[Rant]Let's talk casual...gaming.

old.Tohtori

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I have to start by saying that if you are an avid Wii fanboi and wouldn't dream of anyone saying anything bad about it in any context even if it was riding a bus full of children of a cliff, you'd better stop reading right about now. Also if you dislike rants that have a slight one sided view and might step away from the "politically correct-please all-non biased" trifecta from hell, there's a cute puppy video for you here.

Now that we got those disclaimers out of the way, let's get the ball rolling.

Lately i've been noticing a dangerous increase in what the game developers like to call "casual gaming". At the core, casual gaming means to gaming as much as wanking means to sex. You might like it, it's fun for a while, but after the nteenth time you get bored and would even hump something which slightly resembled an animal to get some form of challenge.

Game companies are about money, big ones especially, and this is where the casual gaming goblin rears its ugly head. Companies look at profit margings and all those lovely figures that show, in an increasing amount, that "old farts and single mothers like to wank the joystick too.". This means, that when a console like Wii comes out and it's being bought by people who think waving a stick is considered "gaming" instead of "fun time simulation", other corporations look at the sales statistics of "Wii Camping - With realistic marshmallow torching" as a base for their next produce.

Now, sales for "Mega War Simulator 3000" might have been same as last years "Mega Was Simulator 2000", but since the Wii Camping sold 3 billion times more, the producers of "Mega War Simulator" decide they need to get in on this market and next year release "Mega Wanking Simulator 4000 - for Wii". Now this leads to companies, following year, looking at statistics and noticing even a bigger increase in the "casual gaming" market. Not because the casual games sold more but because noone-the-f*ck makes normal games anymore.

This is rapidly becoming a norm and as an avid gamer and also a game developer, this concerns me bigtime.

If some more independent company decided to make a "War Extreme Simulator 3000!", it couldn't compete with the PR propaganda machines and the "buy this, it's pjopular!" monger out there with the big bucks who want more big bucks.

Don't get me wrong and before you come over and stick a Wiimote up my a*** and wave me around to play Mario Kart, listen up. Casual gaming, Wii and the sorts, is FINE. It's good fun, i enjoy it too at times and as such it shouldn't be banned from the world(i wish). But at the core it's about the money. And since casual games, or as i like to call them "WoW Syndrome Games", are becoming the norm in the games, it might and already has, lead to the demise of good games.

Just look at the king of all casual, World of Warcraft. Most popular game ever in the MMORPG genre, it's good fun, it's "great!" but at the same time, everyone who hates it, hates it for the same reasons that the game developers these days use as "cornerstones of games"; Easy to play, not too hard, not too challenging.

This leads to new players playing the popular "great!" games, getting dumber and dumber in the "game wisdom" sense in the process and ofcourse, if anyone tried to bring a challenging hardore game these days, it would be thrown out by the masses for being "too hard".

So should i get to a point? I think so.

Casual gaming is good fun, but if it becomes a norm in gaming and it takes over the likes of PS3, XBOX360 and Hardcore MMORPGs, we might be looking at the death of real games. Lucky for us, companies still exist who make "real" games and don't give that much cr*p about pleasing the masses. I just hope it stays this way and the casual gaming goblin doesn't take over completely.

And now, if any of the "casual gaming neo-genre" were reading this, here's the whole thing so you can understand it:

"Your games are not games, they are fun simulators, we like harder games, stop pissing in our pool."

Rant, as such, over. *nod*
 

fettoken

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This casual gaming that you mention, or "lower quality games", probably due to cross platforming or making more games over a short period. This is due to the huge piracy problem.
If you go back in time, you´ll notice that much much more games were pure fun to play, and there was significantly less piracy in terms of torrents, DC++, mIRC clients and such.

If they were to get around this problem, and making games completely unable to copy and distribute i think it would solve the problem over time.

Then they would have more money to spend on making a game, and would be sure they could reach out to a certain amount of people instead of having to sacrifice certain elements to reach out to a bigger public.
 

Iceforge

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While I agree there is a decrease in good games coming out, I don't think you can chunk that all up to the Wii console, as it has been that for a long time before the Wii was released.

Also, Fettoken, I 100% disagree. Piracy has spiked due to bad low quality games coming out. I only feel tempted to download games to avoid falling in the pittraps of worse than shit games that comes out with nice marketting making them look good, just to turn up to be such bad game play that I know I could have designed better from stratch myself without straining myself (might not be able to actual code it or make the gfx). But when I buy a game, I don't pay because I want nice graphics, I pay for the GAME PLAY that I should be enjoying while playing.

