You think I should consider kids who can't get off on a game unless it's gory and their parents don't want them playing it to be "hardcore" gamers? I don't. When they're into gaming enough to write games, when they've been playing games more than a few years, then they can talk. Until then, they're just wannabes.

Re:Atari say's please use caution...

[AKAImBatman]

Anyone remember the early 80's? The biggest contributor to the great video game crash of 83 was the over abundance of crap in the marketplace.

While you are correct, I think it's important to understand that the crash of '83 can't happen again. The factors that made it happen simply don't exist anymore. Those factors are:

1. Atari did not want to allow third party developers for their console. Third party developers sprang up anyway, and started chucking out whatever they could possibly sell. Since Atari had no licensing arrangements with these companies, there were no quality control checks in place. Today's console makers require licensing arrangements to prevent exactly this sort of problem. (And to make more money!)
   
2. Just before the crash, there was a general feeling that the gaming market was going to experience unlimited growth. This was not the case, and there ended up being more game producers than the market could reasonably handle. Gaming did experience quite a bit of growth, however, and the current market size sits at not-quite 200 million consoles. That's an incredibly large market.
   
3. The crash would have been nothing more than a slump if not for a man known as Jack Tramiel. He was determined to make his Commodore computers take over the gaming market. Thanks to a price war with Texas Instruments, he was able to smash the price barrier between consoles and computers at just the right time to put everyone else (both consoles and computers) out of business. (Or at least in a world of hurt.) Stores threw out all their console garbage and started carrying computers. Computers and consoles coexist at a similar price point today, but computer gaming has been largely deemphasized over the years.
   

Re:Atari say's please use caution...

[mwvdlee]

In my opinion, it is the hardcore gamer that has low expectations; always buying the latest well-known brand of FPS, RTS, RPG, platformer, fighting game or whatever. As long as the graphics are better than the previous game and there's ever more of everything familiar. The kind of stuff the PS3 and X360 offer.

The casual gamer, on the other hand, requires new stimulation and new experiences. Casual gamers want to see new gameplay, new ways to interact with the medium; the kind of stuff the Wii offers. These are definetely a form of "expectations" too, an IMHO a lot higher expectations than those of polished recycleables.

Whether the casual market will be a mainstay of the console market is hard to tell. Developers will have to keep coming up with new ideas and will have to be competitive in a far less "measurable" way than how they've been dealing with hardcore gamers.

The past generations of consoles have been largely pushing increasing processor power. The Wii broke this mold by focussing on new ways to interact, and it'll be interresting to see whether they made the right bet. The market Nintendo "created" will be less easy to satisfy than the hardcore market and we'll have to wait and see whether their controller is just a novelty or the first step into the future of consoles.

Re:It's a Myth

[ProppaT]

Unfortunately, it's not a myth of the industry so much as it's a myth of gamers. They fight over the meaning...some think it means FPS players, some think it means those who play only the most obscure of games, some think it just means people who play absurd hours of games. It's just like any club of sect of society...for some reason certain people like labels and feel strength and security in numbers.

The sad thing is, as a 28 year old life long gamer, starting with a Commodore 24 and currently owning practically every home game console to be mass produced since (save the PS3 and the Xbox 360), I wouldn't even consider myself a gamer at this point. While I play games and own over a thousand, it seems that these days it's not about playing the games themselves so much as it is having the best gear, best graphics, most violence, cinematic sequences, etc. I used to smile when playing games, now it's all too serious and realistic. I've actually gotten anxiety from playing some of the newer games, and that's not really cool.

In that sense, maybe I AM a casual gamer. So, in this day and age, can a veteran gamer who's been gaming nearly 25 years be considered a casual gamer? I suppose so, by definition.

Re:Atari say's please use caution...

[twistedsymphony]

I agree with you half way... I think the hardcore gamers do like unchanging gameplay... they want the FPS the plays like that other FPS they love that plays like that other FPS they love and is by that developer they love in that franchise they love... etc. etc.

Casual gamers will just play whatever looks like fun and move on when it stops being fun

On the other hand I think hardcore gamers demand more of a deeper plot and character development... they want to play Halo 3 not just because it's the gameplay/franchise they love but because it's like the next chapter in a really good book... I don't really think the casual market cares so much nor has the attention span for this kind of involvement with a game. Wii Sports might offer fresh gameplay but it's completely devoid of the kind of intellectual stimulation you'd get from something like Half Life, Halo or many of the other games hardcore players are known to love that casual gamers turn their nose up at.

I think in many ways hardcore gamers view their gaming experience as a solid form of entertainment that act in place of a movie, or book in terms of artistic value. I think Casual gamers view games more in terms of cheap thrills and as a completely different and alternative form of entertainment, rather than a replacement.

I certainly hope so...

[7Prime]

I'm a serious gamer, but I'm tired of the "hardcore" crowd. It's becoming a cliche like the "extreme sports" fad. I'd like serious, involving games... but I don't care about shit like high-end graphics, or shock-value elements like lots of blood and sex everywhere, that the hardcore crowd seems to be getting at. I'd like a game that will immerse me in its game world, or tell a good epic story, or something to that extent.