Casual Games Kill Hardcore Gamers
This post was originally a comment that I wrote over on Mischiefblog, but it’s something I’ve wanted to write about for a while so I’m cross-posting it here. One thing I’ve never seen discussed anywhere is how casual games kill hardcore players. If you have ever considered yourself a hardcore gamer, you’ll know what I mean in a moment.
Before I played an MMORPG with many casual elements, I didn’t care about them one bit. I was happy to type a line of text to examine an item, I was happy to type [a question] to NPCs to advance a quest, I was happy to sketch crappy maps on a notebook to get around, and I was happy to keep a spreadsheet to tell me what I had to do for the many quests I was on.
Now you may look at that and say, “no, you are stupid GG, those are not elements of a casual game. Those are, in fact, inconveniences that have been eliminated from MMOGs, and for good reason.” Well, you might not state it exactly that way, but it’s a valid argument. I just disagree with it.
Casual games take the tedium out of everything you do. They make finding quest givers convenient, travel simple, they even the odds between skilled min/maxers and less experienced players. All the elements of convenience and simplicity combined make a casual game.
Most importantly, up until I played a game with these elements I didn’t give a crap about them. As I said before, I was happy with the tedium. I was happy with having to grind for a year to max a character out. I was happy that I lost all of my equipment when another player killed and looted me. But now that I’ve seen the other side–the dark side that is casual games–I can’t go back.
I stand a hardcore gamer converted to a relative carebear. Sure, I still love PvP and some hardcore game elements, but I will never be half as hardcore as I once was. I am a former hardcore gamer who is not part of “the target market” for hardcore anymore. And it’s not because I didn’t love such games at one point, it’s because I let myself sample the casual side, and the convenience and simplicity corrupted me forever.
“All the elements of convenience and simplicity combined make a casual game.”
I disagree, these are merely side effects of the casual design process.
IMHO what differentiates casual games (in the MMO variety and the Bejeweled-types) from hardcore games is the focus on reducing the amount of time investment needed to play the game, and to start playing the game.
Conveniace is needed because that 5 minutes setting up for a 6 hour play session, suddenly becomes 5 minutes of setting up for a 5 minute play session. If you have shorter play sessions, you need to have proportionally shorter ‘non-play’ bits, and therefore casual games have virtually no ‘non-play’ bits.
Simplicity is needed because complexity, and therefore, more learning about the game, and thus ‘non-play’ bits is not wanted. Not to mention that with shorter play sessions any gameplay mechanics that take a long time to take shape will not be effective in short sessions.
Spending less (or no) time looking for a group, getting to the quest or mob, or begging for buffs isn’t a bad thing, is it? It gets the player into the game with much more immediacy.
Playing EQ2, I spent 15 minutes today moving from my inn room in Nettleville Hovel (Qeynos) though four zones to get to my wife outside Freeport to help her with quests. In Guild Wars, arguably a more casual game, I would have spent under five. In WoW, I might have spent 20. In the original EverQuest, pre-PoP and unable to hitch a ride with a Wizard or Druid, I might have spent an hour or more.
Making games more casual benefits the hardcore more than it does the casual, but as Grouchy pointed out, it also changes their expectation of future MMOs. Future MMO designers are going to have to incorporate ease of use features that meet or exceed those of recent successful MMO releases.
Last October, my wife stopped being hardcore, and instead became a dedicated casual player:
Never make a blog post on the last day of March or the first day of April. You risk being dismissed as an April Fools joke.
Taking your post as serious, it all depends on if you think grind equals hardcore. It’s not a bad definition. Per M-W.com Hardcore is “a relatively small enduring core of society marked by apparent resistance to change or inability to escape a persistent wretched condition”.
But I don’t think that’s what you really mean. I think you mean “hardcore” to mean “ubber” or “elite” or “best of the best”. And what streamlineing the game means here is that you will have to find something else to do to show how cool you are, not just log in 10 hours a day to someone else’s 6 hours a day . What that something else is will be difficult to define. But if you’re the best you can do it
“Never make a blog post on the last day of March or the first day of April. You risk being dismissed as an April Fools joke.”
Roger that. I just changed the timestamp on this one so people know I’m not joking.
