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I think it's safe to agree that there are casual gamers and hard core gamers. The casual gamers hop onto WoW, play for an hour or two, level up once, maybe twice on the weekend, do some questing, sell some crap, then happily go on their way. The hard-core gamers go on 24 hour binges, knowing all of the secrets of power leveling and using them to their fullest just so they can run a massive raid the next day.
What I take issue with is the definition of "casual game". I really don't believe there is such a thing. Let's take a look at a so-called casual game: Diner Dash.
I'm sure you've all seen the ads, some of you, like me, have probably played it. It starts off slow and simple. Teaches you the basics of feeding your customers, bussing tables, etc. But as the game continues on, it gets faster and harder and more twitch intensive. By the time you have four or five restaraunts the game is ANYTHING but casual. It requires the same level of speed and hand/eye coordination that Gears of War does... yet the casual gamers aren't attracted to that game... why not?
"Because it's a HARDCORE game, of course!"
Well, see, here's where I start taking issue with those terms. From talking to friends who are casual gamers, I've found that they actually ARE interested in games like Gears of War and Call of Duty, but they don't feel that they know how to play it well enough. I think the reason for that is the lack of a good teaching method in games.
I've seen debates in magazines and on forums on how to seamlessly integrate a learning level into a game without losing your pacing or your immersion factor. Let's face it "OMG! YOU'RE THE BEST SOLDIER EVER... and you're going through basic training again for some overly contrite reason..." is a weak story point. It does the job and it teaches your player how the game works, but it kills pacing to have someone walking you through and it's just an odd story point.
I think we're over complicating it (as game designers, we often do!). Let's look at a classic game, one that we've all played: Super Mario Bros. for the NES. First level you had three basic actions: Jump, Run, Shoot Fireballs. Next level we introduce flying enemies, so now you've got Jump, Run, Duck, Shoot Fireballs. Next level we introduce moving platforms, so now we've got Jump, Run, Duck, Shoot Fireballs, Timed Jump. This continues on until the end of the game is all about hand/eye and timing. Mario has been enjoyed for years by both casual and hardcore gamers alike. And I think it's because of the way that it's approached that both types of gamers can enjoy it.
So let's stop and think about the games being made now adays. All to often there is this preconcieved and usually sobconscious notion that "Everyone knows how to play a shooter!" so rather than starting slow, in an effort to have more action packed and dynamic stories, our player often gets tossed headlong into the action. That right there is a disconnect from the casual gamer.
Another thing is the controls. Remember the old NES controller? D-pad, A, B, Start Select. Now let's think about the XBox 360 controller. A,B,X,Y, D-pad, Right Bumper, Left Bumper, Right Trigger, Left Trigger, Two joysticks, L-Joystick Button, R-Joystick Button, Start, and Select. Wow o_O Now let's be honest, most of our games don't use ALL of those buttons, and to truly work in a 3D environment, you need more control, however I think there's a lot of streamlining that could be done with our controls to make things better. Control schema is far to often left under done in game dev.
We're missing a market. By taking a little more time to teach the player to play and making our hardcore games more accessible for the casual gamers, we're getting ourselves into an additional market, which means more success for our games. The mentality of making games for gamers is fun, but we have to remember that there are many different types of gamers and try to make them good for all.
Thoughts?
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This seems like a big hurdle to jump, and a solution would be great. What that solution would be is beyond me though, but the point of this piece is well taken.
Personally, I find almost all "hardcore" gamers to be casual gamers as well. I may be playing "hardcore" games like Disgaea3, or Gears of War 2, but that won't stop me from playing a couple rounds of Peggle, and I still play many casual "traditional" games on my phone like mah-jong solitare or go.
I suspect many self-described hardcore games really just have bad designs, making them difficult to learn and inaccessible to casual players. I know I've seen conversations about game design where options that would make a game more accessible get shot down by the macho hardcore-or-go-home attitude. In this kind of environment, people are going to think twice about offering criticisms or suggestions that aren't "hardcore" enough to be accepted. I hope that the rise in awareness of the casual market (such as your post here!) will help break down these kinds of attitudes among game developers.
On top of it, aiming and moving in all directions in 3d space while using the keyboard/mouse or 2 analog sticks is a lot harder than moving the mouse and clicking. just grab any casual gamer and let him/her play portal (first level). you will immidiately notice that moving and aiming is far from being natural as it is to most hardcore gamers.
Am I saying more teaching is a bad thing? No way. But I'm also saying that we all were casual at one time, and we figured it out, and I don't remember it being painful to figure out. So there really is no excuse for a casual gamer not to take time and learn the game if they're serious about wanting to. I am not convinced that someone simply "CAN'T" learn current games just because they are new or casual.