Anyway, both mine and your claim is bogus, as that is circular logic for you. Some Copyright advocates trying to make easy excuses like saying that piracy cost them so much, but the facts remain that it isn't really as big a problem as they make it out to be.
 

old.Tohtori

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Iceforge i may have attacked Wii a bit there, but i didn't mean it's the sole problem. If it was percieved as such, wasn't intentional. Though a semi-attack on wii was intended.

To fettoken;

I think piracy might be a bit of a problem, sales wise, but it's not really hindering creating "good hardcore games".

From the POV of a game developer, game developers get paid no matter how much the game sells, so piracy can't be blamed for poor game designs.

Also what Iceforge said, there's a problem with piracy when you don't want to buy poor games.

It's a damn dirty vicious cycle and again, as f*cknuts as it is, it comes down to money.

Faster productions, more releases etc, all due to producers wanting to churn out money.
 

fettoken

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Sales allows publishers to have a bigger budget, thus letting the developers work for a longer amount of time to polish the game. But it seems to be some kind of trend nowdays. Bigger and better graphics, but letting gameplay suffer. Givf the good old days back!! And i agree with you Tohtori.
 

Iceforge

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No, I don't think there is a problem with piracy when I don't want to pay for poor bad shitty games.

If the producers are trying to rip me off with a bad game, I hope they end up loosing money on that specific release so they will realise they should not put out shit like that again
 

old.Tohtori

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Check some torrents of newly released games for Xbox 360/pc/whatever. And only on one torrent site, you can see 10k downloads after a week, and lot more over time. But hey, if you think the sales doesn´t matter at all..

Sales don't matter, not in the context i'm talking about casual gaming harming regular or even hardcore gaming. My upper post expalins it a bit.

Piracy would stay at the same level, EVEN if all games were casual wii type games.

Hell, torrents would probably be the only way some indy game developers would get their good concepts out there.
 

Iceforge

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Check some torrents of newly released games for Xbox 360/pc/whatever. And only on one torrent site, you can see 10k downloads after a week, and lot more over time. But hey, if you think the sales doesn´t matter at all..

Strawman'ing me...

Or refusing to see the big picture.

Because of all those shitty games coming out, me and others download games to try them out (demo's tell you shit all about the overall game), try it out a bit and then buy it if it is worth our money.
I know some don't do that, but I do.

And sad as it may be, the newest games I have are Oblivion, Two Worlds and Overlord

Only new game I tried during the last like 2 years that is worth my money. If I can download a game and get tired of it and uninstall it after 2 days, it does simply not have enough entertainment value to be worth the high price games got nowdays.

"OH, you can choose not to play them at all then!"
True, the flaw with that arguement is that I like playing games, good games, but if I only tried games after buying them, I woudl waste tons of money going to producers of shitty games because they was concealed to actually have good game play by advertising
 

fettoken

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Obviously its useless to argue if the developers lack of talent, or lack of time and money. Due to piracy or large companies/publishers absorbing every individual developer/smaller publishers and fucking over the general public.
 

Thorwyn

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I don´t quite see why "casual gamer friendly" automatically means "lower quality" or "worse gamedesign". When a game fits both categories, it´s not neccessarily a result of cause and effect. It´s simply a matter of bad/sloppy design. A good gamedesigner is able to design a game that´s challenging and interesting for both, the casual and the core gamer.

From a financial POV, core gamers are *completely* irrelevant for software company. You can´t produce a game that´s purely focused on core gamers and expect to make the break-even. Core gamers tend to play one or maybe a couple of games pretty intensively, trying to "master" their games. Just look back how long it took Quake 3 to finally die on a competitive level (and it´s still not entirely dead). Same with Counterstrike. And then look what impact this had on other/newer shooters back in the days. Same is true with Warcraft. And before that Starcraft.

Now, of course, core gamers are not just the few maniacs who´re playing Warcraft 24/7. That´s a cliché. But so is *the* casual gamer. However, the dictum still stands: you can´t make money from core gamers.

Making a game "too hard" is one of the cardinal sins of gamedesing, because the result is binary. The player either manages to "defeat" the game, or he doesn´t. If he doesn´t, the game creates frustration and that´s about the worst thing you can do to a customer. Unfortunately, there also is no such thing as a perfect balance. What might be piss easy for person A is absolutely impossible for person B. (This, btw, is one reason why we don´t see any riddles in games these days.. you either get the riddle, in which case it´s easy, or you don´t, in which case it´s a blocker).

But it´s even worse than that. Players are playing games for different reasons and with different intentions. There´s the explorer, the efficiency-mavin, the (as I call it) meta-gamer (who is trying to find holes in the gamedesign and exploit them).

The responsibility of the designer is to create something for everybody. There are a number of different ways to achieve this. It´s not rocket science, but it takes some planning and consideration.
 

