Could Hardcore Players Kill Gaming?
There’s a divide in the gamer community that I’d like to address, if you’ll humor me for a few minutes. I was fortunate enough to grow up as a first generation console gamer with an Atari 2600 in my home and gaming has been at the forefront of my free time activities for my entire life. A lot has changed since that first decade of playing Combat against my older sister and later teaming up with friends in the arcade for some Double Dragon beatdown action, and not all of it is good.
Growing up, the gaming community was a very positive place. Games were made and played for fun, and people enjoyed them on their own merits. Alone was fine, but with a friend was better. Unless you were playing Battletoads, that is. That game’s co-op play was designed to ruin friendships. The games were much harder, but the atmosphere was somehow more casual. Even competitive play was fun rather than a life or death struggle to prove superiority.
Fast forward to present day. I’ve got a full time job, a non-gaming family, and precious little money to spend on my hobbies to go along with the time sucks of responsible adulthood. As I’ve grown, so has my favorite hobby. No more controllers with a single button and a joystick/wheel. My Xbox 360 controller has some 11 buttons plus two clickable joysticks and 4-way directional pad for 6 more inputs. Most major games use all of these in some capacity (aside from the guide button which brings up the system menu).
In addition to constantly improving graphics, the features of games continue to grow and evolve, and the storytelling aspect of interactive fiction has emerged so strongly this past console generation that I don’t think there’s a credible opinion out there that would deny that games can be classified as art.
As gaming has become more sophisticated and new generations have taken up the hobby, attitudes towards it have changed. The internet has added an avenue for anonymous interaction with fellow gamers and game developers, and the result has been pretty disastrous at times.
Is it awesome that you can team up with and challenge gamers from around the world? Hell yes, it is. But when many of those gamers are total assholes who behave as if their entire life depends on winning every single game, even if it means cheating or otherwise playing the game in a manner that diminishes the enjoyment of everyone involved, it kind of dampens the fun.
Likewise, there are the game developers whose job it is to make the games as enjoyable and balanced as they can so the largest number of people will want to play it and have a great time doing so. They are running into the same problem where the hardcore types are massing to shut them down, sometimes over the stupidest things. Small changes to game functionality, the option of paid DLC, or an underwhelming story ending can lead to an otherwise great game being slaughtered on sites like Metacritic where anonymous users can influence a game’s score by voting en masse.
So being a long time gamer who automatically bristles at the mere mention of the word “casual”, I’ve had to reevaluate my view. You see, I love complicated game elements, and I love for boundaries to be pushed and expanded, but at the end of the day I play games for fun and that alone seems to put me in the casual domain these days.
One thing I’ve learned is that there is certainly such a thing as too hardcore. Some of the most hardcore games aren’t even particularly fun, and a lot of gamers are beginning to push HARD for games to become less fun and more of a chore to play for the sake of humoring a crowd that considers anything new, different, or streamlined to be catering to casuals. And considering the meteoric rise of gaming over the last few decades, the last thing the industry needs at this point is a move towards stagnation.
Aim at the feet, noob!
Let me explain. Remember Halo? The revolutionary FPS that was so good it literally made Microsoft a heavy hitter in the highly exclusive console market almost overnight with the sequel that became a legendary online multiplayer smash? Well, the last couple of games added some controversial features, in particular “armor abilities” that allowed players to choose extra functionalities for their combatant such as jetpacks or active camouflage to make them difficult to spot.
Why wouldn’t you want to be able to do something so cool? Well, basically armor abilities and other loadout customizations add an element of randomness to the combat, meaning that you won’t always know what you are up against, making some of the old tried and true tactics semi-obsolete. To me, that makes a game more interesting because it requires adaptation and keeps you on your toes. But most hardcore players tend to gravitate towards repetitive behaviors and habits learned over countless hours of play that have led to success in the past, and in doing so, they become entirely resistant to change. If that sounds to you like a method that takes the actual fun out of playing a game, you might be correct. But this represents a growing preference in the gaming community.
Another hardcore gaming trope that’s becoming a problem in my opinion is looting. Loot drops are an indelible part of RPG’s. Gaining levels and fighting tougher enemies to gain better equipment is about as classic as it gets. But at some point, the loot started getting more important than anything else. Take a game like Borderlands. It boasted over 16 MILLION different guns.
