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Even though I rarely get around to writing an entry for Corvus Elrod’s monthly Round Table discussions, they’re always thoroughly good reads, and interesting topics.
This month, the discussion surrounds the growing split between “casual” and “hardcore” games. What can be done to bridge these two worlds that seem to be drifting apart?
I find myself in the middle of it, actually. Moving from a school-based life (WoW in the morning, class in the afternoon, Counter-Strike at night, followed by midnight food runs..) to a real-life based lifestyle (get up early, work, work, see friends for an hour, sleep, wait, wasn’t I going to play Bioshock?), has been an odd transition for me.
I still make time for games. I probably make more time for games that a lot of people do, but there’s no question that I have a lot less time than I have ever had before.
Corvus hit some really important points in this post, the one that comes to mind being:
Might casual gameplay be defined merely by short play sessions and simple interfaces? Perhaps it doesn’t matter how challenging the game is, or how long it is overall, as long as it’s satisfying to play in short sessions and doesn’t require elaborate key-mappings or bewildering menu navigation.
Yes. I think that is exactly what defines casual gameplay.
And in that sense I’ve always been a casual gamer. I think the best and most successful games, with a few notable RPG exceptions, have always been games that take 15 minutes to learn, and countless hours of gameplay to perfect — gameplay that can be easily chunked into 30-minute segments. The manual transmission of gaming, if you will.
Let’s list a few games that fit that description for me:
- Half-Life
- Halo
- Diablo, Diablo II
- Lego Star Wars
Notice something? These are all “hardcore” games. If you’re sitting in front of Halo, nobody’s likely to accuse you of being a casual gamer, unless you’re asking questions like “what button shoots?”
(Incidentally I think one of the pitfalls many developers fall into is adding unnecessary complexity to sequels under the guise of “new content.” But that’s another post entirely)
I think that many genres have the ability to bridge the casual-hardcore gap. In the end, it comes down to the user interface. In my mind, if you make a “hardcore” game that also hits the following, you’ve got a winner in both spaces:
- Save anytime. No checkpoints.
- Keep all actions to three keystrokes/button pushes (use established control schemes wherever possible)
- Be able to explain the premise of the game in two sentences
Now, I don’t make games. I play them. So technically, I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I dare you to find me a game that meets those three marks, and isn’t played in both the “casual” and “hardcore” style.
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Chris 08.23.07 at 6:29 am
Why should it be that as a player of games you have less authority than those who make games? Personally, I feel a lot of the people who make games would learn a lot by talking to, and observing, people who played games more often. A lot of assumptions lead the videogames industry, and not many of them are that valid…
However, I would say that for a “Casual” audience, “save anywhere” is not necessarily good enoughl. For someone like you - somewhere between “Hardcore” and “Casual” - that’s about right, but as it happens many Hardcore players want to “save anywhere” too.
I’d say the Casual audience as a whole doesn’t want to be bothered by save mechanics at all. Invisible save mechanisms that allow you to quit at any point without loss of progress, that perhaps is the ultimate Casual save mechanism.
Anyway, must fly! Have fun!
Chris.
Jason 08.23.07 at 9:02 am
@Chris: It’s a good point, and I toyed with the idea of saying “hibernate anywhere” instead of “save anywhere,” but I think that if you’re trying to bridge the gap between the two styles of play it’s OK to add a two-click save process.
I’ll be surprised if you find a significant group of casual gamers who can’t be buggered to hit “ESC” + Save in something that isn’t Tetris of Bejeweled. So I guess I mean “save anywhere” in games that it makes sense to have “save anywhere.”
Also, RE: “just a gamer,” - I mean to say that I have no idea how hard it is to implement any of my suggestions. It’s a little presumptuous to think that it’s only oversight that prevents them from ending up in more games.
Marcus Riedner 08.29.07 at 12:05 pm
Ubiquitous Saving would be a fantastic feature period, no matter how or what game you are talking about. I don’t think it is presumptuous to think that it is only an oversight that prevents things from ending up in more games. I think a lot of the game developer head space is full of faulty logic and oversights that are leading to all sorts of problematic issues.
It is really important that people jump up and down and say ‘This is stupid’ every now and then. Otherwise it just ends up being the same incestuous idea pool, and we get a new Gran Tourismo every 2 years…
Jason 08.29.07 at 1:12 pm
@Marcus - oh wait, we do get a new Gran Tourismo every 2 years… ;)
I really think that the “you can’t save anywhere” thing is mostly a product of developers not wanting to build different games for the console and the PC. I’ll have more on this in a later post, I think.
chico 08.31.07 at 5:19 am
I get your point. Like you, I also play what you would call non-casual games in a casual manner (when I have time to play them, that is). However, when you say something like “use established control schemes wherever possible”, you might be forgetting that there are players who don´t know how these schemes operate. In fact, some wouldn´t know that are such conventions exist!
But that was a good post - I´m glad someone pointed out that there are ways of playing hardcore (or just core) games casually.
Jason 08.31.07 at 11:21 am
@chico glad you liked it! It’s really a timely roundtable, since these kinds of thoughts have been bouncing around in my head for a while. I finally had an excuse to make them coherent ;)
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