Bugz

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I'm with Thor on this one.

Btw - WoW is probably the worse example you could have chosen for an example of a casual game. One of the reasons it was revolutionary was because it catered for BOTH the casual and the extreme.

People do not hate it for the same reasons (easy to play, not too hard, not too challenging). Are you telling me that the thousands of people who left WoW left because it's too easy to play?
 

Iceforge

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I'm with Thor on this one.

Btw - WoW is probably the worse example you could have chosen for an example of a casual game. One of the reasons it was revolutionary was because it catered for BOTH the casual and the extreme.

People do not hate it for the same reasons (easy to play, not too hard, not too challenging). Are you telling me that the thousands of people who left WoW left because it's too easy to play?

Part of why I didn't go through with WoW was that it was too easy to play.

Tried starting up two times.
First time I simply ran tired of their boring PvE (yes, found it uninspiringly boring compared to DAoC, as it catered so much to solo play that finding groups was tiresome, while DAoC catered to groups so much that you always meet new people).
Second time around I tried sticking it out. My cousin had a lvl 57 shaman and when I was lvl 23, I got to try and play his shaman in PvP, just to see if it was worth sticking it out to get to lvl 60.
First 3 runs I get knocked down right off the bat, as I am learning the terrain and the setup/shortkeys for this new character and what he is capable off.
4th run I run solo and killed 3-5 from their zerg before they managed to react.
5th run I took about the same, so on for 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, etc. Remember that one run I managed to use the "hit'N'run" strat to get nearly 10 kills before they got me.
That was playing solo and attacking their zerg, by the way, just using various angles to cloak the incoming attack and wait for them to be distracted by something. Extremely easy.
After that I decided it was simply not worth it going for level 60. So easy combined with being tiresome and that the group interface sucked big time the few times I tried running in groups in it.

So for me, yeah, one of the main reasons I am not playing WoW is, besides it being a bad game imho, was that it was too easy.

EDIT: Btw, agree with Thorwyn. I think I am mixed with my gaming. I got some regular games, which I play to the end or for a short while, then forget about those games and once in a while they get taken off the shelf, reinstalled and played for a while again, usually just a few days each time, but some entertainment in retrying them. Then I got some core games, which I play a lot almost always, games like WC3TFT and CS, which I play many hour on end. Sure there are sometimes long periods where I don't play one of them, sometimes half a year between playing CS, but I always end up back playing them after a while.
Regular/casual games are fine, but games without a interesting game play is just something I don't want to spend my money on.
Took me like a week to complete OverLord, and not gone through it all again, the online function is badly implemented at best, replay value is simply low in OverLord, but the gameplay rocks, hence I bought it. Just trying to say that I am not holding extreme high standards for what I will and will not pay for, but I just do have standards, just that when I don't want to play a game anymore after 2-3 hours of playing, it is just not worth my money.
 

Ctuchik

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While I agree there is a decrease in good games coming out, I don't think you can chunk that all up to the Wii console, as it has been that for a long time before the Wii was released.

Also, Fettoken, I 100% disagree. Piracy has spiked due to bad low quality games coming out. I only feel tempted to download games to avoid falling in the pittraps of worse than shit games that comes out with nice marketting making them look good, just to turn up to be such bad game play that I know I could have designed better from stratch myself without straining myself (might not be able to actual code it or make the gfx). But when I buy a game, I don't pay because I want nice graphics, I pay for the GAME PLAY that I should be enjoying while playing.

Anyway, both mine and your claim is bogus, as that is circular logic for you. Some Copyright advocates trying to make easy excuses like saying that piracy cost them so much, but the facts remain that it isn't really as big a problem as they make it out to be.

yep, thats what i usually did when i was an avid downloader. i usually ended up buying the games i felt worth buying. the rest stayed on my HD as virtual discs until i got bored enough of them. pretty much a day or 2 after i downloaded them.

and i agree that bad quality games isnt something the wii has any sort of monopoly on. theres a craptastic ammount of shite games for every console/computer. well, maybe not for the MAC because they dont have anything to compare to so anything seems good on that thing.

but anyway, i think its more the fact that ppl have already done it all. the second a company comes up with something that works 500 other companies instantly starts to make a cut and paste copy of it. and the first company starts to shell out shit sequels/expansions.
 