The sequel has an essentially infinite number of firearm variations. This means that pretty much every time you kill some of the thousands of enemies or loot one of the endless number of chests, a new gun pops out which you must now check against all of the other guns in your possession and their numerous statistics to decide which one to use to shoot the next batch of enemies so you can repeat the process again.
I love Borderlands, but can I be the only one who just wishes I could find a gun I really love and have it not be obsolete in a matter of minutes, or to not have to constantly pause my game and examine the limitless crap that fills up my limited inventory space trying to decide what to discard and what to keep? Well, I’m pretty sure I actually am.
And when you get into the traditional RPG’s, it actually gets worse because not only do you have weapons, you often have numerous individual pieces of armor like gloves, greaves, boots, and so on; and that’s before you get into enchantments and whatnot. It’s not unusual to spend more time fussing with your equipment in a game like Skyrim than you spend actually adventuring. Add an entire party of characters to that mix and you’re not even playing a video game anymore; you’re just playing stat-based digital dress up.
Okay, I’ll admit it. This image makes me drool a little.
Dragon Age 2 attempted to simplify this process and prevent the visual sameness that often occurs from parties that all equip the same kinds of armor by having your main character be the only one to benefit from individualized equipment. The other characters just got general upgrades as the game progressed. Players were not pleased. It wasn’t the biggest complaint over the game, but it was one that was brought up endlessly as a reason why BioWare ruined RPG’s and is now one of the most vocally hated companies among the hardcore crowd.
The biggest complaint from hardcore gamers regarding Dragon Age 2 was the combat. In the first game, you selected an enemy to attack and pushed the button and your character then moved to the enemy and attacked it. In the second game you had to move your character to the enemy and press the button to attack it. Does that sound like a deal breaker to you? For the record, I did enjoy the first game’s semi-turn-based approach more, but the amount of breast-beating and teeth-gnashing over a pretty minor control change was way out of proportion.
The term “Skinner box” is being used a lot these days to describe games whose appeal is limitless loot drops. This, of course, references B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning chamber where animals were trained to perform repetitive behaviors in order to receive positive reinforcement. So, if need be, a game basically can potenitally overcome a lack of actual content by just training players to continuously jump through hoops trying to get better and better equipment heedless of the actual gameplay ceasing to be challenging or enjoyable.
This is likely a single chest in a room full of chests that is also littered with enemy loot drops. So why do I want them all?
Normally, I’d say “to each their own” and that’d be the end of it, but the online mobilization of these types of gamers is actively attempting to wipe out non-Skinner box games as well as all variables and variations in competitive multiplayer games and it’s something that could potentially have disastrous results. Driving out casual gamers by making less creative and less accessible games or by giving mass bad reviews to quality games trying something different with the goal of driving consumers away from them is not going to do anyone any good. It’s just going to drive more developers out of the industry and eliminate game variety. In fact, it is believed that constant mass online attacks from the internet community were responsible for the sudden departures of BioWare’s founders last year.
My instinct is usually to defend my geeky brethren as the ones who support the industry and live and breathe in these fictional worlds that others merely visit, ignore, or ridicule; but in video games I think the time may have come to draw the line. Gamers have already built a reputation as entitled man-children who are hostile towards human contact and out of touch with reality. It’s not a stereotype that is accurate by and large, but it’s not entirely false either, as any sojourn to a gaming message board will show you.
And that’s just with “normal” people.
The problem is that naturally the gamers who have absolutely nothing else in their life to do are the ones spending hours of every day raiding comments sections, message boards, and review sites to overzealously voice minority opinions and appear to be a larger factor than they actually are. It isn’t helping.
I love games, you love games, we all love games. We may love different kinds of games more than others, but I think we should at least agree that there is room for everyone. I don’t want to be stuck playing cart racing and platform games for the rest of my life, but I also don’t want every Halo to be just like every other Halo and I want developers to feel like they can experiment and introduce new ideas without being run out of town for daring to try something different.
There’s a happy medium that can be achieved here, but the only way we are going to get it is if we all think before we type and respect that other people’s opinions are as valuable as our own. Crazy talk, I know. But a lot of people will post 0/10 ratings for a game they have a minor beef with and even admit in their “review” that the game deserves a higher rating, but they are rating it lower to offset the high ratings.
One does not simply “play a Bioware”. Also, Mass Effect 3 confirmed as “COD-alike”.
Most of these types of “reviews” were posted on the very first day within hours of ME3’s release.
