old.Tohtori
FH is my second home
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2004
- Messages
- 45,210
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*
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*