Ctuchik

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So for me, yeah, one of the main reasons I am not playing WoW is, besides it being a bad game imho, was that it was too easy.

its only easy if you make it easy. try some of the end game raid dungeons. and i'm not talking kara or any of those pansy instances. try a run in MH or BT and i bet u'd find something challenging there. and as for solo content. theres still challenges if you seek them out.

my warlock was leveling up farming elites that were 10 lvl's higher then me. now THAT was challenging.
 

old.Tohtori

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I don´t quite see why "casual gamer friendly" automatically means "lower quality" or "worse gamedesign". When a game fits both categories, it´s not neccessarily a result of cause and effect. It´s simply a matter of bad/sloppy design. A good gamedesigner is able to design a game that´s challenging and interesting for both, the casual and the core gamer.

The responsibility of the designer is to create something for everybody. There are a number of different ways to achieve this. It´s not rocket science, but it takes some planning and consideration.

Two points there. I didn't mean "casual gamer friendly", i mean the industry is turning towards "casual completely", which can cause a huge problem with quality of games.

As an example, last company i was in, i created a concept of a casual friendly strategy game. A core game which could eb plaed casually as well. The answer was, it's not casual enough.

Companies want, a direct quote, "bring out games aimed for the female/too busy people". THAT, is the problem if it becomes a norm. IF. As i said above, there's no problem with casual games, it's good for those who want it, but we should be careful in making sure we don't just follow the figures and go "hardcore casual". Casual games that the companies seem to want to bring out now, at this "mainstream market", are games akin to solitaire, mario kart, etc.

Bringing out "casual friendly games" is not a problem, it's the "simply casual games".

The second point is your final line:

It can't be done. Games can't be catered to all. You can try and make a mroe casual game, or you can try and make a casual game more core, but 9 out of 10 times it falls in the middle where it appeals to none. So producers(again) don't take the chance and simply say "make it more casual, it sells".

People do not hate it for the same reasons (easy to play, not too hard, not too challenging). Are you telling me that the thousands of people who left WoW left because it's too easy to play?

Yes. Thousands and thousands of people left WoW for the simplicity, repetition and overall lack of challenge.

The thing is, we shouldn't kill casual games, no, there's a market for them and people who enjoy them, but when every company decides to go with the "more casual games" genre, it is a very valid danger to the normal gaming.

To borrow the final line from Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw:

If in 10 years people complain that there's no real challenge games, BYC: "just remember i f*cking called it."
 

Iceforge

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its only easy if you make it easy. try some of the end game raid dungeons. and i'm not talking kara or any of those pansy instances. try a run in MH or BT and i bet u'd find something challenging there. and as for solo content. theres still challenges if you seek them out.

my warlock was leveling up farming elites that were 10 lvl's higher then me. now THAT was challenging.

My point was that PvE was boring and end-game (not interested at all in end-game PvE, if I was that, I would have played EQ or trolled around in ToA all the time, while to me, ToA ruined DAoC permanently) PvP was too easy.

To be frank with you, after having tried 20+ MMORPGs, WoW is not even in my top10 of MMORPGs, it plain sucks. As far as I see it, people playing it are either unaware of the alternatives or blinded by the huge "BLIZZARD" stamp it got on it, for to be honest, Blizzard usually means high quality
 

Iceforge

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Two points there. I didn't mean "casual gamer friendly", i mean the industry is turning towards "casual completely", which can cause a huge problem with quality of games.

As an example, last company i was in, i created a concept of a casual friendly strategy game. A core game which could eb plaed casually as well. The answer was, it's not casual enough.

Companies want, a direct quote, "bring out games aimed for the female/too busy people". THAT, is the problem if it becomes a norm. IF. As i said above, there's no problem with casual games, it's good for those who want it, but we should be careful in making sure we don't just follow the figures and go "hardcore casual". Casual games that the companies seem to want to bring out now, at this "mainstream market", are games akin to solitaire, mario kart, etc.

Bringing out "casual friendly games" is not a problem, it's the "simply casual games".

The second point is your final line:

It can't be done. Games can't be catered to all. You can try and make a mroe casual game, or you can try and make a casual game more core, but 9 out of 10 times it falls in the middle where it appeals to none. So producers(again) don't take the chance and simply say "make it more casual, it sells".



Yes. Thousands and thousands of people left WoW for the simplicity, repetition and overall lack of challenge.

The thing is, we shouldn't kill casual games, no, there's a market for them and people who enjoy them, but when every company decides to go with the "more casual games" genre, it is a very valid danger to the normal gaming.

To borrow the final line from Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw:

If in 10 years people complain that there's no real challenge games, BYC: "just remember i f*cking called it."

So, are you still able to pinch ideas for new game concepts where you work now? Got something I don't think has ever been done before that actually might be both casual and core gamer friendly...
 

old.Tohtori

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So, are you still able to pinch ideas for new game concepts where you work now? Got something I don't think has ever been done before that actually might be both casual and core gamer friendly...