All of this is to say that even though you may spend 16 hours a day farming rare item drops, practicing combos, or searching for exploitable glitches on multiplayer maps and most of the remaining 8 complaining on the internet, you pay the same price for the game as everyone else (assuming you’re not a PC pirate) and your opinion on what makes a great game is not necessarily better than anyone else’s. Naturally, you are welcome to make your case, but the unbridled hatred, venom, and spreading of misinformation that has resulted from this culture clash is not the solution.
Nothing is going to kill this expensive and growing industry faster than snobbish exclusivity. We should be welcoming more people into the fold instead of fighting against their inclusion just to make ourselves feel important. More gamers mean more money, which means more games, which means more diversity, which means more innovation, which means more quality. And just remember, a casual gamer is nothing if not a potential future hardcore gamer. So be nice! I need more clueless noobs to smash and bitch about on the internet while I hide in my cave for days on end being all casual and stuff.
Sound off below! I want to hear what you folks think about the state of the gaming industry regarding hardcore and casual tropes.
Sounds to me like someone gets their ass handed to them on a regular basis in FPS games lol.
The thing is, I think it is the opposite of what you are saying. When it comes to gaming, I think it is the Hardcore players that actually drive the market. The true hardcore gamers will challenge developers to add new elements to a game in order to make it more fun. You see this all the times with MMO’s when the hardcore base wants more raiding and more challenges. Developers like feedback. They encourage it. On many websites and forums they are often looking for peoples ideas and demands and they usually run with the ones that they believe make the game run better.
Hmmm I wouldn’t use Borderlands 2 as a loot example.
99% of the time the gun you get from killing a normal mook or low-level boss is crap.
The problem is they added the MMO boss/raiding mentality to BL2 and forced you to kill the same bosses over and over to get a good weapon.
BL1 you could get an awesome gun anywhere in the game and the one end game raid boss was added for people to farm to get better versions of that gun later on.
And Gabriel, its not just the raiders that make a MMO successful, it is when the devs make an effort to cater to all forms of playstyle that a MMO becomes truly brilliant and long-lived (and thats my opinion as a EQ2 raider).
However the casual – hardcore battle has been going on since the first computer game was released, how long ago was that? > 20 years?
Like it or not its never going to go away, and neither is gaming.
Shawn
Absolutely to what Shawn said. Though gaming as it is may very well go away; if hardcore gamers force stagnancy and monotony onto games, video games will lose people. I’d definitely quit if videogaming became a hardcores only paradise. Hardcore is, imo, boring shit. People who do it, fine, whatever. I game for escapism, not a grind. You enjoy grind and repetition, fine. That’s your bag. Not mine. It shouldn’t be the only bag.
Gabriel, MMOs adding more raids is not adding new elements. It’s bulking up on one element. When I played WoW, most of my time was spent exploring, running defense for low-leveled people trying to get between zones, and battlegrounds. Never once raided. Solo’d a few dungeons. If the interest is in diversifying and thus drawing in more customers, they would be best not to just add new high level content. Thankfully, they don’t just do that.
I dont have much to add, this article was both really well thought out and written. In fact, I think this type of thing is necessary to the site; so aside from a little added praise for a great article, I’m really just commenting in the interest of padding.
@Gabriel- That’s exactly how I used to think, but the last few years have been increasingly insane. I’m really not feeling the trend. And I’m all for demanding innovation, but if you read most of the bad reviews and comments, what they complain about the most is any changes at all from past games. Devs should feel like they can experiment without their career being threatened by psychotic OCD gamers.
I’ve a respectable K/D in most any shooter I play. Not great, but I stay well above 1.0 even after the casuals have gone. I threw in the remark about needing more noobs to kill mostly to end on a joke. It is fun as hell to find an occasional concentrated patch of them and feel like a total beast for a game or two though.
@Shawn- That’s true about BL2, but I’m compelled on a primal level to pick up every. last. gun. Passing them up is like throwing money away to me, so as long as they are throwing them at me non-stop, they are a distraction from the game.
@Frank- Hey, padding in my comment section makes me look important. Pad away!
Thanks for the feedback, all.
Yeah, I’d have to pretty much agree. Some people take games entirely too seriously. I mean, if you’re not having fun, what’s the point? It’s because of attitudes like that, that I largely avoid competitive multiplayer of any stripe. Which is fine, things change. When I was younger, I had more time and could play to “master” a game. These days I’m just not into that and you know, that is cool, I think there is room in gaming for everyone.