It isn't that casual players are *unable* to learn new control schemes, it is that the are intimidated by them enough to be *unwilling* to learn. Making the controls easier or teaching the controls more effectively is simply a good way to help people that aren't used to playing get over the intimidation factor that most people feel towards modern games and game controllers.
This goes back to Aaron's point about the method of teaching used in Mario. It starts fairly simple and works its way up to more advanced techniques. This is very similar to Portal, which is one of the best examples of a game that purposely teaches you how to play it over the length of the experience. The classic boot camp tutorial in CoD games is, in comparison, a ridiculous introduction to first person shooters.
I'm definitely glad to see that I'm not the only one thinking this way!
@ eyal:
Really? Aiming is different from pointing and clicking? ;) I think you'd be surprised at how well casual game players would do at something like Portal if they've gotten good at the point-and-click style games. Before long, they'd be natural, I'm certain.
@ B N
I disagree. The general concept hasn't changed at all, you're right, however the way the game plays has changed drastically. They're much more fast paced, and they tend to throw the player in head first into a frenzied battle. Think about the first level of Doom compared to the first level of Call of Duty. You had a few baddies who were slow moving and relatively easy to kill. As the game progressed, you had more baddies who were faster and harder to kill. It's the same slope that I mentioned before, that we're seeing less and less of in modern games. The "Everyone know how to play..." mentality.
@ Jeff
EXACTLY! It's like I said in my post and to B N, modern "hardcore" games are much more likely to simply toss the player in head first. That's a COMMON mistake of designers lately, and I'm not even immune. We've got to get back to the slop of learning as opposed to the sink or swim mentality.
I disagree. The comparison of DOOM to CoD isn't the fairest. CoD is a war game so it will seem more hectic, but essentially it is the same model of low amount of enemies at the beginning and greater number of waves as the game progresses. None of that hectic stuff that you are thinking of can harm the player (sounds, imagery in the distance), if it was stripped away you would have a few baddies who were slow moving and relatively easy to kill. I know you're thinking that the hectic feel of the game will, even if it can't harm the player, put the casual player off in comparison to the calmer DOOM, but I don't necessarily agree that DOOM is less hectic. I still remember the screeching and weird sounds in DOOM while just walking around that were meant to create this hectic atmosphere, but I never thought of them as something to harm me until I was proven otherwise, which I often was when an enemy popped up behind me. So I'd even go so far as to argue that DOOM was less casual friendly than CoD with all the ambushes from behind when compared to the CoD model where the enemy is always in front of the player and presented to them as a challenge they can identify.
If you try to take "hardcore" games and make them more casual friendly (and sometimes I think we really lose a lot when we use this dichotomy), you're assuming two implicit things: 1) Your casual crowd wants a longer experience with at least some enhanced level of complexity. 2) Your hardcore crowd is willing to play a less complex game if the mechanics are there.
Say you take Warcraft 2. Now vis a vis a modern RTS, it's more simple. Only two factions, less units, three resources, relatively small unit caps, straight forward tech progression, limited control options. It seems much more simplified today, and yet at its time it was a cutting-edge RTS title. Even Halo Wars, which has been criticized as too simplified, is certainly more complex.
Perhaps the learned skills of the average RTSer has allowed for the extra complexity over the years. But I don't see what games casual players are playing that would make them any more skilled to tackle WC2 now than they would've been when it was released. When I think casual, I think a certain set of expectations. Chief among them is the desire to jump into a game and be playing at a meaningful level within a couple minutes of starting.
You can try to ramp up the difficulty a la Portal, but I'm not sure someone with no gaming experience is going to be able to match even a gently sloping curve. And while you're doing that, consider that you're frustrating your traditional audience (i.e. the predefined market for this game) with a level of difficulty that, for most of the game, will be absurdly easy.
It's a good goal, and in some genres and applications it'll probably work. But there's also an equal danger of trying to play to both ends of the spectrum, and satisfying no one.
The idea of difficulty levels is also important, I like how CoD does it, go through training at the start, and it assigns you a difficulty, rather than letting an inexperienced gamer from stumbling into something that will frustrate them. For an experienced gamer it gives some form of novelty (I did it a couple of times over going, "naw I'm way better than that") and ultimately the experienced gamer can overwrite the games choice if they choose. Hell if you wanted you can actually reduce the number of mechanics a player encounters based on difficulty. Say for instance you want every player regardless of difficulty to encounter all the enemies moves by the end of the game, that's cool, just for easy players give them a nice gentle curve, that only in the last couple of levels they encounter the enemies at their "toughest" (subjective cos they're playing on easy after all), for players who choose the hardest difficulty, give enemies access to all their strongest abilities right from the get go.