Actually applying in-house(at new company) for a game design/graphical design job. Been doing it before so, might pan out.

That or level design which they would like a "pro" on(done that too) :D

I can't ofcourse post my concept here, as it's rather "work in progress" and also, well, never can be too careful with concepts. But it is, at it's core, casually hardcore :)
 

Ctuchik

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My point was that PvE was boring and end-game (not interested at all in end-game PvE, if I was that, I would have played EQ or trolled around in ToA all the time, while to me, ToA ruined DAoC permanently) PvP was too easy.

To be frank with you, after having tried 20+ MMORPGs, WoW is not even in my top10 of MMORPGs, it plain sucks. As far as I see it, people playing it are either unaware of the alternatives or blinded by the huge "BLIZZARD" stamp it got on it, for to be honest, Blizzard usually means high quality


well if you dont like pve then no ammount of challenge will be anything but boring. and as for pvp. theres ladder arenas now, they are horribly unbalanced in terms of certain class setups but if you play a non fotm setup theres plenty of both fun and challenging pvp to be had.

and yes. blizzard usually stand for quality games, but they have done nothing but single player games before WoW. and its SO much easier to balance a game that way. heck, even their B-Net servers were alot easier to balance because they could ignore most of the pve problems they have in WoW because their other games didnt have any pve end game so they could focus ALOT more on the pvp aspects of the game, of wich most ppl concidered to be the end game because there wasn't anything else to do once u've hit lvl 99 or whatever the cap were.
 

Iceforge

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well if you dont like pve then no ammount of challenge will be anything but boring. and as for pvp. theres ladder arenas now, they are horribly unbalanced in terms of certain class setups but if you play a non fotm setup theres plenty of both fun and challenging pvp to be had.

and yes. blizzard usually stand for quality games, but they have done nothing but single player games before WoW. and its SO much easier to balance a game that way. heck, even their B-Net servers were alot easier to balance because they could ignore most of the pve problems they have in WoW because their other games didnt have any pve end game so they could focus ALOT more on the pvp aspects of the game, of wich most ppl concidered to be the end game because there wasn't anything else to do once u've hit lvl 99 or whatever the cap were.


Somebody seriously lack knowledge of Blizzard.

Starcraft has been renowned several times for being the most balanced strategy game with variance between the races.

Saying they had done nothing but single player games before WoW is just plain ignorant and shows you don't know about their game development history.

Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo, all playable with other players over battlenet, granted Diablo is mainly a single player game with multiplayer aspects aviable, but still an ignorant claim that they hadn't done anything but single player games before Wow due to Starcraft and Warcraft (on which WoW oddly enough is based, so very ironic you didn't realise the ignorance of your statement as you was typing it)

EDIT: If you meant single player games as oppose to MMO, you really forget all the other catagories inbetween those 2 and just generalize all none MMO as something they aren't.
There are basicly no single player games being made anymore by anyone. Almost any game that can have multiplayer implemented in anyway has that as well.
 

Golena

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I think actually the current problem is that games are becoming too complex that by the time you've finished sitting through the 17 hour of tutorials on how to play, there's only actually 2 hours of content to use that knowledge in.

I've recently been playing GTA4 and so far i've spent the time slowly taxi'ing people around while the interface explains how to use your mobile phone and various other bits and pieces. I've spent alot of that time thinking back to GTA2 where you knew every control within 10 minutes then got to spend the rest of the time having fun. 20 minutes after getting the game from the shop you could have 8 swat vehicles on your tail and be crushing stuff in a tank.. I imagine that kind of fun is something that GTA4 would require you playing for a good week to get to.
So far after a few hours playing all i've had to do to escape the police that i've been able to get to chase me is hold down the accelerator and crash randomly into objects for 2 minutes until I was free. Sure it looks pretty, but there's no real challenge there..

Now if gave companies actually wanted me to purchase more than 1 game every few months, they have to make sure that I can actually get to a point where i'm playing the game, not simply playing through tutorial 15 in the first week.
They also ensure there's so many save points that all you need to do to get past any point in a game is have a lucky 30 seconds then mash your save button. It means there's no actual need to perfect anything any more, since you can fluke through it once then never worry about it again. Because of that the only thing they can do to increase difficulty is give you yet more controls you need to learn.
 

Thorwyn

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As an example, last company i was in, i created a concept of a casual friendly strategy game. A core game which could eb plaed casually as well. The answer was, it's not casual enough.
Bad decision by the responsible people then.

Companies want, a direct quote, "bring out games aimed for the female/too busy people". THAT, is the problem if it becomes a norm. IF. As i said above, there's no problem with casual games, it's good for those who want it, but we should be careful in making sure we don't just follow the figures and go "hardcore casual". Casual games that the companies seem to want to bring out now, at this "mainstream market", are games akin to solitaire, mario kart, etc.

