The Hardcore/Casual Divide - Such Bull

I play games a lot.

Not many days go by when I haven't spent at least an hour playing them.

I consider myself to be pretty good at most games, and rather adept at getting good at new ones.

Yet I would never call myself a hardcore gamer.

I've never understood the term properly. To me it seems to be a way for the 'elite' to describe themselves as something that sounds better than, "I play games way too much." Why is there this need in some gamers to label themselves in such a way that, from what I can tell from a lot of forums at least, gives the impression that they are hot headed, egotistical, whiny pricks who can't take their precious favoured games being ranted on?

Then there's the casual gamer, a term coined by the 'hardcore' to describe those they feel beneath them. Any game considered casual is normally immediately bashed by said hardcores, with claims such as lack of story, simplistic gameplay etc.

It's as if these hardcore gamers, a demographic which takes up only a small percentage of those who play games I might add, don't want people who only play games for fun to play them. Y'know, the ones who actually realise what games are for.

I know a few people who seem to play games purely for the sake of beating them, whether they enjoy the games or not. One of my friends played Fable 2 and, despite claiming it was pretty bad, continued to play it anyway. True, if I'd spent thirty quid on a game I'd play it through, but my point here is why play a game you dislike, with the only reward is the boast factor of 'I completed the game'? Even then, when the truth is revealed at 'I completed the game I didn't like' it makes the whole aspect of beating the game a little less flavoursome.

Games are primarily for a fun. A game which isn't fun to someone shouldn't be considered a bad thing. I don't dis those who like Cooking Mama and games such as that on Wii and DS because if that's what they find fun, then good for them. Just because I enjoy games like Call of Duty, Half Life, Halo, Eternal Darkness, No More Heroes, House of the Dead etc. doesn't mean I'm not partial to a bit of Rock Band, Peggle, Wonderful End of the World, Osmos, Eets, and whatever other games I play that many would deem 'casual', as if it's a truly bad thing.

One arguement I've heard is that it's ruining the gaming industry as a whole.

Big problem with this is that it's targetted mainly at the Wii, a Nintendo console. Nintendo have never been big on the hardcore side of things, aside from Contra, Mega Man and the real SMB2. Even then, those were on their oldest of old consoles. N64 and up, it became a lot harder anyway to find these so called hardcore games, with Perfect Dark and Goldeneye being the only ones to come to mind. Even then, these eventually spawned Timesplitters which seems to me like the most casual FPS out there.

True, there's so much shit on Ninty's latest consoles, but within the sludge there are a few shining diamonds of great games available for those who prefer a game with killing, with excellent artistic style. True, this is done mainly due to the limitations of the Wii's graphics capabilities, but that's a suitable price to pay to deviate from the realistic graphics of the modern age a little bit. No More Heroes with its cel-shading, Madworld with its comic book, almost light-hearted Sin City-esque style and Super Mario Galaxy with its incredibly bright and colourful scheme spring instantly to mind when I think of this.

And while Nintendo has these problems, the other two players of the console race are not at all devoid of shit. The amount of generic FPS, racing and sports games that come out on those consoles (that are also widely hated by hardcore fans which I don't understand too much... It's like they want every single game to be like Counter Strike or something) is staggering, with immense use of licence branding over them to appeal to a wider audience.

This ties in well with my last article really. People like the games that appeal to them. For a group of people to say, "this game is bad, get *Insert completely different genre game here* instead," won't change a damn thing if that person doesn't like those kind of games. Someone who plays games they enjoy to get the best times, the best rewards, the best scores etc. will be the ones who are hardcore, not those that play Valve and Infinity Ward games constantly whether they are good at them or not.

Opinions, criticism, and feeling yours is above everyone else's...

I very lightly touched upon this subject in my earlier post about fanbases. Opinions are a very awkward thing to talk about, and I'm not going to pretend I know much about how the brain forms such opinions. One thing I do know, however, is that opinions are different.

Whether you prefer Halo or Half Life is perfectly valid as an opinion. It simply reflects what you prefer to have in the games you play. What I'm struggling to understand is the way certain people feel their opinion allows them to state that the game they prefer gives that person a higher status in life in comparison to the person who enjoys a different game more.

I mean, seriously, it's a game, you like it, someone else does. Get over it.

There's also the use of opinion within a debate or arguement. While opinion heavily influences whether you will like a game or not, it is NOT a suitable tool to use in debate or even just a review of a game. Both Halo and Half Life are good games, although I repeatedly bash Halo for its highly simplistic gameplay in comparison, and I gladly admit to that being my opinion. Surely I can't be right among the six or seven million people who have bought and love the three games of the Halo series (even though most of those sales can be attributed to the advertising the game received on release of the XBox, or gamers who dislike Halo in an attempt to see if the series has gotten better yet).

The most common use of opinion from what I have seen is "Well that's just your opinion," as if this is a suitable way of ending an arguement. If anything, this should be something used at the beginning of said arguement, and even then, there are aspects of games that are pretty much objectively bad, if only because they are not suitable in an interactive medium.

Poor controls would be a big one, and no amount of 'you can get used to it' arguements beat good old fashioned good controls. This would be the difference between having a bajillion buttons that do everything the player could need to use, while good controls would be the more and more popular 'context sensitive' controls, with a 'use' button allowing the player to do everything the character needs to do, but only when they seriously need to do it to continue with the game. True, this limits freedom of the player somewhat, but most games are linear anyway, where context sensitive controls make sense. Even sandbox games like Saints Row utilise them, such as the 'climb on cars' button performing an action which I have currently forgotten when not near a car. Probably reloads or something.

Unskippable cutscenes are another one, although then again this may be a statement influenced by opinion. But here's my example: Metal Gear Solid, filled with so much bullshit I could grow several crops of food with it, allows you to skip the cutscenes. This is especially useful on multiple playthroughs. I don't want to sit through the same bullshit again because I'm playing through again. Even if it's something as simple as having lost the save file. This sways my opinion of Half Life a little, because it has a total lack of cutscenes, with every bit of story within gameplay and therefore unskippable. The amount of times I've had to sit and listen to, "Wake up, mister Freeman... Wake up and smell the ashes..." is gradually wearing on my mental capacity, but I digress...

Leave opinion out of review and out of debate when talking about games. In fact, remove it from every entertainment medium. There's many Youtube videos calling out rap as being unskillful and boring in comparison to other genres such as rock, and using this as an example as to why rap lovers should stop loving rap. But a person's opinion is based on a totally different set of attributes, a reflection of that person's personality, a reflection of their history, and the same can be applied to games. If people want a game to challenge their intellect in quick paced strategy, they would play a real time strategy. If someone wants to blow off some steam, or simply relax after a long, hard day, games like Halo or Timesplitters will seem more compelling with their much simpler approach to gaming.

Until gamers can realise their own opinions are not useful in swaying other peoples' opinions, we'll always have fanboy wars. It's just annoying that most of the gaming population are either elitist dickweeds who can't stand their precious 'hardcore' games being blashphemed (Most PC gamers), or 12 year old kids with shrieky voices who demand people don't kill them so they can kill other people (Most console gamers).