I also think it's true what B N mentions about how easily a lot of us picked up games, but as I've seen time and again, just because it was easy for me doesn't mean it's easy for someone else. I learn fast, it's something I've always been able to do, my sister, not so much. I love shooting games and have played them for years, was self taught and never really had any difficulties. Now with the advent of Halo, my sis really really wanted to play, but it took a good 2 hours of cajoling and praise before she got the hang of basic movement (this was her very first fps). Now it took a while, but I'm quite proud to say that she's almost as good as I am at almost every fps I play (and believe me, that's pretty skilled =P ), and loves them to bits. Now if I hadn't been there to help her through the game, she would probably have given up (or maybe not, halo has a halfway to decent tutorial), or at least if it had been any other game, getting her to play another fps again would be difficult.
My ultimate point is that Aaron is right, there's an entire market of people who are at least curious about our "hardcore" games, but are either intimidated by the controls, actually incapable of learning them in the situations provided, or just turned away by the stigma attached to them as "hardcore" games and this market could be accommodated, it would just take a little thinking through before the doing.
If I would be casual player & I have time & I do not know what to do… I will play a videogame with the following conditions: It must be screen-clear, not CoD or something like that, and a VERY intuitive gameplay. If I have to do ANY effort = it is not fun, so I give up. Obviously for Hardcore gamers those are not the play conditions when they choose a game…. basically: It looks GREAT, and after you can play the same as usual ;) …
There are people that have more or less time, people with more or less patience, people with more or less twitch capacity, and people with more or less brains.
When you create a game you must target it, IF you target it to reach "everyone" then the game must have absolutely good design, in fact that is what results in awesome-sellers like Tetris, so, how to make games stuck on "hardcore" level be acceptable to "casual" players?
First you must detect the problem of the game, then solve it, most of games fail at teaching the player, others have overly complex rules, or interface, or obtuse controls, after solving that, the game may still be too hard...
Then it comes difficulty level...
Trying to make like was done with Spore, or Prince of Persia, where the game was bizarrely simplified, and in case of Prince of Persia make it not even a game anymore, is a bad design, not good one.
Prince of Persia for example, it turns your character automatically, and do some other auto things, and whatnot, why not make these features linked with diffculty level and disable them if the person want the game hard?
My philosophy is that if you make a good game, teach the player properly, has difficulty levels or a great difficulty curve, and a well crafted interface (both physical, the controllers and GUI, on the screen), then anyone will play, there are no such hardcore or casual.
Maybe I should explain myself better. point and clicking is the most common action you perform on Windows OS. it's like going to your desktop and clicking an the internet explorer icon. it's always there, in the same spot waiting for you to click it and everyone knows how to do it.
Aiming in Cod is different since the player you are trying to shoot is constantly moving and jumping which makes things much harder, on top of that these players are actually shooting back at you while other players that you can't even see since they are behind you are shooting at you too. to avoid them you have to constantly move and now you have two moving object that you need to evaluate in order to aim.
Imagine trying to click your internet explorer Icon while it's keep moving trying to avoid you clicking on it , while all the other icons are doing the same thing. some of them are off screen, behind you.
That's what I meant by Aiming vs point and click. Hope it makses sense.
To be honest, I think you guys are speaking more to personal preference rather than casual v hardcore here. No matter how good the design is, there's always going to be people who simply don't like the game you've made. The goal isn't to make a game that everyone likes. Like you guys said, that's impossible and when it's tried it usually results in no one liking it. The trick is creating a game that is accessible to everyone. So that your hard core gamer can jump in and love it, and your casual gamer can do the same. That's MUCH easier to do, and is often accessible.
@Christopher:
You've nailed it here, my friend. That's exactly my point. We have to plan, we have to think about how to ease the casual gamer in while keeping the hardcore happy. It's not impossible, and it's possible to do it without alienating either side, but it takes some additional planning in the pre-production stage to really make it happen well.
@Helder:
I think we're actually on the same page here :) There are hardcore and casual gamers, and they're defined by the things you noted (time constraints, twitch capacity, etc), but there shouldn't be hardcore and casual games. Not if they're well designed and fully thought out.
@eyal:
No no, I understood. Your explination just struck me as ironic :) I still disagree, however. Many of the casual games require the players to click on moving objects while keeping track of other objects and stats. These things could easily translate into an FPS, if the player was eased into the game rather than tossed in head first. Know what I mean?
It should really be "old school" and "new school" players.
hrm I think hardcore and casual are probably bad words but they certainly represent what they're trying to. A casual game being something you can pick up play and put down again within a very short period of time. It's not talking about a game that gets played more or less.
For instance, solitaire vs wow;
Solitaire = casual
WoW = Hardcore (though not the most hardcore of the hardcore (sorry for my english I couldn't think of a better way to put it))
Most people play these games for a relatively similar net amount of time. Solitaire is a casual game though because you can easily pick it up, play it for about 10minutes and put it down again while accomplishing something significant within the game world.