I don´t think that this has become the norm. If you take a look at the top 50 games at the moment, you´ll find a bunch of pretty complex titles (next to the unavoidable "Sims X whatever expansion" games of course). I wouldn´t go so far as to call them "core gamer titels", but they´re definitely not in the Mario Cart league.
Another thing to keep in mind is the platform. There are more casual gamer titles on console games, simply because .. well.. it´s a console. Plug in, play.. done. No PC knowledge required, no confusing installation stuff. If you´re talking about consoles only, I´d maybe agree with you. But as soon as we´re talking about PC, I´m still pretty confident that I`ll be able to play challenging games in the next couple of years.


It can't be done. Games can't be catered to all. You can try and make a mroe casual game, or you can try and make a casual game more core, but 9 out of 10 times it falls in the middle where it appeals to none. So producers(again) don't take the chance and simply say "make it more casual, it sells".
Not true! You can do it.
Difficulty levels, AI support, dedicated tutorials, customizable options, tooltips. They made chess software work for the grandmaster as well as the patzer, so why shouldn´t it be possible to do the same for a much less complex game?
Just an example: you can play Age of Empires purely by mouse. Not a single button required! In fact, it´s played in american schools by children in 3rd grade classes for educational purposes and they´re doing fine. But you can also play it on pro-level strategy. It´s the same game, the same mechanics, the same design. Of course, this is a rather old example. But it´s still a valid one. Just because designers are too lazy to do their job these days doesn´t mean it can´t be done. The problem in my opinion is, that many developers are mixing up "casual friendly" with "simple".
 

Iceforge

Can't get enough of FH
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It is kind of odd, got this thought while reading Golena's post, but we, the gamers (atleast here on FH) buy less games now because they each has less content, while I think many game companies might make their games short so you will be more games.
Logicly seen, without the obsticale of what people are willing to spend their money on, game with little content = lots of sales, but in the real world, the more content each game has, the more games we are willing to buy.

It is all about the value you get for each buck spend in the end, and many games just don't deliver any value for your bucks now.
 

Thorwyn

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Logicly seen, without the obsticale of what people are willing to spend their money on, game with little content = lots of sales, but in the real world, the more content each game has, the more games we are willing to buy.

Is that so?

I think this is another common myth that doesn´t seem to die despite the fact that reality proves it to be wrong time and time again.
Take a look at some recent titles. Bioshock, Assassins Creed, Orange Box, Crysis, Halo. The playtime of all those titles is nothing to write home about. Yet, they have all been pretty successful I´d say.
Playtime is not the factor it used to be and the equation content per buck doesn´t mean too much. People want quality, not quantity. As a developer, if you have the choice between adding some more content or dumping the money into cut scenes or intro/extro movies, you don´t have to think twice. It´s always the cut scenes. Because fancy movies are state-of-the-art. Slap a "25 hour playtime" as a selling point on your box and nobody will give a damn.
Of course, one of the reasons for this is the fact that games these days are easily re-sold. People can buy a game, play it in a day, then sell it on Ebay with a loss of a couple of bucks.
 

Hawkwind

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I think the big problem is that every gamer out there has a different perception of makes up the ultimate game. Lets face it, it's all been done before. There are hardly any games out there that could be called unique or ground breaking. They just rehash what sells a hundred times with different themes.

The last big game that everyone was wow'ing over 'Gears of War', what made it so special? Standard war type FPS that you could blow scenary up on. It's amazing how little additions can make or break a game.

TV Media/Films are the same. X-Men did well so all the movie studios start lining up superhero movies for the next 10 years. Games are no different. A genre sells well there will be a hundred clones made.

The Wii sells not because of casaul gamers, it sells because the whole family can have fun playing the games. I bought one purely so my son would be active at least whilst gaming. Although now the wife controls it with her damned 'Wii Fit' excercise thingy :(
 

old.Tohtori

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1: Bad decision by the responsible people then.

2: I don´t think that this has become the norm. If you take a look at the top 50 games at the moment, you´ll find a bunch of pretty complex titles (next to the unavoidable "Sims X whatever expansion" games of course). I wouldn´t go so far as to call them "core gamer titels", but they´re definitely not in the Mario Cart league.
Another thing to keep in mind is the platform. There are more casual gamer titles on console games, simply because .. well.. it´s a console. Plug in, play.. done. No PC knowledge required, no confusing installation stuff. If you´re talking about consoles only, I´d maybe agree with you. But as soon as we´re talking about PC, I´m still pretty confident that I`ll be able to play challenging games in the next couple of years.


