Monday, April 5, 2010

Hardecore vs Casual: The Bloody War

Over the last couple of years, the "casual gamer" has been making its voice heard in the industry. The gaming community seems to now be completely polarized into 2 camps: the Hardcore and the Casual. And these two camps do not get along.

Many people have asked why. Why can't the hardcore get along with the casuals? Why do casuals get flamed so often on gaming websites?

I think the first problem is that people have different ideas of what the word "gamer" means.

Over the last couple of decades, gamers have proudly created their own culture. The head of the UCCS Game Design and Development program, Dr Chamillard, told a story of spending an entire night during his college days playing one arcade game (I forget which) until his finger was bleeding.

His students then chuckled, nodding their heads in an understanding fashion.


For many of us, this falls into the definition of a true gamer. Someone for whom the gaming experience becomes something more. It's a matter of pride. We stay up late to get in just one more level. We follow our favorite developers and their current projects. We comment on where we think our favorite games are going. We are emotionally invested, on some level. We have a bond with our fellow gamers.

It has been almost like a secret society. But, our secret is out. Over the last few years, gaming has branched out. It reaches out to the non-gamer. The casual. The people that don't want to spend more than a few minutes a day on the game of their choice.

iPods, smartphones, Facebook etc have all started introducing games specifically designed to attract people that don't know what FPS, RPG, RTS etc stand for. They have little idea of the vastness of the rabbit hole they have tumbled down.

The most notable major game to succumb to the casuals is Blizzard's World of Warcraft. These casuals come in, and are astounded when their critiques and comments aren't accepted with open minds.

Some of it, admittedly, is the elitism that runs rampant in our virtual world of high scores and epeens. But not all of it.

Most of us feel we earned the title of "Gamer". We played multiple games. We took an interest in the design. We joined the aforementioned secret society as it were. To see someone who's only gaming experience is a flash-based game using that sacrosanct title is annoying, even to the best of us.

But it runs deeper than that. Casuals speak of abuse and derogation at the hands of the hardcore. But it's a two way street. The hardcores are called basement-dwellers, assumed to have no life or relationships. We get mocked for defending our games. This certainly does nothing for the case of the casual.

The worst, and most rampant in our society of information-at-a-click where Wikipedia makes you feel like an expert, is the "know-it-all" attitude so many people take on.

The next few examples are going to come from World of Warcraft, as I feel that it has some of the best examples of what casuals, or at least a certain breed of casuals, can do to a game. A true representation that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

WoW has become a phenomenon. It has taken what was a very niche market and exploded it to the most popular MMO in the world. With a staggering 11 million subscribers, they have done a great deal bringing casuals into the realm of gaming.

This has many pros. I've seen families play together, providing a bond between parents and siblings through shared experience. More gamers means a more universal acceptance of the gamer culture. Admitting you play video games no longer contains the connotation that you are a "complete nerd".

But not all change is necessarily good. Particularly in the WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, change seems to be coming at the cost of quality. Casual gamers, rather than tailoring their own experience around their play-time limitations, are demanding more and more that the game conform around their needs. And the sense of entitlement in many of these requests is absolutely astounding.

These players in particular are a sub-group of the casuals, and whom the "good" casuals get lumped in with. These players are what I call "The Lazy Whiners."

It is these players that the hardcore are truly raging against, and why, I believe, the good casuals are merely casualties in the crossfire.

I've seen players complaining that raids are too long and should be able to be fully completed in a single 3-4 hour sitting, without requiring a huge learning curve on new content. This causes an unbelievable (and I feel justified) outrage amongst the hardcore. Raids have always been meant to be the truly epic. The biggest battles and most dangerous foes. They were always meant to be what was reserved for the people that had the time and dedication to apply themselves.

The Whiners, when they have this pointed out to them, simply reply "Then it's time for change. Unlike you, I have a life and I can't raid on a more standard schedule because of x, y and z. Why is it fair that I pay for a game when I cannot play all the content?"