I remember bringing up that I would like to have respawns as an option in Mechwarrior Online, oh geez, you would think I had just proposed to kill and eat cats, the negative reactions that people had. Including the whole, “we don’t need no stinking casuals messing up our game” attitude.
That really is the big problem with the kind of “hardcore” people Nick singles out here. It’s not just that they’re “hardcore” and you’re not, that would be fine. It’s that their way is the ONLY way d*mn it and they won’t take any other way. That is the real issue IMO.
@ Gabriel, I think hardcore players can be valuable sources of feedback, I think they can also be a major pain. They go out of their way to find every exploit and such and while that can be good feedback, it can also mess up the game for everyone else. I know I have largely quit playing one F2P game because the grind is simply too much, and I could be wrong, but I suspect the game has such a massive grind, at least in part, because hardcore players are able to crank out the rarest loot in a couple of days while it would take me weeks to do the same.
Great article. While I don’t think games necessarily have to be “fun” to be worthwhile, I’m not a fan of the way some reduce a game to item statistics and a collection of muscle-memory-driven techniques. I’m even less of a fan of the kind of gamers who threaten rape and murder over shit that is not at all important to anyone in a real-world scenario.
Oh, that gun’s reaction time has changed by a minor percentage? Sure, seems reasonable to go on the internet and act like a petty idiot about it, said no one with any perspective ever.
The majority of your arguments only apply to online MP. For offline play it’s the “filthy casuals” who are killing gaming. It’s their buying preferences that have meant we’ve had gimmicks like motion controls etc. foisted on us. It’s when developers bastardise beloved franchises to create wider appeal to the casual market. And despite how quickly you dismissed it, it the casuals who have caused the complexity (not necessarily difficulty) of games to wither away.
It’s the casuals who make the simplistic “kiddie” games the runaway successes they are, which only perpetuates the stereotype that video games are toys.
Yes if you’re gaming online, sure you’re going to encounter some a$$hole core players, but to the industry as a whole it’s the casuals doing the most damage.
I’ve spent most of this article being amused that “casual” is apparently a pejorative term in large sections of the gaming community. It’s a label that would fit me like a glove, by the way, as I tend to pick up two or three games a year that hold interest for me (and often wind up selling one on ebay because I was wrong). There’s something thuddingly mechanical about a lot of games that keeps me from really being able to get into the flow of things.
Good writing, though, at least from the perspective of someone like me, which… according to certain people on certain threads I’ve spoken up on in the past… might not be a whole lot.
@Johannes –
I think that the main thing perpetuating the reputation of games as toys is that you “play” them. And that they’re called “games.” I say this as someone who thinks that a few I’ve played are more or less artworks, but still…
@Anderson- Could be. I definitely agree with you on the motion control thing. I’d like to think there is room for both, though. I don’t mess with that crap so that’s fine for them to have, but I don’t think that Mass Effect or Halo are the cancer that is killing gaming. Wii Sports has exactly 1 negative customer review on Metacritic. Halo 4 has 176 and Mass Effect 3 has 597 on the Xbox 360 version alone so it’s not casual games taking the beating here.
@Clemens- I wasn’t even going to go into the psychotic verbal abuse towards other gamers online. That’s a whole other article. I wasn’t surprised with sore losers’ hatemail because they lost, but some games I get just as many nasty messages from the people who beat me. Sore winners? How does that even work?
@Morales- You bring up something that may have influenced my change of attitude over the last few years. I just don’t have the time to game that I used to so I’m likely becoming more sensitive to time sucking in games. I don’t want to rush through, but I don’t want to feel like I should spend half o
I think a big issue is that those hardcore gamers who whine and complain are mostly the younger crowd who have the time to but not the perspective of maturity. The older more mature players feel like most of the rest of us that games should be entertaining first and for most but we usually don’t have the time to express our opinions. One of the best “games” I have ever gone through was Dear Esther. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen and it is really a story being told to you. I would take a hundred Dear Esthers over one COD nowadays.
The thing that gets me about the Halo franchise is that they add all these new abilities but take out the option to dual wield guns. Now in part 4 they have 3 rifle weapons that all function essentialy the same and make the sniper rifle almost completely useless.