I’d say, despite m-w.com, that being a “hardcore gamer” has come to mean:
1. You are passionate about your games.
2. You study the games you play looking for every advantage over the other players, even when it isn’t a competition. You don’t even think twice about the extreme extra effort you put in. When others see a beautiful mountain, you see an ambush opportunity.
3. You don’t complain about missing luxury features, they are for the weak and you can be proud that you found your own way to accomplish what you need and the extra work was worth it.
As more and more “luxury” features become main stream, the more and more difficult it is for the hardcore gamers to find ways to gain an edge over everybody else — except maybe in just the sheer time investment the hard core players so eagerly make. Of course, with time requirements going down and down, even that aspect means that far less passionate players may have the same accomplishments with only slightly less time investment.
There are encounters in some games that test the hardcore gamers out there, these encounters require study, trial-and-error, and effort. Even in WoW, which I consider very casual, these encounters do exist. Sadly though, this has become narrow means of defining oneself as hardcore.
I don’t think hardcore players have gone away, they’re just having a hard time standing out in a crowd when playing so many games is generally so easy, data/information is abundant, and time requirements are relatively light.
Thanks for writing this post. It was something very interesting to ponder and consider. Sorry for the long response.
Great explanation of hardcore, Erik. M-W.com unfortunately does not have definitions as they apply to specific subjects–in this case, online games. I mean “hardcore” to mean exactly what Erik says: willing to do anything it takes to get the edge over others, not worrying about time investment, preferring if there are some ways for them to get a competitive edge because of their experience (e.g. through inconveniences they can circumnavigate), etc.
I was willing to do all the mind-boggling things Erik so described about two years ago. Now, I’ve been tainted be convenience and faster leveling. I used to be someone who could and would invest tons of time into a game, and would gain a competitive edge through various means. Then I tried out games with more casual aspects and convenient features, and I’m not sure I can ever go back to the “hardcore” type game again.
The question on my mind would be, why?
I’m suggesting that being hardcore is an attitude and a passion. So, I’m trying to decide what feature or game design aspect actually change the attitudes (and even the passions) of a player.
I’m in no way doubting you. I believe you feel (and are) changed. I also suspect you are not alone.
I’m looking to learn something here. I’m hoping maybe you’ll have some insight into why luxury features and lower time requirements in games today are changing the attitudes and passions hardcore players.
My definition of hardcore could be wrong, or my perception of why people are hardcore could be wrong also. Or maybe it has nothing to do with luxury features and lower time requirements. I wonder.
Hopefully I’ll learn something out of this.
Because the convenient features are just too convenient. When you know you can achieve the same “uberness” in a more casual game with significantly less investment, it reduces your drive to play the games that require the huge investment to become uber. The same thing with features. Now that I’ve played games that tell me where the next piece of a quest happens to be and has a journal showing me what I’ve done so far, I can’t go back to games that don’t include those features.
Let’s try a real world parallel or two. Have you ever not had cable TV? If you enjoy shows that are on cable, it’s extremely hard to go back to not having it after you’ve seen it. Have you ever tried Netflix? After I did, I pretty much stopped going to the local Blockbuster or Hollywood video because it’s just too darn inconvenient to drive two miles and physically look for a movie.
Ah, I just came up with a fairly good one: Calculators. Have you ever tried to do statistics without a graphing calculator? Without a calculator at all? Will you ever go back and do statistics with anything other than a graphing calculator after having used one? I can’t.
Farmers were happy to plow fields with ox and plow until machines were invented. After that, the efficiency just became too useful and going back to the old way just doesn’t seem viable.
Maybe real world parallels don’t actually work out, because there’s not really many examples of people purposefully making things hard for themselves. Or is that what hardcore players do? I don’t know.
Is there still the feeling of being better than the next guy in hardcore games if you are a hardcore gamer? I don’t think so. Why? Well, you won’t be. The only people who will play hardcore games are hardcore gamers, who are often driven by achievement. All the casual gamers will be playing different games, so you can’t feel superior to anyone else except less hardcore players. That’s why old school hardcore games had an advantage–there weren’t casual games out there for those who wanted to play them.
Humans in general tend to gravitate toward the path of least resistance, and this is no different in video games. You never know what you’re missing until you try it, and it’s hard to go back to being hardcore after you’ve been casual.
