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East is East, West is West
By Corvus | August 14, 2007
This month’s Round Table asks us to think about ways in which the gap between casual and hardcore games (and/or audiences) can be bridged. I thought it might be useful to kick things off with a brief look at what makes a game hardcore or casual.
My first impulse is to say that hardcore games tend towards greater challenges than casual games. But as Krystian has pointed out before, Brain Age is a causal game with some very challenging elements (link). Of course, the challenges in Brain Age are more cerebral in nature than manual. Strategy games also tend to provide less dexterity based challenges and I don’t think there’s many that would consider RTS or TBS games casual in nature. Strategy games most often tend to require two things that casual games don’t–long play sessions and elaborate key mappings.
Perhaps that sums it up, actually. 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.
If that’s the case, is it possible that a crunchy RPG could be considered a casual game if the wandering between towns and monsters elements were removed? If the long distance parcel quests were abandoned in favor of more local challenges?
Let’s take a look at the DS as a casual platform. While it’s certainly got it’s fair share of casual puzzle games, it’s also popular with an audience typically categorized as hardcore as well. At least, with an audience that is (or was) hardcore when it has (had) the time. And thanks to the DS’s ability to freeze a game and drop into low power mode when closed, even RPG and RTS games can be experienced in short cycles. The touch screen and handful of buttons lend themselves to simple interfaces as well.
So, as a platform, the DS seems perfectly designed to bridge that gap between hardcore and casual player. Now what about the game’s themselves? What can be done to create the same bi-lateral appeal in a game for any platform? Stay tuned for more Round Table entries to find out!
Or… you know, submit your own post on the topic and tell us!
Tagged:Blogs of the Round Table, Design. | 10 Comments »
August 14th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I’m not so sure that there is a real dichotomy between casual and hardcore games or audiences, but I’ll have more to say on this topic later. B-)
The Escapist for this week is focused on casual games, too, so potential contributors might find plenty of angles to attack this topic on.
August 18th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
I think the terminology is a big silly semiotic and semantic debate that makes people in the industry feel like they are addressing a problem.
The fact that it is an issue that is quite possibly completely artificial doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone…
August 19th, 2007 at 10:07 am
I don’t see it so much as a “problem” as a design challenge. If you want to maximize your design budget by reaching the largest audience possible, how do you appeal to the ‘hardcore’ gamer who can play for hours at a time and the ‘casual’ gamer who can play for fifteen minutes at a time.
August 19th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Heh, I was thinking of selling the DS as a casual/hardcore item (but, um, Pokemon would have been my choice of game
). I see no way to describe hardcore and casual, with strange definitions everywhere at the absence of any kind of sense!
But the way some games appeal to a lot more people then others is perhaps a better thing to describe, and games have I think gone up and down in wide appeal from their creation (as do all games, from board games, to card games, to quiz games and so on have different appeals!). This won’t change, since there will always be games which a limited amount of people enjoy, and ones many enjoy. If they have complex elements (or investment of time) or not seem to be besides the point with all the examples available, with games having both simple and complex, long and short varieties and still selling (or not) to wide audiences.
Um, kinda meandering but I mean, the discussion does seem very semantic rather then to the point, that many different types and complexities of games sell a lot or a few copies.
I’d love to see the other entries and their take on this
I’m not the most informed on what PR and Marketing might think either…I wonder how their market research involves these horrible definitions and stereotypes.
August 20th, 2007 at 4:55 am
Well, if the discussion focuses strictly on the terms “hardcore” and “casual” of course it’s a semantic one.
But to examine how games can best serve a wide audience is a design challenge, not a semantic argument.
August 20th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Yep, sorry, that was kinda what I meant. Not something that is easy to discuss though, but I know certainly that many games which have a high standard of quality and using well tested things usually sell more – like Blizzard, Nintendo, Valve all prove.
I wonder how many things you have to sell for it to be considered something that a wide audience accepts?
Is Grand Theft Auto, a hugely popular game in America, casual or what? It is aimed at a wide audience (some would say simple controls, decent storyline, or sandbox mode where anyone can do what they like) but not everyone would play it (compared to say, Tetris or Brain Age), and I doubt it appeals to both genders equally.
Bridging all the gaps, such as gender appeal, age appeal, “ease of use” appeal, isn’t something design can easily do. If done, it also can’t target everyone equally, no game (as well as no book or film or TV show) can do that.
So, well, that’s what I think. It’s going to be a case of those games which appeal to all the factors might sell more, but like any medium, they will never appeal to everyone, and some more “niche” areas will still sell just as many despite the fact they are considered not aimed at the wide audience.
August 20th, 2007 at 10:09 am
…meant to finish with …. despite the fact they are considered not aimed at the wide audience, and perhaps just because they are good, high quality and fun to play games, which like film, can surpass genre boundaries and simply be good to enjoy for anyone even if they don’t usually like that kind of thing (this happens in film (huge blockbusters, oscar winners), TV (long running very popular shows) and books (harry potter and other huge sellers)).
August 22nd, 2007 at 6:44 pm
[...] 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 [...]
September 3rd, 2007 at 6:29 am
I think the difficulties in definition stem from the fact that in reality ‘hardcore’ and ‘casual’ aren’t simply two ends of a one dimensional spectrum, or rather, they are the ends of two separate spectrums, one involving frequency of play and the other depth of gameplay.
What if we had a 2 dimensional scale? On one dimension, you could have the length and frequency of gaming sessions, with one extreme ‘Casual’ and the other … hmm… ‘Intense’ maybe?
On the other dimension you could have gameplay depth, with one extreme being ‘Hardcore’, ie. a large or complex system of game rules, and at the other end.. I can’t think of a good name for that end. For now, how about ‘Simple’.
This is an issue myself and a friend (who funnily enough, has a blog at casualhardcore.com) have been talking about for a while now. One thing you realise by doing this is that there’s a whole lot of untapped potential in terms of gaming styles rather than just casual and hardcore, you can have:
Simple Casual – this would be what you already know as casual, Bejewelled etc.
Simple Intense – maybe this would be the Guitar Heros of the world?
Intense Hardcore – usually just referred to as hardcore, including neverending RPGs, strategy, shooters, etc.
And the most interesting for me: Casual Hardcore – in-depth game mechanics but coupled with quick games… an example of something that already exists might be something like Star Chamber, or Advance Wars. I think this area of the spectrum has huge potential, what with your average gamer growing older and having less time to devote to the 100 hour RPGs of the world.
September 3rd, 2007 at 9:16 am
Good thoughts, EPM. I’d encourage both you and your friend to write up full entries and join the Round Table!