Don't fear the Casual Gamer

by Dick Ward May 24th 2008 12:14 AM EDT

There’s a lot out people out there trying to ruin a good time by regulating or even banning videogames. Whether it’s religious organizations decrying the heresy of having churches in shooters, pseudo scientists using fake data to push their personal beliefs or political figures using videogame regulation as talking point for their campaigns, games are under constant attack. Why is it, then, that the hardcore 360 player feels he has so much more to fear from the success of the Wii?

Today I explore the casual gamer, raise a few questions, and quash a few myths.

The most difficult part of any conversation involving casual games is stapling down a definition. For the purposes of this article, and only for the purposes of this article, I will cite Wikipedia as a source for an agreed upon definition. It’s a bit vague, but it’s the best we have to work with at the moment.

"The term casual game is used to refer to any computer game targeted at a mass audience of casual gamers… video game players whose time or interest in playing games is limited compared with a hardcore gamer."

Essentially, according to the currently agreed upon definition, a casual game is simply a game created for, and marketed to an audience outside of the hardcore. This in and of itself is a change for the gaming market, as for years; there have been only two real markets for gaming, kids and hardcore gamers. Adding a third type of consumer to an environment that already has too few good games could mean an even smaller chunk for the hardcore.

The face of casual gaming has taken many forms throughout the years, but at the moment only one vision comes to mind. Dwarfed by the colossal PS3 and Xbox 360, the Wii, miniscule in both size and power, has captured the casual gaming market like nothing before it. Its motion control capabilities make it a simple system for anyone to pick up, and the friendly face of Mario makes families feel comfortable.

The Wii isn’t the only place casual games are surfacing though; the Xbox 360 is actually the primary system for most games considered to be casual by the mainstream gaming crowd. Games like Luxor 2, Backgammon, Hearts, Spades, Solitaire, and even Uno are available for download on the 360. Games skirting the line of Hardcore and Casual like Guitar Hero 3, Pac Man CE, and Super Puzzle Fighter II are all available on the 360 as well.

Many companies have been quick to jump on the bandwagon, offering up ports of PS2 and GameCube games with motion control hastily attached and barely functioning. After Wii buzz got around, the PlayStation 3 had a six axis motion sensor added to its controllers, but thus far the Xbox 360 has stood firm.

I’ve chosen not to go into elaborate detail in what people are referring to as the Xbox Wiisixty, as our own Steven Wysowski "The Xbox Guy" has written quite elaborately on the subject. It has been recently decried by Microsoft as a hoax, but the next few months are always ripe with surprise, and Microsoft is known for keeping secrets.

So why fear casual games? Many hardcore gamers are under the mistaken belief that otherwise gamer specific projects will abandoned, and the resources dedicated to so-called real games will be siphoned off to casual game creation. This of course, is an unjustified and uninformed opinion.

Some companies, of course, will branch off into the casual gaming space, but rest assured a developer like Epic, the team behind Unreal Tournament and most notably Gears of War, won’t be deviating from the course that got them where they are today. Unless of course, there truly is a demand for Getting Fit With Marcus Fenix. Even if there was a desire for an Epic Games casual game, the development team would be so small that it would have little to no effect on development of their main titles.

In fact, just as actors often do ‘money movies’ to finance their good movies, casual games can be a great way for a smaller developer to build up the money and reputation required to finance a larger title. Capcom is the finest example of this strategy at the moment. With several major titles upcoming (Bionic Commando, Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil 5) Capcom is releasing a wide array of downloadable games for Xbox Live including 1942, Bionic Commando: Rearmed and Plunder.

So hardcore gamers - don’t fear the casual, embrace it. Remember, today’s casual player could become tomorrow’s core gamer.

http://xboxfocus.com/columns/26-outside-the-white-box/351-don-t-fear-the-casual-gamer/index.html

So, did annyone beside you turn from Casual Gamer to Core Gamer?

I believe the most notabaly example is your girlfriend, am I right?

This has happened before. Back when the casual FPS and RTS twitch gammers killed all the fun for us hardcore turn based strategy and wargame players. Almost nobody puts significant resources into these types games anymore. Civilization is the only series that I can think of which has survived well. FPS players should be afraid, but I say good riddance.

yay? Now I can look forward to being the fringe demographic for the console and game makers as a hard core gamer and not being catered to while Bejewelled part 56 gets made?

I guess Im happy?

@alephnull: There's actually still a decent amount of Turn Based Strategy being made, their team are just usually small, and the games are not really flash. Think Independent(Indie) Developers

UFO: Afterlight
A cross between turn-base and real-time. Where you control your squad simultaneously and you can pause at anytime to micromanage them. The actions can be given real-time, if you want.

It's actually the 3rd game of the series and it's quite awesome.
Most likely appeal to X-Com fans.

@Galaki: I have yet to play Afterlight, but I did get a chance to play Aftershock recently. It was impossible to plan things out similarly to x-com because you have no real metric without movement points. You are forced to make incremental plans for all the units if you want to play it as a turn-based strat, which I found to be frustraiting and it limits the number of units you can reasonable control. It felt to me like I was playing a RTS that paused alot automatically.

@takkxyz: There were tons of Indie turn based strategy games too back in the day. It's just that nobody remembers them because they were mostly crap (except vgaplanets). With Indie games the refinement just doesn't seem to be there in interface, music, or just general artwork. I'm not asking GTA investment here, just some nice 2d artwork which doesn't make my eyes bleed. These all seem to be works of love done by 4x or whatever fans that, none of whom seem to be good artists or HCI people. I have heard some good things from Space Empires, so maybe I will eat my words in a little bit.

We still havent seen anything as good as MOO2 (no galciv is just not even close, and I say this after a tour at IBM). There are no "casual" wargames of the likes of panzer general, V for Victory, Wargame construction kit, etc. Are there really less people alive now who enjoy these types of games or are game developers led by humans who seek glory in working on "in" things?

This all started with Wolfenstein which I admit I played non-stop for about a year straight. By the time Doom came out I was already pretty bored of the genre. Halo and Crysis are both pretty much the same game. 

@ Alephnull
Have you played Galciv2 and it's latest expansions? GalCiv2 is a lot better than Galciv?

By the way I don't think there is less TBS War gamers now than they were. In fact I say there are more but the growth of those who likes "thinking" strategy games ("War of the Lance" was one of my favorite back in my C-64 days) haven't increase at the rate compared to those who likes playing a more shallow casual game. Thus you see some very simple games like "Carnival Games" and "Cooking Mama" sales blow away even the best of the TBS games like Civilization 4.

@Smidlee I played Galciv2 and the first expansion. I just don't like the haphazard placement of things. I wish they would bring back starlanes. I don't like constructors, they are annoying. The ground assaults were even more broken than in galciv1 and I wish they would just copy MOO2 or even MOO3. The government and society types aren't as creative as MOO2 or Alpha Centauri (notice im not asking for hearts of iron II like sophistication here). Plus it just feels like kiddie sci-fi (think star wars, ender's game, snowcrash VS asimov).

Also didn't play War of the Lance, I had an atari XE instread of a C64.

Carnival Games and Cooking Mama were around before they were just called "Myst" and "Big Game Hunter".

Wow that brunette chick looks like my sister.