I am all for lots of weapon choices but when you have weapons that function almost exactly the same whats the point? A spartan laser and a Railgun are both have to charge up and have a one hit. Look at the Rocket Laucher, Fuel rod cannon and the Pulse Cannon, sure they have different clip sizes but amount to the same thing-one hit kill super explosion cannon.
I’m so put off by the plethora of one hit kill super weapons along with insanely fast kill times for almost all the weapons that it bores me to try to play. Abilities are nice but not when they sacrifice weapon design and variety to implement them.
Now lets talk Street Fighter 4 a game that has been simplified and made excessible over the previous version. The final build of SF3 was brilliant, great cast of almost all original new characters to the franchise, amazing game balance and an astoundingly simple yet complex element added to the gameplay. All removed for Street Fighter 4. They brought back every character from Street Fighter 2, removed the parry system and made Ken Ryu and Chun Li overpowered.
I in no way consider myself a hardcore gamer (or a hardcore anything for that matter) and I disagree with a lot of what the “Hardcore community” has to say. I do want to see more variety and innovation in games but lets not forget to keep the elements that made them fun in the first place. It’s not always necessary to remove something to add something new.
What I think is killing the industry is that there is even a separation from “hardcore” gamers and “casual” gamers. I’m not able to play like I used to anymore. I get maybe 1 to 2 nights a week to play (work, wife, and baby take up everything else) but when I play I go hard. 4 to 6 hour sessions, when I’m not able to play, I’m searching down strategies, hints, gameplay videos. Am I a casual player or hardcore? In the long run, who gives a shit? The rage that exists on both sides for their opposites now is almost on par with the crap we see happening between the two political parties in our country. And we all know how bad that is.
I truly see that what is causing this is that with the free exchange of ideas the internet has to offer is that there seems to be no room for personal preferences on games. “I really liked this game, but wasn’t a huge fan of that game.” “Well, you have to be the biggest fag I’ve ever seen for liking that game. Only steers and queers like that game and you don’t seem to have Texas accent so I can only guess what you are. Stupid f**king casual.” This seems to be the only response you can find on any forum where an unlucky comment maker thought that a gaming forum would be a place to share his own personal viewpoint. All of a sudden post people are bashing each other linking their hatred of that one person to other people that call themselves casual or hardcore.
In all honesty, I think that the gaming industry’s biggest threat is the vast majority of the gaming community. We give gaming a bad name. We are the abusive boyfriends who give this industry a black eye when they do something that wasn’t what we liked, and they come back with something that they hope will appease us (“fixed” ending to ME3 comes to mind here). In the end it will be the industry’s biggest fans that put a bullet in it’s head later on down the line. We will kill it with our twisted, selfish version of love.
The problem isn’t casuals, it’s that the pendulum of the industry has swung so far in the direction of casuals. I would hardly classify myself as a “hardcore” gamer(whatever that means) but even I have to remain flabbergasted at the handholding that goes on in most mainstream games nowadays. If you want to make things easier, do so, just don’t make it insultingly easy for the players.
Stuff like regenerating health, arrows pointing towards the direction of your next quest, checkpoints after every long corridor, important items or mechanisms glowing bright.
I actually get surprised when I see a mildly challenging mainstream game nowadays. The HARD/VERY HARD setting of nowadays is the normal of days past(say something like the 90’s) and worse part is that the hardest setting usually simply means that enemies have more health so they take longer to kill, not that they have better AI or something along these lines.
It seems that a lot of developers ideas have no idea what a difficulty curve is.
I think the absolute lowpoint for this insanity was when I played Assassins Creed(I think it was the second or third one), I literally had to wait around for MINUTES to get my character’s health to drop substantially(health regenerated DURING battle and guards were very slow to attack) and I waited quite a long time before I could kill him. Now that’s just embarrassing for any decent gamer, you don’t have to be “hardcore” to be against that.
