Is it a game? Yes. Are they playing it? Yes. They are gaming, therefore gamers, regardless of the category. The more people buy consoles, the more developers can afford to take risks with certain games and come out with fantastic hits that everyone likes. That is what they want - what you want may not be the same but rest assured, there are a ton of games for those considering themselves 'hardcore' ...

I don't think anyone wants to alienate the traditional (or hardcore) gaming crowd just to appease the new casual market. I doubt Epic is going to cancel "Gears of War 2" in order to devote more developer time to "Cooking with Marcus Fenix." They're just opening up to a new market, and trying to cater to that one *as well*. I don't see how this can do anything but benefit everyone.

Yay, my Cooking Mama pic lives again! :D

(sorry for the double fucking post)

I don't like the terms 'hardcore' or 'casual'. You're either a gamer or you're not. The genre of games you play does not define you as a gamer. I play Animal Crossing and Viva Pinata and then I go play Gears of War and Rainbow Six: Vegas. I like all kinds of games, because I'm not a hardcore gamer or a casual gamer, I'm just a gamer, period.

Why the hell are all my posts doubled recently?

nicely written! hooray for games!

To me, this is a non-debate. The only way that videogamers are ever going to be taken seriously is to have a wide variety of people playing them. Gaming needs the numbers if it ever wants to be taken seriously and once it has the numbers, I'm certain we will see the raitings shift to match closer with movies. The disparity now is that videogaming is still a niche entertainment and seen by most as something children do. Once the general public gets in on gaming, this perception will change. Then you can have your movie tie in for hostel 9 and torture teenagres all the live long day.

With a new market of gamers, the game industry may be making a shift. I think the people who this worries the most are those whos first videogame experience started with the Playstation. As an old man of videogaming, I can remember being left out of an industry shift at least once as 90% of the 2d genres I loved are dead. While I dont think having new people play games will be that drastic, changes of the landscape are natural and prevent stagnation.

What I really love is the whole casual gamer concept among the core audience. They freak out when videogames are dismissed as childerns entertainment, but don't hesitate to use casual as an equally dismissive term.

I say if having more casual games around gives me more Raving Rabbids, I'm all for it. I like the game on its own merits (which I don't think I'm allowed to and still be a gamer). My girlfriend also loves the game and having games we can play together is a godsend. For those of you too busy pwning to get laid, I can understand why these games can fuck off. For those of us with spouses and the like, being able to share our hobby with the missus not only makes bringing more games into the house easier, it lets us have videogame time as together time. How cool is that?

My old lady is getting pretty good at trauma center too. Given the games ninja gaidenesque difficulty, I don't know that I would throw that one in the casual pile. I suppose the idea of casual games working as a gateway game never crossed anyones mind.

I still don't know how people can claim the Wii is innovative, it just slightly improved old peripheral ideas like light guns and dance pads and applied them to the same types of games we've already seen everywhere. The major qualm I have with companies devoting time and money to "casual" games is that the games are overly simply, repetitive, and unrewarding. They're fun for about 30 minutes and then it's the same shit forever. Regardless, I still think they're necessary and in many cases a good investment for companies since only making cult classics has never been a great source of income in any industry.

I'm not showing any of them love. They're the reason as to why the Wii sucks right now.

It seems this has turned into a, "Why fewer core titles, Nintendo" discussion, so I'll just continue in the vein, well, -ish.

When I first heard of Wii Fit, my initial reaction was, "Oh, great, so now my last bastion of couch potato-ness is under attack". But I could stand to lose a few pounds...and knowing what I do of gaming life, so could most of us. Perhaps instead of playing SSBM or Ninja Gaiden or whatever for hours on end, I might actually get off the couch and do something. Horrors! Armageddon!

So as corny as it sounded initially, I must applaud Nintendo for Wii Fit - a videogame company that cares about your personal health? Anyone else think of one?

klll6

Check out what my kitten typed... she's evil.

Ugh. More bitching from gamers. Here's the thing: DON'T BUY CASUAL GAMES IF YOU DON'T WANT TO PLAY THEM. You have a choice and it doesn't require you to voice your opinion. Simply keep playing the games you like, which I assure you will continue being made, and be happy with that. If your mom/sister/grandparents/etc start playing games then good for them. Gaming will simply become a more common thing and that can't be bad.

Wow, this story seems to almost be MORE of an attack ( and a generalisation) of the "hardcore" gaming populace as much of society sees it than an article in support of casual gaming.

I understand the argument that getting games into the hand of more people, be they 'casual' or not, should theoretically further legitmize our favorite passtime to the rest of the world. Alas, there is a ginormous (it's officially a word now, WHOO HOO!) problem in this logic...