I don’t disagree with what you have said. I actually pretty much agree with you completely.
Taking the path of least resistance is in our nature.
I think though that I’m trying to drive deeper than the level of “people go from hardcore to casual because the new games offer features that make playing easier.”
The more I think on this, maybe your point is that once you’ve played a feature rich game, it is harder to go backward to play a no-frills game. The features are some that you’ve lived without, but now that you have them it’d be like dropping your microwave for a campfire.
I don’t know that I would call that losing your hardcore attitude or passion though. I would say that only if you lost your passion for being a great player at whatever game (regardless of it’s level of feature sophistication.)
Would you agree?
I’m basically saying that “not roughing it” (to put us the Northwoods of Minnesota) is not the same as not going all out to be the best. I’m not saying you haven’t lost your hardcore drive. I’m just trying to first figure out whether or not we are really talking about passion to be the best or if we are talking about an appreciation for good features.
I have a slightly different take on how convenience affects the hardcore.
If the game has features to make achieving relatively ordinary tasks easy(eg. finding a group; travelling from one end of a zone to the other end of another zone; crafting a basic item that can be sold for profit etc.) then all players benefit, whether hardcore or casual.
I don’t regard it as “hardcore” simply to dump a load of time into a game in order to achieve the tasks that are prerequisites to the contextually “real” achievements of your character. That isnt hardcore. Its just anti-immersive.
Anyone can stand outside Mos Eisley killing baby lizards for hours on end in SWG and slowly but surely rack up the skill points. That aint hardcore – thats just a sign of too much time and a lack of imagination of how to make the most of the VW concerned.
Designers should deal with making the gameworld an easier place to operate in and then entertain players with a ton of content. This is exactly what the designers of EQ2 have done. The content in that game is gigantic.
The “hardcore” players then have the option of travelling to the remotest dungeons or raiding for exclusive items. Very casual players can log in, go do some solo killing in one of the overland zones or maybe group and then log off. The way that hardcore gamers play changes. Instead of taking an age to get anything done at all, they can take an age getting something done. That doesnt stop them being hardcore. Time is still required. And it needs to be used intelligently.
And – this is important on this point – there is no magic box which flags a player as “hardcore” or not. Some players might be hardcore levellers. Others are hardcore crafters. Others hardcore raiders. Or a combination of the foregoing. And they go hardcore for different reasons.
I have one toon who is a level 30 crafter bu only level 14 adventurer in EQ2 – Does that make me a hardcore crafter? No. My main is a lvl 61 adventurer. The idea that there are 2 games going on in the same world is wrong for 2 reasons. First, it can be said that there are 5,000 seperate games going on in a world, with one for each player. Each player’s game is created by them based on their ambitions within the virtual world concerned.
This fits with Richard Bartle’s breakdown of players into 4 categories: Explorer, Achiever, Killer or Socialiser (I did that from memory – apologies to Dr Bartle if its inaccurate). There is ample room for hardcore play in each of those categories, but the hardcore socialisers, who love running a big guild, are not competing with the hard core explorers who want to scrawl their tag on the bottom of the deepest dungeon. Every player has their own objectives and thus their own game.
Or there is just one game. Everyone (should) play by the same rules and the toons run in the same virtual world.
Apologies for such a long post (and gratz if you stayed with it to the end!). But the OP and the responses have been really interesting. Like Erik, I’m hoping to learn some stuff from this exchange.
I agree, before I played WoW I never thought I’d enjoy raiding weekly to kill an AI dragon, but now I even subjicate myself to play with sub-par PvP groups because the average player in WoW is terrible at PvP and doesn’t understand basic things such as communication or assisting. There’s simply no good competition on my server so there’s no reason for me to speak up and try to make a group of dis-loyal players that would jump at the prospect of joining a guild that can kill 1 more NPC boss than us and try to make them better. Besides, there’s no reason for it. We still win in BG’s because 95% of WoW players don’t have a clue PvP-wise.
I’d never lower myself like this in any other game but the MMOG market is just so damn stale right now.
I think part of the draw of an MMO for a “hardcore” gamer is the ability to be “better” than most other players. That used to mean you knew all the tricks, the best places to level, the best equipment, quests, etc. You were also willing to invest time and effort into doing and getting all those things.