3: Not true! You can do it.
Difficulty levels, AI support, dedicated tutorials, customizable options, tooltips. They made chess software work for the grandmaster as well as the patzer, so why shouldn´t it be possible to do the same for a much less complex game?
Just an example: you can play Age of Empires purely by mouse. Not a single button required! In fact, it´s played in american schools by children in 3rd grade classes for educational purposes and they´re doing fine. But you can also play it on pro-level strategy. It´s the same game, the same mechanics, the same design. Of course, this is a rather old example. But it´s still a valid one. Just because designers are too lazy to do their job these days doesn´t mean it can´t be done. The problem in my opinion is, that many developers are mixing up "casual friendly" with "simple".

1: It's an executive decicion because casual games sell more. And there-in lines the problem i was talking about.

2: IF, the word IF. You seem to take my post as "casual games HAVE killed the normal gaming". Like i said, aslong as there are still people who go against the "mainstream let's release this market cashbomb", it's fine. It's jsut a scenario that is growing, and this is from an "inside view". and yes, consoles are more casual.

3: I think you misunderstand what i mean as the problem "casual" game. Casual games in the industry are games that you play on the bus, maybe for half an hour between picking up kids and making dinner, things you learn in five minutes and well, that's it. Easy, fast to learn, nothing complex, relaxing. Age of Empires that caters to a more casual gaming community, is not the problem casual games i'm talking about.

You can make a game more towards casual people, but you cant' make a game(easily) that will cater to all, women, housewives, hardcore gamers, kids, old age pensioners etc.

I guess the best analogy one could use is: Casual games are to games what reality TV is to TV.
 

Thorwyn

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2: IF, the word IF. You seem to take my post as "casual games HAVE killed the normal gaming". Like i said, aslong as there are still people who go against the "mainstream let's release this market cashbomb", it's fine. It's jsut a scenario that is growing, and this is from an "inside view". and yes, consoles are more casual.

Well... I can´t say I see the trend and I dare to say that this is coming from an "inside view" as well. ;)
Casual games don´t sell more. That´s just not true. It costs a lot less to produce them, that´s true. And in relation to the production costs, the ROI might be ok, in addition to the fact that smaller productions are less risky than large, expensive ones. They´re certainly not market cashbombs. If you want to make money, you *have* to procude quality. Since that is hard to achieve for a small company, they usually avoid the risk and produce crap.

Oh, and about companies taking the risk to try something new... remember Looking Glass? Their "Thief, Dark Project" was praised as THE innovation on the market. Everybody was like "ZOMG! a new genre!" Didn´t help them though, they went tits up because they didn´t sell enough copies. :(

Here´s the fresh sales charts from one of the biggest german stores. Does this support your theory?

[FONT=&quot]PC
1 (1) ASSASSINS CREED (DIRECTORs CUT EDITION)
2 (3) CALL OF DUTY 4 - MODERN WARFARE
3 (2) COMMAND & CONQUER 3 - KANES RACHE (ORIGINALVERSION)
4 (4) COUNTER STRIKE SOURCE
5 (8) DIE SIMS 2 (DELUXE EDITION)
6 (7) WORLD OF WARCRAFT - BATTLECHEST
7 (5) FIFA MANAGER 08
8 (6) DIE SIMS 2 - FREIZEIT SPASS
9 (9) CRYSIS
10 (10) TWO WORLDS GAME OF THE YEAR EDITION INKL. TAINTED
11 (11) WORLD OF WARCRAFT - THE BURNING CRUSADE
12 (12) DIE SIEDLER - AUFSTIEG EINES KOENIGREICHS - REICH DES OSTENS
13 (13) DAWN OF WAR - SOULSTORM
14 (15) TOM CLANCY S RAINBOW SIX - VEGAS 2
15 (14) COMMAND & CONQUER 3 - TIBERIUM WARS
16 (-) DIE SIMS 2 - KUECHEN- UND BAD-EINRICHTUNGS-ACCESSO
17 (16) WORLD OF WARCRAFT STANDARD PC ONLINE GAME
18 (-) AGE OF CONAN - HYBORIAN ADV. (PRE ORDER VERSION)
19 (20) FIFA 08
20 (19) FRONTLINES - FUEL OF WAR

