Many game industry terms are still poorly understood. Alex recently blogged about the problems with “fun”. Another problematic term is “casual”.
What’s a casual gamer? Someone who plays easy games? Someone who plays hard games, but infrequently? How about someone who plays casual games in an extremely hardcore fashion — is that still casual?
There are no answers to any of those questions because nobody knows what hardcore or casual really mean.
I sometimes struggle with this myself. Someone might ask if our game is for a hardcore or casual audience and it’s difficult for me to answer. I usually say the level of dedication required is casual — it’s easily accessible and you can play it for 15 minutes or for hours — but the game has “hardcore aesthetics” (for lack of a better way to put it) which includes advanced 3D graphics, leveling, skill points, etc. But I’m not sure that makes anything clear at all.
Damion Schubert argues that all games and genres have hardcore players and casual players. In other words, he doesn’t think of casual or hardcore as target audiences or markets but as different degrees of player dedication on a game by game basis.
He explains how his mom is a hardcore solitaire player — a game that most would call casual. “She looks at a screen with Spider on it the way that Cypher looked at the Matrix and saw blondes, brunettes and redheads. Mom just sees things I never saw as there. She has an innate sense of opportunity. When she plays, cards light up for her as if she were the main character in A Beautiful Mind. She’s damn close to being able to move the cards telepathically.”
He also writes: “Hardcore vs. casual should always be considered in relation to the game that you are making and the genre you are exploring — not the games market as a whole.” I think that’s indeed the most useful way of thinking about casual and hardcore.
Sadly, any attempt to make the term casual any more meaningful will fail as long as there’s the super vaguely defined genre known as casual games. I imagine there’s pretty hardcore Diner Dash players out there and very casual Gears of War players, but Diner Dash will always be known as casual and Gears of War always as hardcore because the word casual is generally associated with a type of game and an aesthetic, not with a type of player behavior.
I heard several people use the new term “advanced casual” at GDC. To this I can only say: sigghhhhhhh. Maybe we should stop using these terms entirely.
What do you think defines hardcoreness or casualness?
I think defining a game as either hardcore or casual is ridiculous and outdated. New terms need to be created which separate them based on if they’re purely ludological (no meaning beyond instant and temporary flow, or fun) or if they involve some kind of narratological elements which affect the player after the game experience is over. An addictive puzzle game you think about playing during work doesn’t count!
High Delivery (http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/high.htm), Defcon, Flow, The Marriage (according to some), obviously do not deserve to be lumped in with the Popcap games, and our terminology needs to be changed to reflect this.
Similarly, “hardcore” games like Gears of War are only hardcore in the sense that devoted video game fans are the only ones able to find any value in them. The term doesn’t imply any superior combination of narrative and gameplay — in fact, to me it suggests the opposite.
On the other hand, maybe we don’t need any categories at all. Half-Life 2 and Gears of War are as different as Children of Men and Starship Troopers, yet there was no debate over how to distinguish the latter two. Hopefully as the industry and PLAYERS mature people will naturally recognize games like Gears as the equivalent to “fun popcorn flick”, without generalizing the entire genre as the same.
Michel
April 6th, 2007
[…] The crux of Damion’s argument is that anyone can be “casual” or “hardcore” about pretty much anything, so I can be a “casual” player of World of Warcraft and a “hardcore” player of Bookworm Adventures. This much is certainly true. The question, then, is whether the PopCap/WoW-style distinction between casual and hardcore gamers is still valid. Answer: It absolutely is. As Marek points out, “Diner Dash will always be known as casual and Gears of War always as hardcore because the word casual is generally associated with a type of game and an aesthetic, not with a type of player behavior.” Thus, there is no contradiction in saying that Jack is a hardcore player of a casual game. Or, to complicate things further, that Jack is a hardcore gamer who is a hardcore player of a casual game, while Jill is a casual gamer who is a hardcore player of a hardcore game. That sort of language can get confusing, but we are able to make sense of it: we know in what scopes the words “casual” and “hardcore” variably operate throughout the sentence. And frankly, the number of situations in which we’re likely to craft such a sentence is small, so I don’t see a pressing need to invent new terms. […]
Casual and Hardcore Distinctions
April 6th, 2007
Oddly enough, people consider teenagers who play 20 hours a day “hardcore”, but when you’re an adult, have a job and don’t have 20 hours a day to play games, but you STILL PLAY, you are considered casual…
I’ll call myself and indie retro gamer until all this debacle is cleared up…
Tanukitsune
April 7th, 2007
To me, hardcore gaming is a nice trap set by the marketers, it’s the 80/20 theory extended to entertainment. It’s ‘well known’ that 20% of one’s clients generates 80% of the profit, and “hardcore gamer” became the label for gamers that belong to this category. And because you need to have hardcore gamer to be profitable, you need to make hardocre gamer a profile everyone wants to aim for. And so, you see all the fuss about PS3 & Xbox 360 being hardcore gamer consoles.
It’s like a myth created by the industry that became true because gamers and developers began to believe it was relevant.
Vimes
April 10th, 2007
I don’t see how the 80/20 rule can be mapped to casual and hardcore. That only works if your definition of a hardcore gamer is someone who buys a lot of games, which doesn’t seem right.
Such a definition would result in a very different division between gamers than any of the other definitions discussed above. There’s many “casual gamers” who buy expansion upon expansion for The Sims, which by your definition would make them hardcore. A coworker of mine plays games probably only for one or two hours a week, but keeps buying new PSP games all the time.
Marek
April 10th, 2007
Well, you’re highlighting what I implied: nobody using the term hardcore or casual gamer about themselves seem to be able to clearly define what they mean. Plus when people conjecture what it could mean for others, they usually don’t agree. There is no way that such label would stick in the gamers’ community if it came from within … so it has to have been artificially input. And that’s my point : to me, hardcore gamer isn’t a term that define how one’s play; that is why it is so difficult for gamers to pinpoint its meaning.
The first time I remember hearing about hardcore gamers was years ago in an interview with a guy from SOE talking about Everquest : he was stating that the hardcore gamers, the one that invested a lot of time and money in the game, were few but they were the one kept the game afloat. Hence the 80/20 comparison.
Vimes
April 10th, 2007
Right. Everyone has a different idea of what hardcore or casual is. I was just trying to say that yours is probably the most uncommon and unusual, as it relates to consumer behavior instead of player behavior or game styles.
Edit: is it just me or does that smiley look mean instead of happy…
Marek
April 11th, 2007
Oops, sorry if my post out of context, but I thought that the end of your post was asking us our definition, no necessarily linked to gaming habits.
And no, the smiley is fine even though a bit menacing.
Vimes
April 11th, 2007
Asking you for your definition WAS A TRAP. Seriously though, I was poking at your definition just to see how it would hold up. Keep posting!
Marek
April 12th, 2007
So did it hold up ?
Vimes
April 12th, 2007