These are some really great observations, everyone. And here I thought an intelligent discussion about this topic was out of the question. People questioning the validity of the labels “casual” and “hardcore” is as good as you can get. Be fruitful and multiply, folks. The gaming community needs more like you.
the casual gaming market will kill the industry if anything…the pros of casual gaming remain to be seen despite all the arguments made for them…that casual gaming money leads to more overall money and leads to better core and casual games alike…this has been proven false however,cod money leads to more cod,assassins creed money leads to more assassins creeds,so on and so forth…its to the point now where the overwhelming majority of the market has been shifted towards making things accessible(i.e making more money from casuals) which is of course going to anger the core market and cause all the backlash you see these days…the other argument is that the two can be separate but equal markets,also false…you now see games that were once the pinnacle of core gaming with steep learning curves(see battlefield,devil may cry) being dumbed down in order to draw in more of the casual crowd…and not just oh here is the casual version and the core version so everyone is happy,its here is the casual version now everybody deal with it…the author being an old school gamer worries me with him taking this point of view…you have personally witnessed the gaming industry crash before due to the amount of shovelware and nonsense being pumped out as opposed to the good games that the industry was built upon,and now you’re seeing it again and i assume that simply because its alot bigger and more profitable now to put this garbage out that its not going to end so badly this time around….so meh
If you enjoyed battletoads, you really need to play dragon’s crown.
After further reading your article, you definitely want to play Dragon’s Crown.
1. It is a beat em up sidescroller with a hint of gauntlet legends and demon’s souls.
2. It has coop once you beat the game so you’re playing with people who are mature and experienced enough to play through the story.
3. You only customize a weapon, armor and a few more item slots for spells.
4. You get new npc allies to play with (if you want to play only singleplayer) by looting their skeletons and ressurrecting them. Each has unique set of items/abilities/stats so you don’t have to micromanage them. You just choose them and get new ones as you level up and find new skeletons in the world.
5. It’s designed for the Vita, but runs more smoothly on the PS3. It has cross save. Play it on the vita imo if you don’t already have a ton of friends playing it on the ps3. I’m gonna get the vita version once I platinum the PS3 version.
6. The bosses are really, really unique and well designed. For example, one boss is a bunch of standard pirate enemies, but the catch is that they are all swarming you trying to get a magic genie bottle which does massive aoe damage once used. You drop it after you use it so it becomes a game of killing swarms of pirates to keep them off the bottle which will annihilate you.
Trust me buddy, you’ll love this game.
On the topic of your article. This is exactly why I don’t play Call of Duty games. i consider myself a hardcore gamer because I play a variety of games that appeal to me instead of just playing a casual social game for e-fame.
Actually I think a better way to classify hardcore and casual is based on how much of their disposable income they appropriate to gaming. I’ve spent 80-90% of my mad money on gaming. I consider that hardcore. I don’t consider someone who buys 1 game to be hardcore. That’s not a very big investment even if they play it for a ridiculous amount of time.
If anything I believe casuals will kill the gaming industry with their foul mouths, egos, spending habits and the effect that they have on the development of games for cores. If casual audiences are what attract the bigggest sellers then you’re going to see more games made for them pushing core gamers away from gaming. Then when it’s no longer even fun for your core gamer, who is left? These are things i’ve thought about.
I straight up shut down my youtube channel after watching a few call of duty videos where you have these kids just saying the most disgusting, ignorant and childish trash to get “likes” and “subs” and then you look down at the comments and they’re just as bad. If my channel ever got even modestly big, it would have those types of people in it. I’d rather just play games.
And call me crazy, but I think that metacritic could be gamed both ways.
Have you ever stopped to consider that perhaps companies like Microsoft (who literally have paid “PR Media managers” who literally go on reddit etc. to manipulate the masses) would not do the same thing on metacritic?
What’s the best way of discrediting user reviews which are right next to the critic reviews? The best way would be to simply spam the hell out of user reviews with ridiculously phony reviews that lack credibility.
Do you honestly believe someone who wants to give a real review on a game will only take the time to write 2 sentences?
Yes I do believe alot of them are children posting garbage. But at the same time, i would not be surprised in the least to find out that some of those “user reviews” were made by the companies that make the games to discredit the actual discord between user and critic reviews.
Then of course you also have sites like Polygon who are funded by Microsoft giving reviews for Sony Exclusives 60s when every other critic almost universally gives the game a 9 or a 10 as was the case with The Last of Us and Dragon’s Crown.
Bottomline is that the world is full of scumbags doing rotten things. you gotta just do what makes you happy. if they overrun what I enjoy and it no longer stays enjoyable for me then i won’t buy it. stay positive and only put your money towards things that make you happy.
