by edgie_za Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:33 amSiegfried. wrote:edgie_za wrote:and their opinions count alot more than a casual gamer.
I disagree with this. Hardcore gamers are, almost by definition, heavily biased. And remember, it's hardcore gamers that have financially justified a lot of the flaws in the gaming industry today, from unsustainable game budgets to a lack of gameplay innovation in AAA titles.
The great thing about casual gamers is that they don't think about games as much as they feel games. They don't really care about anything except for how well an overall experience comes together, so a casual gamer is the best indication of how intuitive and fun a game is.
Remember, we all started out "casual", even if the concept of a casual gamer didn't necessarily exist when we started playing games. I remember that my first console was the original "brick" Gameboy, and I played games such as Donkey Kong and Link's Awakening on it. These games were simple and primitive, but they were also exceedingly well-designed. It says a lot about such games that, even as a small child with no gaming experience, I could understand them and play them with a minimum of prompting.
Take Pac-man as an example. It's the prime, old-school "casual" game, and pretty much the basis of most casual games today in gameplay design principle. You don't need to be taught Pac-man, because the game inherently shows you what you have to do. For instance, as soon as you move, you consume some of the white dots and your score goes up. Alright, so you should consume more white dots to increase your score, right? But then there's the big dots, so we're inherently drawn to be curious. But the ghosts are coming towards us, and a game isn't a game without the prospect of failure, so let's just avoid them for now and grab that big white dot. And, oh, all the ghosts have turned blue and are avoiding us rather than coming towards us. So consuming a big dot is a defensive measure we can take against the ghosts.
The game has no tutorial, because it doesn't need one. Anyone who plays it, casual or hardcore, will understand the game within seconds of manipulating the controls. And that is intensely elegant game design, because it expresses its mechanics in such a fundamental way.
Casual gamers are extremely important, because they're free of many of the expectations and biases hardcore gamers have. Remember, a game being simple does not mean it's shallow. Many exceedingly simple games are also exceedingly deep. Take chess, for instance. You take one move per a turn, and if you end on an enemy's space during that move, you take their piece. There are six different types of pieces, each of which can move differently. You win if you checkmate the other player's king. And that's pretty much the entirety of chess, but it's a system with such versatility that players are free to apply themselves as they see fit.
The last ten years or so haven't just been dark for developers in terms of fiscal pressure -- they've been dark in terms of progressive game design, too. Since we had a period where games were directed directly towards a growing base of hardcore gamers, game developers moved their design towards the biases and tastes of that group. With an exploding base of casual gamers now, though, developers are free to work at a variety of budget levels to suit different needs while also taking drastically different approaches to game design.
Hear what you are saying, and aggree that Casual gamers are important, infact most games that are being produced today are geared towards casual gaming, where very little investment is required in terms of time, and mental effort and exercise.
I am just saying that there is a perceived lack of quality in games these days, and that if companies are looking for better qaulity in their games, then speaking to more regular gamers (maybe the word harcore is too "hardcore") will ensure that the quality of their product is better.
