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Hey! I'm a really cool guy. Get to know me. Usually you can find me hanging out with my friends, pretending to freestyle good, making up designs, creating movies or just sitting around. I have a thing for 8bit so I makeup sprite characters on occasion.
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T'was a quiet, Saturday night. Dre was sitting at his computer after a botched attempt at trying to get tickets to the late show of Fast and Furious.
Long story. Anyways, so here I was. Bored, and lurking a game forum that I consider my usual watering hole of lurkery, when suddenly I came across a comment that read something along the lines of "teh casual gamerz 4 teh lozeeee lawllll". That triggered something within me and I was inspired to create a thread called Casual Gamers > Core Gamers. I submit to you, my brain child. A product of a Vin Diesel-less Saturday night and clique rebellion. 
Casual Gamers > Core Gamers It's time core gamers start to acknowledge that fact. If you're in this forum posting now and than or even just lurking, odds are you're a core gamer. I'd define this more specifically as a person who considers video gaming a primary hobby and immerses themselves in the culture of it. Me and, like I said, probably you. That said, the vibe across the general populace here and most other gaming enthusiast forums is to be butthurt over the recent surge in new casual gaming experiences and players. But let me pose a question to you: The Xbox 360 has sold roughly 30 million consoles worldwide. Now, how many of those people do you think fall under our "core gamer" category? The same question can be asked of every console. However, no matter what you might think, the core gamer is not the majority, here. Fair weather gamers dominate sales charts every time. It's something I've come to call the Inner Circle Effect, where we go on forums, we talk to our friends on Live, we read Gamespot and these EGM and what we've done is build ourselves a network. In all actuality, this network might only consist of 10 000 people, perhaps. However, not actually knowing this number, we build ourselves up as these high and mighty powers behind the video game industry. We consider ourselves important to an industry that is rising as the most popular means of entertainment. But in all actuality, we're not important. In reality, we probably make up a small piece of the sales pie. It's casual gamers. People who don't reach out into our network and just play games now and than for fun. They've always been there and without them, this industry couldn't exist, or at the very least, would be nowhere as huge. I'd bet that anywhere between 75 - 90% of console owners would consider themselves a casual. You, reading this blog, are undoubtedly more intelligent than the numb skulls I interact with on that forum. Your opinion is actually valued here, so I'd like to know your thoughts on the matter. Leave a comment.
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Living the dream since March 16, 2006
Living the dream since March 16, 2006
The Future of PC Gaming Isn't You (Aug 2007)
I do wonder what our actual power in the gaming world actually is though.
Is it to circulate the latest tidbit of gaming news/rumour, eventually reaching the ears and eyes of our 'casual' gaming friends?
Is it to keep niche gaming franchises and communities (online/offline) alive, no matter how small?
Are our opinions (moreso than casual gamers') still able to influence and shape gaming franchises and gameplay types?
What would games be like without the core community of gamers? I'd guess it would be even more homogenous than its becoming.
Lots of questions, I know, but I don't really have definitve answers for any of them myself. I'm probably ignoring mountains of evidence answering most of these as well.
Shovelware and the casual audience has been around for a long time. I realized it back when my friend and I would go to the store every once in a while to look for a new game, for my Gamecube and his PS2. The amount of crap for those two systems was amazing. By the end of the generation we each had a nice library of top tier "hardcore" titles...but it sure wasn't our favourite's that sold the best.
I think the casual demographic is just a lot more apparent now and is being marketed toward a lot more aggressively.
...
That said, videogames are just like any other media. There are more "casual" movie goers, book readers, and TV watchers than there are "hardcore" aficionados of those mediums.
The lowest common denominator is always made up of "casuals". They are the people that led to Friends staying on the air for ten years (or something like that) while Arrested Development only lasted three seasons. They are the ones that read Harry Potter 7 instead of World War Z. They are the ones that bought Mario Kart Wii instead of MadWorld.
And that's OK, because MadWorld was cheap enough to make that it'll likely warrant a sequel. Brad Pitt loved World War Z so he personally is spearheading the movie. Arrested Development is getting a movie as well, thanks in no small part to it's "hardcore" fan base.
My point? The stuff we like doesn't have to be #1 to keep going. It doesn't even need to be #10. As long the people who make the stuff can live off making said stuff, then they'll keep churning it out.
I bought, read, and loved both. I think I'm bipolar.
It's a basic fact in psychology and sociology that the inner circle must be smaller than the outer one; but the inner circle, for the most part, always controls the direction of the group. The casual gamers that take interest in videogames direction are soon absorbed into a sect of the "hardcore" innercircle because they are no longer just a casual gamer. Just like a casual music listener who starts a band, will soon be more off an elitist as a musician, than a regular old music lover. It isn't a psychological problem, it is the fact that once you know more about something, it is harder to ignore flaws, mistakes, problems, and that means opinions are formed much faster and with much more detail.
The inner groups really just need to practice some patience and help steer the larger outer circle in the direction they want. After all, being a jerk will only turn people away from getting more into games/music/etc, not make them want to be "hardcore."
In reality I think hardcore aligns itself more with those looking for quality, versus those who are to naive and just buy absolute shit, or quality products like WiiFit which aren't games in the traditional sense of the word.