WoW on the other hand, cannot be picked up straight away (one reason being a difficulty curve making it harder to learn than a card game like solitaire), and it cannot be put down again after 10 minutes with anything meaningfully accomplished, hell it can take 10 minutes just to run from one location to another.
NOTE: Yes I know Aaron mentioned casual gamers playing wow and I have just described it as a "hardcore game" my reasons for doing so will soon become clear.
Casual Gamer and Hardcore gamer are really just people who display a preference for either sub genre. The point of this article is really that someone we label as a "Casual Gamer" can also show a distinct interest in wanting to learn and play a "Hardcore" game, but are usually put off by the simple things that in fact cause it to be labelled as hardcore in the first place. The biggest of these factors being the time taken to learn the game.
Now although in general a "casual game" needs to have a quick pick up and put down time, players often will sit and play said casual for several play throughs resulting in a much longer play session. Wow is evidence that the casual gamer can enjoy a "hardcore" game. (note that this is about to get very convoluted). WoW, once learned, can be played meaninglessly, you can go online, kill some stuff, chat with some people, sell some junk and go offline, never caring about the intricacies of attack rotations and aggro management or overhealing. Ultimately this doesn't take long, you can play half hour to an hour play sessions easily.
Now wow still doesn't attract a large portion of the "casual" market, instead it just tends to garner a lot of "hardcore" gamers playing casually, now this occurs, hardcore gamers do have a tendency to play casual games when limited by time constraints or when they just don't feel like sitting down to a grind session. Now note that while this occurs its very rare to see it happen the other way around. You're not likely to see a casual gamer sitting down to a 24hr halo marathon.
Ultimately as far as the wording is concerned "casual" is a good word, I think perhaps though that hardcore could be switched out for something like "Serious" or "Intent", maybe even "Dedicated" or "Persistent", unfortunately each of these words could be applied to casual gamers under the right situations, so perhaps thats why we have the word hardcore in the first place, it's a nice umbrella term for something harder to get into, something more serious than the norm.
You guys are both making epic points here, and chris, I don't disagree with you classification of WoW as a hardcore game, but I also don't disagree with my classification of it as a Casual game. And I think that is why WoW is so successful in the market. The casuals can pick it up, play for an hour, go on about their lives, or the hardcores can grab it and, like you said, grind for hours on end. It's because the game has a difficulty ramp and teaches the player through doing, like the other games I've mentioned do. To me, WoW is the epitome of the perfectly designed game on the market today. It doesn't looke ridiculously amazing, with the latest and greatest effects, but the truth is ANYONE can pick it up and be good enough to be competitive at it within an hour. THAT'S what we should be striving for as an industry. The type of games that pique ANYONES intrest, not just select groups.
Frankly, the more I read your responses and the more I ponder the matter myself, I think we've crippled ourselves as an industry by planting these designations on people. "This game has to be casual," or "this game has to be hardcore". It draws us into a box. Where as "this game has to be GOOD!" leaves it wide open. So I say we do away with the name game and the pidgeon holes and make games for gamers, all gamers - casual and hardcore alike. Soon enough, phenoms like WoW won't be as rare.
For example, I used to play Battlefield 1942 years ago with my teenage sons when they were in high school, and I was a reasonably good player, for an old guy. I would usually be in the top 3 on the score board, and frequently would be #1. My favorite weapons were an assault machine gun, sniper rifle, or an armored vehicle. One drawback that I had, interestingly enough, was due to prior military experience. I would always aim for the center of mass (except with a sniper rifle. Aimed head shots against an unsuspecting target are irresistable). This was a reliable technique, but it takes several shots to kill an opponant with a center of mass shot, but only one shot with most weapons with a more difficult head shot.
My sons, on the other hand, were in an entirely different class altogether. A lot of this was due to the fact that they had a lot more time to devote to playing the game, but they were just amazing, particularly my second son, Kevin. His weapon of choice was the engineer's rifle, which packed a terrific punch but had a very slow rate of fire. I'd played engineers as well, but usually just on maps that featured a lot of tank vs tank play, rather than infantry heavy maps. Kevin almost always played an engineer even if no tanks were available, and he was better with that rifle than I was with either an machine gun. Instead of aiming for the center of mass, like I always did, he had an uncanny ability to make head shot after head shot, which was deadly with the engineer's rifle. As a sniper, he was a better shot without a scope that I was with a sniper rifle, taking out targets at the bleeding edge of visibility as fast as he could bring the aim point to bear on them.
He could run full speed into a group of enemy players, twisting, turning, and jumping, and could head shot six players frequently before they would get one shot off against him. If our side was running well ahead on the score and he was feeling bored, he'd kill half of them with the rifle, and finish the remainder with a pistol or a knife. His style of play was an art form! If we were playing online together, I might come in second on total points, but never first, and he would frequently double my scores.
Rotten kid! ;)