However, with games like WoW, there are no “hardcore” secrets anymore. It’s fairly easy for everyone to follow quests, get equipment, etc. Sure there are still the raid masters with ultra-gear that casual players don’t have, but that’s about it.
In addition, WoW/DDO/etc have taken away the populations of the older hardcore MMO’s such as EQ/EQII/etc so that only other hardcore players are still playing them.
Those two combined have taken the wind out of many hardcore players, as the reason they are playing no longer exists (to be better than everyone else).
However, I think that Vanguard, with it’s return to difficult gameplay, may be the new MMO for those lost in the storm. Of course, only time will tell…
Lots of interesting points here. Starting with Erik’s latest. Agreed. Casual games don’t destroy the hardcore mentality of hardcore players (to always be the best), it just makes it so they won’t tolerate inconvenience in the future.
I do worry for upcoming games that specifically target the hardcore market, though. Part of the draw, at least for me, was that I was much more of a badass than many other players in these games. I was hardcore, so I was willing to do what it took to prove how uber I was. Casual gamers aren’t going to play hardcore games, so it doesn’t motivate me to play the hardcore game since I’ll be run-of-the-mill there (everyone else who plays is hardcore too). Then again, maybe this will promote more competition.
Great points, Spyte. I personally dislike any barriers to gameplay just as much as the next guy, if not more. This has only be amplified by recent more casual games and all of the convenient features they include. The only hardcore game I would play at this point would be one that is hardcore because of what goes on in the game. That is, political struggle, territorial control, city building, etc. would attract me. Games that have slow progression and are unnecessarily complicated to play scare me off.
Xeon, I agree with everything except that the return to difficult gameplay would attract those lost in the storm. Difficult gameplay is bad (gameplay loosely defined as how you interact with the game world via its interface, how you fight, etc.). Tedium is not fun to me anymore, even though it was at one point because I knew I could advance further than the more casual players.
Also… “Those two combined have taken the wind out of many hardcore players, as the reason they are playing no longer exists (to be better than everyone else).”
Yes, but games that are created specifically for hardcore players won’t have casual players in them, so hardcore players won’t be better than everyone else. Hardcore gamers that aren’t better than most others will likely get disillusioned and quit, and those that stuck around would be “average” overall and might see that as something that sucks.
I am finding it difficult to associate my internal definition of a hardcore gamer with your unstated definition .
It sounds as if you are stating that those willing to perform mundane tasks for hours on end should be considered hardcore gamers – even when they do not enjoy those tasks -. Similarly – a gamer who doesn’t enjoy those mundane tasks and thus gravitates to games where those mundane tasks do not exist is defined as a casual gamer.
My definition of hardcore vs casual is a bit differant.
As the guild master of a mediumish ( 4+ish years ) old guild, my experiance with gamers would have me believe that the definitive “thing” that seperates the hardcore gamer from the casual gamer is time.
Even when you remove other forms of gaming ( FPS, RTS, SIM and Sinple Player RPGs ) and stick just within the MMO genre – a hardcore gamer might not like the grind of EQ2 or WOW – yet might enjoy the cut throat politics and/or social dynamics of a game like Shadowbane and therefore spend all of his/her time becoming a notorious killer rather than spending all of his/her time getting a pretty looking set of new gear ala WOW/EQ2, whereas a casual gamer – while possibly enjoying the same things as the hardcore gamer – simply will not do it as much. Time again being the determining factor between the two.
Bleh – hit the submit button before I was ready. If you ( the moderator ) could add this last bit to my previous post – I would appreciate it.
Because my experiance says that time spent gaming rather than time spent doing mundane ( or non fun tasks within gaming ) is the real differance maker between hardcore and casual gamers, I am hard pressed to agree that a game which dissassociates specific aspects of mundane tasks really constitutes harm on the part of the hardcore gamer or conversely, benefit to the casual gamer.
An example that another poster brought up was traveling. In Guild Wars – providing you have been to the specific city before, you can travel across the world – from one city to another in an instant. That – compared to Everquest (1) where traveling from Qeynos to Freeport could take even an experianced lvl 50 – an hour.
