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.