The games that are infiltrating the traditionally non-gaming populace are basically ALL casual games. In effect, they are actually DISTANCING gaming from being seen as a form of art or at the very least, a venue from which intelligent, artistic, even mature, media can be achieved.

And yes, the more resources are pooled towards casual games, the more they are taken away from meaningful, thought-provoking games.

And no, I couldn't care less about the next GTA, or ultra-violent FPS. Manhunt 2 (free speech issues aside) can stay dead for all I care. As gaming strives to garner the support and finances needed to produce more artistic, intelligent IPs, I'm waiting patiently for the next Ico; the next Okami; the next Shadow of the Colossus.

Putting games in more hands can only take gaming so far. I feel we need LESS of a shift from gaming as a 'geek' activity to an 'anybody' activity, and MORE of a shift from gaming as a 'violent' refuge to an 'artistic' escape.

That was a horribly structured final sentence there, but I think it makes at least SOME sense.

There's a big difference between "dumbed down" and accessible. Just because a game can be picked up and played by almost anyone doesn't automatically make it crap.

Let's be honest here, "meaningful, thought-provoking" games sell like shit. Casual games that do well mean that publishers will have more cash to take chances on intelligent and artistic titles they might otherwise pass on. And does nobody seem to realize that players who get hooked through casual titles are more likely to try out traditional games in the future? Jesus, use your heads people.

i almost forgot... the whole "people will use casual games as a gateway to regular games" is a crock of shit. how many people that only know how to make microwaveable food move on to gourmet cooking? i know how to change the air filter on my car, but it never led to me rebuilding my engine (or even changing my own oil).

also, these companies are companies. think about it. they want to make money. if they figure out that they will only make money on the casual games, they will only make the casual games.

@ MusashiX2:

Your comparisons are rather ridiculous; you're making the gap seem much wider than it actually is. There's a world of difference between heating up a hot pocket and competing on Iron Chef. With gaming it's a few more buttons to manage and more complex controls. It's much more like learning to drive with an automatic and eventually graduating to a stick shift. If someone has the basics of driving in place, if so motivated they can learn the rest in a single afternoon. The point is once their foot is in the door, it's a lot easier to get them to try out something more advanced.

If you think that game publishers are only going to focus on the guaranteed money makers, then you haven't been paying attention for the last decade or so. Publishers have been doing this for years with licensed titles. They make film or TV tie-ins in order to earn money to make original IPs. The game industry (along with film and television) for the most part (ahem, EA) knows that there's a balance between creative expression and making a profit. Film studios make most of their money off huge Hollywood blockbusters, yet still find the time to make art house movies. The same is true of video games.

@ TheRob91:

Yes, but I've never left my action figures out to come back and find my mom and dad playing with them. However, I have left the Wii over at my folks house and found them playing Wii Tennis and Bowling with each other while I was gone. I've also seen them hide the DS from each other so they could get dibs on playing Brain Age first after work.

Why is this a conflict? I remember the same arguments being made when the Playstaion's popularity heralded the death of gaming, only to go on and produce some iconic gaming experiences. And also some unimaginable dross, but there we go. In other forms of media the "casual" and the "hardcore" manage to exist side by side, each appealing to a market. Guess what, I enjoy Umberto Eco, Primo Levi and James Joyce just about as much as I have enjoyed Tom Clancy, J.K Rowling and Dr Seuss.
If you want the games you like to continue, support them by buying them - hence proving that the market exists and that you are worth developing for. The ones you don't like, don't buy - its called market forces.
And from my own personal experience, as a long time gamer now with a family the 'casual' approach is a godsend. My whole family now finds the whole game thing a lot more accessible - my wife loves Guitar Hero while my eldest daughter like Zelda: Twilight Princess and Wii Bowling. Its all good.

@Mxyzptlk

my comparisons are "ridiculous" because you elevated them past what i intended. i didn't say "competing on Iron Chef." i said "gourmet cooking." e.g. pasta with a cream sauce, or some sautèed chicken with vegetables. nothing out of the realm of possibility for an average person.

the key words in your manual transmission analogy are "if so motivated." think about that for a second.

@ MusashiX2:

Exactly, if so motivated. Not every person who gets into a casual game is going to graduate to the next level. But the chances are better of them doing so once they've tried it out. Some is better than none.

@TheRob91:

I disagree completely that it's "just something to pass the time". I don't get calls from my mom asking if I can bring over the paper so she can do the crossword. I do get calls asking if I can bring over the Wii next time I visit. Like I said, some people are going to be content with just the casual games. But many are going to think to themselves, "Hey, these things are pretty fun. I wonder what else is out there?"