XBOX 360
1 (-) GRAND THEFT AUTO 4
2 (1) GTA 4 VORVERKAUFS-BOX
3 (2) ASSASSINS CREED
4 (-) GRAND THEFT AUTO 4 (SPECIAL EDITION)
5 (3) UEFA EURO 2008
6 (5) FIFA 08
7 (4) GAMES VALUE KIT (VIVA PINATA & FORZA 2)
8 (6) HALO 3
9 (8) LOST ODYSSEY
10 (7) CALL OF DUTY 4 - MODERN WARFARE
11 (9) SAINT ROW (CLASSIC)
12 (10) DEVIL MAY CRY 4
13 (-) CLIVE BARKER S JERICHO
14 (11) SKATE
15 (12) TONY HAWK PROVING GROUND
16 (15) GUITAR HERO 3 - BUNDLE
17 (13) TUROK
18 (14) COLIN MCRAE DIRT (BESTSELLER)
19 (-) CALL OF DUTY 4 - GOTY MODERN WARFARE
20 (16) BULLY (SCHOLARSHIP EDITION)

PLAYSTATION 3
1 (-) GRAND THEFT AUTO 4
2 (1) GRAN TURISMO 5 PROLOGUE
3 (2) GTA 4 VORVERKAUFS-BOX
4 (5) FIFA 08
5 (3) UEFA EURO 2008
6 (4) ASSASSINS CREED
7 (6) CALL OF DUTY 4 - MODERN WARFARE
8 (-) GRAND THEFT AUTO 4 (SPECIAL EDITION)
9 (7) CALL OF DUTY 4 (OEM SATURN EXCL.)
10 (9) VIRTUA TENNIS 3
11 (8) VIKING - BATTLE FOR A... (EXPOR-VERS.T/NICHT U
12 (10) CLIVE BARKER S JERICHO
13 (11) VIRTUA FIGHTER 5
14 (13) DEVIL MAY CRY 4
15 (12) PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER 2008
16 (14) TUROK
17 (-) FORMEL EINS CE +WIRELESS CONTROLLER
18 (15) FORMULA ONE (CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION)
19 (16) BURNOUT PARADISE
20 (17) SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

NINTENDO WII
1 (1) MARIO KART (MIT LENKRAD)
2 (2) WII FIT MIT BALANCE BOARD
3 (3) WII PLAY (MIT REMOTE)
4 (5) SUPER MARIO GALAXY
5 (4) MARIO PARTY 8
6 (6) MARIO & SONIC AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES
7 (7) PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER 2008
8 (9) GAME PARTY
9 (8) HARVEST MOON
10 (10) NARUTO
11 (11) ZELDA - THE TWILIGHT PRINCESS
12 (12) GUITAR HERO 3 - BUNDLE
13 (13) LINK S CROSSBOW TRAINING (INCL. ZAPPER)
14 (14) DANCING STAGE HOTTEST PARTY & MATTE
15 (15) BIG BRAIN ACADEMY
16 (16) CALL OF DUTY 3
17 (17) RTL WINTER SPORTS 2008 - THE ULTIMATE CHALLENG
18 (-) FIFA 08
19 (18) LUCAS LSW THE COMPLETE SAGA
20 (20) MARIO STRIKERS[/FONT]
 

fettoken

I am a FH squatter
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Messages
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Casual games sell more because most "casual people" doesn´t know how to torrent a game(one of the reasons). They want profit, so they make casual games mostly. This has also been stated once from a publisher company. They also stated that when making a game, they need to spread it out of different platforms due to the piracy problems and therefore the game suffers. This leads back to the word "profit". But im sure someone will reply something like: Piracy is not the problem, piracy is honourable!!!


Quote from Crytek president:

Crytek, creators of PC-Only FPS Crysis, are going to stop just producing for PCs.

In an interview with PC Play, Crytek's president, Cevat Yerli, said the change was due to piracy

"We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy. To the degree PC Gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we wont have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore."

So still PC games, just not exclusively PC games.
 

old.Tohtori

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45,210
Well... I can´t say I see the trend and I dare to say that this is coming from an "inside view" as well. ;)
Casual games don´t sell more. That´s just not true.

But the thing is, they do.

Especially when game companies turn to the mobile market for cheaper production costs, more client base and bigger sales.

It costs a fragment of a huge title to create a casual "fun" game, and it sells more because, as mentioned here "It's for the whole family".

Strategy, FPS, driving, simulator...all genres have declined over the years because A: Market shows casual games sell more(when they just sell more compared) and B: Because of this wrong comparison, people make more and mroe casual games.
 

fettoken

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Messages
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But the thing is, they do.

Especially when game companies turn to the mobile market for cheaper production costs, more client base and bigger sales.

It costs a fragment of a huge title to create a casual "fun" game, and it sells more because, as mentioned here "It's for the whole family".

Strategy, FPS, driving, simulator...all genres have declined over the years because A: Market shows casual games sell more(when they just sell more compared) and B: Because of this wrong comparison, people make more and mroe casual games.

EA Sports anyone? :p
 

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