Your argument is that the ” hardcore gamer ” is being harmed ( directly or indirectly ) within Guild Wars because he isn’t required to run that potentially long distance. But if you use my definition ( TIME ) rather than ( Mundane/Boring Tasks ) being the equalizer – you might see that the ability to travel from point a to point b ( ala Guild Wars ) actually harms the casual player much more than it harms the hardcore gamer – while at the same time, allowing the casual gamer to compete alongside or against the hardcore gamer in realms where player skill might be a determining factor in deciding which is a better gamer ( PVP ).
I had to agree with some of your statements. I think that Casual games in the long run could make up a huge percentage of the gaming market. I think in my older age now I tend to want to relax more with my gaming. So having casual gaming elements in a game is more then enough for me. I often time don’t want to play button twister on Mortal Kombat.
First off I would like to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this post, everything so far has been well thought out and extremely thought provoking. I would personally like to add my thoughts on the matter, seeing as how I still view myself as a hardcore gamer. This post is long and I may draw it out longer than I should have but I had a lot to say on the subject.
My first gaming experiences with MMO?s were with EQ1 and later DAOC. Though both of these were not of the extreme hardcore nature of typing in your actions and attacks. I still viewed both of them as huge time sinks, and along the lines of what other posters have been calling hardcore. In both of these games I spent countless hours of my day going through the motions and taking the steps necessary to call myself, and to show others that I was hardcore. During this time I was still in college and I had the luxury of time.
However I leap forward to my current situation. I am now a working man, who spends 8 hours a day sitting at a desk doing paper work, as well as another 2 dealing with traffic both ways. Now I am sure that in your mind you are saying to yourself that there is no way that this person can be hardcore. Well my purpose of this post is to prove you wrong. The reason that I am still able to achieve many of the accomplishments that I was able to in those older games is because the time sinks such as horrible travel times and insane respawn timers have been removed. I leveled straight through WoW in barely a week played and less than a month real time. I joined a hardcore guild and raided with them every night till I got a full set of the best gear in the game at the time. I then became bored with aspects such as the horrible pvp and the routine end game instances, thus I switched back to my old DAOC toon which barely held my interest for a month. Thus I have ventured to EQ2 in hopes of finding something I lost when I quit the original; I started on March 9th and am now level 60 with 12 days played. I have a pending invite to one of the top three guilds on the server who are closing in on completing the end game KOS instances.
I love the gaming experience, and thoroughly enjoy seeing people that were level 20 when I was 10 still stuck in their 40?s while I am closing in on finishing my exp grind. Now to me EQ2 is one of the most hardcore MMO?s out right now, though not as hardcore as some would like. I believe that I have gotten what I was hoping for when I started playing, and I have high expectations for the raids that I will soon be enjoying with my new guild. In the theme of the post I will give what I believe constitutes a hardcore player. It is someone who knows what they are doing, and has a vast amount of knowledge in the MMO world. It is someone who strives to be better than the next player and knows what they need to do to achieve that. It isn?t someone who sits in front of their computer logging endless hours playing a game, but instead someone who invests quality hours accomplishing the key parts of a game that will allow them to advance to the next tier, and eventually the top tier.
Great definition of hardcore, marc. I discussed what hardcore means with Aggro Me for a while at Fan Faire, and I decided that hardcore is actually a term independent of time. I’m planning on writing up a post explaining how and why hardcore and casual are terms that have no time component at some point, but haven’t quite fully solidified the argument in my mind.
In my post Dear MMORPG (link above), I tried to touch on the infatuation period that is at the beginning of most MMORPG “relationships” which may mask some of the underlying problems that are there from the start (this also covers nerfs to a degree, since a nerf that creates problems in the relationship was already a problem in the first place in the overall game). “Hardcore” games tend to mask these problems longer with their complexity in driving the gamer in finding a way to over come them. I contend that casual games don?t kill hardcore players, it is the standard rock/paper/scissors, level-n-class, item driven systems that kill hardcore players. Casual game features are the flowers everyday that keep the relationship going despite the acknowledgment by the player that there is a problem in the first place. Which is the true reason that hardcore gamers are killed off. Casual games simply offer better relationship (albeit it is still flawed) than the hardcore games do, because while the player knows that it is flawed, they also know that the cost could be worse.