You can consider the Wiimote overrated (and I agree it's got flaws). But try giving a non-gamer the option of playing a game where all they have to do is swing a remote like a tennis racket, or explain to them game that requires them to figure out two analog sticks, four face buttons, and four shoulder buttons... There's a reason the Wii appeals to the casual crowd so much, besides it being the new hotness.

Awesome! This debate never gets old! It's as exciting and refreshing as the never-ending debate over which console is better than the others or the debate over whether console gaming is better or worse than PC gaming!

@Lewzr

For what it's worth, I agree with you 100%.

As I know I've said before on more than one occasion, I cannot for the life of me understand how and why this beast called casual gaming has gathered so much infamy as some sort of giant threat to gaming which must be destroyed at all costs.

This is how it seems to me. Forgive me if I exaggerate a tiny bit in the course of the following rant.

It seems like a good number of people are afraid that developers are simply going to altogether cease making FPSs or RTSs or RPGs or whatever in favor of only making mini-game collections from now on, forevermore. And it seems like these same people simply cannot themselves fathom just how or why anyone anywhere could actually enjoy these mini-game collections and their casual ilk in any way whatsoever. It's not just that they themselves don't enjoy these particular types of games, oh no, it's that they simply cannot perceive how anyone could enjoy them, since they're obviously "shit games" and nothing more. They can't understand why everyone doesn't share the perception that these games are the "shit games" that they themselves know them to be, and anyone who tries to say otherwise, even if just to say that even these so-called "shit games" maybe have their place too, is just plain wrong (or so it seems from the vehement way that this point gets argued so very often). The mere concept that anyone could find these games to be the slightest bit fun or entertaining is as absurd to them as the idea of casual gaming being some DIRE THREAT is to me, and to them the gamers who enjoy these "shit games" deserve to shunned as less-than-gamers. These less-than-gamers are people who obviously lack the refined tastes of the hardcore elite and thus don't deserve the ungodly massive amounts of time and resources that game developers are wasting on them. Time that could be, and more importantly should be, better spent making some suitably h4rdc0r3 title like Unreal Tournament 2008 Turbo Hyperfighting Edition or else some impossibly artistic title like War and Peace: The Video Game which uses an graphical style based on Picasso's Analytic Cubism period and has a soundtrack consisting of nothing but Beethovenian or Bachian classical music. There's simply no room whatsoever in the video game industry for something that they perceive to be the rough equivalent to, if not far worse than, the cheap pulp thrillers, shallow pop music, brainless action films, or crappy sitcoms of other media, all of which have totally annihilated their respective media beyond any hope of recovery, of course.

That's how it seems to me.

It is all laughably ridiculous to me, and gets ever more so every time this dying horse tries to stand up, only to be beaten down with two-by-fours once again.

Musashi seems to forget that Clover studios fucking went under because the Hardcore audience wasn't enough to sustain their losses for their art. If the gaming industry was expanded, maybe fantastic games like Okami and Psychonauts would have actually been successful and studios like Clover would still be around.

This argument is largely raised because gaming is loaded with pissy Prima Donnas.

Marc Ecko's game wasn't that good, but if you remember he said something along the lines of "the fashion industry has some bitches, well, gaming's got some *real* bitches. I'm going back to fashion".

I mean, look at the history of the prima donna bitch throughout gaming history, another great example is when "hell levels" were fixed in EverQuest. The argument was "we had to play a game that played like shit to get to level 46 (or whatever), you can't just go and fix that and make it possible for someone with family obligations to get to level 46 this century".

This is the same reason Final Fantasy keeps selling. Oooh, sick burn! Not really. But I still can't figure it out.

"Hardcore" gamers are scared that the one place in their life where the are constantly catered to (other than the Sc-Fi channel) is going to be taken from them.

And I personally think that's awesome. I hope that the Wii will win and cause hardcore gamers to quit gaming, so I will no longer be associated with their fat, nerdy asses.

Same with comic books. Since DC and Marvel went bankrupt due to their regurgitation of the same "hard core" product (Super hero comics with gatefold covers), the field has greatly broadened. Autobiogarphical comics, romance comics, horror comics, etc. This has brought a lot of people into reading comics that never would before, and drove some of the losers out.

And comics are making more money because of it.

This is all further proof that gamers will find anything to bitch about, just for the sake of bitching.

Bill Gates could write every Xbox 360 owner a check for 1,000 dollars and gamers would bitch that they have to get up off of their Cheeto-stained couches to cash it. Some people simply cannot be pleased.

I'm all for the so-called casual movement in gaming today. I can now enjoy a hobby with my entire family that I previously was only able to enjoy alone or over the internet with anonymous strangers. And the "hardcore" games are still there for me to play whenever I have a bit of alone-time to kill. It's win-win.