Very interesting article with it’s own pros and cons. I also have enjoyed video games going back to the original Pong console and commodore 64. Ask a lot of the hardcore or casual gamers what they are, and most have no choice but to hop online and google. Please realize that i said most here, and not all. I appreciate if you actually READ my response. After going through all the comments, looking at the responses, it validates what the author is saying in his article. Sure, you can have your viewpoint, but once you start throwing the @’s around, war begins. The attacks come directly or indirectly in the comments. Unfortunately it’s in human nature to see the negative in everything, and why not? That’s what’s thrown around us all day every day, in the news this person has died or that plane has crashed or oil spilled there. Where’s the this person delivered her baby in her car and both are doing well, he has been made ceo and has implemented positive changes for this company? So we all might as well just jump on that negative bandwagon, woohoo.
If critics, whether they be hardcore, casual, or that hated word “noob”…seriously, why is that even in the english language? actually concentrated on what made the game great for them, we would have more titles that would cater to everybody. Think about it… I hate that this is in this game, what the hell were they thinking of when they added this?, What a waste of money buying this because of that. What happened to all the positive? Introducing this element really made this game, I love to see that they’ve kept this element, it’s worked in the past and still works now, the graphics are breathtaking, i can pick and choose what weapon works for me? brilliant! You won’t see those comments in most places, it’s like the criticizers think that developers are so thick that they can’t read between the lines. If you comment on what works, leave out what doesn’t work, I’m sure developers will see that what HASN’T been commented on doesn’t work, and can revamp their next title accordingly.
It’s not the hardcore gamers, the casual games, or even the “noob” gamers that are killing the industry, it’s all the negativity that gets thrown out. It’s called transference. If you get negativity thrown at you daily, and we all do, you need someplace to transfer it to. Unfortunately a lot of it is in the online gaming world, because it’s no longer gaming for fun, or a sense of accomplishment, it’s a lifestyle.
Oh wow, I missed a lot of these comments when they were posted. Great discussion, all.
@Mikey- No way can you compare gaming of today to the Atari 2600 days in terms of shovelware. I actually played crap like ET and Superman when it came out. Ridiculous. Even the worse games nowadays are fun on some level, they just pale in comparison to other options.
Note I’m not saying all games (or any) should be dumbed down. I’m mostly saying that an open, flexible mind is a superior alternative to raging at every tiny change that doesn’t benefit your playstyle and tearing down excellent games and their developers over it.
@m r- It’s a known fact that “shill” reviews are a thing, but they are often as easy to spot as the flame reviews because they are full of shit in a way that goes beyond difference of opinion. But a few corporate shills can’t keep up with legions of dedicated trolls so they aren’t really a factor in my opinion.
I agree with a lot of this, but your criticizing of the RPG genre is a little questionable.
Having all those equips and managing your character’s stats and the like are what RPG’s are all about. It seems more like RPG’s just aren’t you favorite game type more than a contribution to the casual vs. hardcore argument.
RPGs are about role playing a character, somewhere along the line RPGs got equated to putting stats, equipment and skills in a game and not with playing a game (usually with friends) where you act out a character and have fun being someone else.
Equipment (and thereby stats to varying degrees) is part of roleplaying. You are altering every bit of the character in this instance, being someone else.
Friends are usually only a factor in MMORPG’s, Most RPG’s are and have been single player experiences.
I’m talking pen and paper son.
I assumed wespeaking exclusively about video games.
I will in that case agree with your previous statement.
RPG has been my favorite gaming genre since the early 90’s. I do feel it’s becoming stale and repetitive due to a lack of willingness to innovate, and I think a lot of people who play out of habit rather than for enjoyment are the ones resisting any sort of change. The loot thing has really gotten out of control in my opinion and judging by what I’ve read, it’s the hardcore RPGers driving this particular trend.
Not all RPGs are like that. There those that are such as Diablo, and those that aren’t such as FF or Magna Carta.
I personally like both styles.
I know, I know. But in this case I was focusing on the ones that are like that. And I still play those too. It’s not like I don’t like them, but they get exhausting at times. I’m playing Disgaea 3 right now for gods sake. A game where not only do they throw tons of loot at you, but you can go inside of each individual item and level it up for hours on end in harrowing dungeons with no save points only to possibly find something much better in the next story battle or at the shop. I still do it, though. I can’t stop myself.
It was hard to read this because you lied so many times to appeal to a demographic that you are not a part of.
It was hard to read your comment because it appears to be referring to an article that didn’t give multiple specific examples to support the points. Perhaps if you had the capability to do the same it might help.