I think the better question is "Why did you buy a game for which you are unable to fulfill the requirements for endgame?" WoW has achievements, lesser dungeons, and even a handful of smaller raids for the casual player that can only log on one or two days a week for a relatively short amount time.

This is the only hobby I see this attitude becoming prevalent. I don't see people saying "It's not fair I can't play on the varsity football team just because I can't show up for practice." Again, when this is pointed out, these self-titled gamers say "But that's real life. This is just a video game."

Just. A video game.

When told that the current setup is how the game is supposed to be played, the whiner replies "Well that's how it used to be, but the game belongs to casuals now. We should get whatever we want."

 I have even seen no shortage of posts made to openly mock the hardcore after a change made to suit the whiners is made.

Now we start to hit the crux of the problem: casuals see their games, all games even, as being temporary pasttimes that should fit into their box of what is "fun" and "easy". But let's put in a few more examples to see if we can establish a pattern.

Throughout Lich King, but especially in the weeks leading up to patch 3.3.3, there was a flood of threads on the suggestion forums asking for Frozen Orbs to be "greed only" because other players were rolling Need on them, and they apparently didn't have a right to. The argument usually went something like this:

Whiner:     "People are rolling need on the orbs. No one has any reason to hit need on the orb. They are stealing it! Please change it so it is greed roll only."
Gamer:     "People have plenty of reasons to roll need. Professions, crafting, or even just cause. Big deal. Why can't you just hit the need button yourself?"
Whiner:     "Because needing on orbs is morally wrong [I kid you not, this argument was used often] and it is Blizzard's job to make sure that I have an enjoyable time playing their game."
Gamer:     "It takes only a second to inform your group that you are rolling need on the orb. It takes minimal effort."
Whiner:     "I don't care. It's not my problem. It's Blizzard's."

Here we see the lack of accountability that is evident in our lawsuit-happy society. "It's everyone else's job to make sure I'm happy. I should never have to expend effort to make sure my needs are met."

This attitude perpetuates itself further through WoW in other areas. "I raid with people I don't know who set the loot system to master looter, then take all the items. This is Blizzard's problem. I should not have to expend effort finding trustworthy raid leaders, or in finding a guild that meets my scheduling needs."

"Why do I have to raid to get top-end gear? I don't need it [as in raiders need top gear to progress further within the instance] but why am I being denied it?"

The list goes on ad infinitum. "Why should I accept that certain aspects of the game are unavailable to me just because I only play an hour or two a week?"

When told that these things are available if you're willing to work for them, the response is "Just because you don't have a life doesn't mean I don't. It's just a game. Games aren't supposed to require effort. They're supposed to easy and just for fun."

Now we start to hit the key issues. These Lazy Whiners, hiding under the casual tag, call themselves gamers. They claim loudly that their opinions are just as good as anyone else's. Then, they turn around and undermine the medium at every turn. They reach out and demand that all games they have an interest, but not the time, to play dumb down their mechanics and gameplay to suit them. Not all changes are bad. I like that raiding has become more accessible (if a little too watered down in some areas) and the hardcore are given a variety of hardmodes and heroic difficulty to satisfy their urges. It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.

And just as the casuals seem to lump all the hardcore players under the heading of "40-yr old virgins with no life living in their parents' basement", the hardcores are just as quick to lump all casual players in with the Lazy Whiners.

Overall, I have found that hardcores have nothing against casual players, if that player "knows their place" as it were. By this, I mean the casual understands that they may or may not be able to experience all the content out there, and accepts that this is a limitation of their own schedule, rather than some conspiracy on the part of the developer to exclude them.

When a casual posts asking "These are my limitations in playing, this is what I would like to experience. Any suggestions on how to make it work?" they are typically met with responses that point them to places where they can find what they want (looking for guilds whose schedule fits their time constraints, how to find effective pick up groups etc).

But unfortunately, I don't see a real peace between the two breeds of gamers until a number of things change: (1) The casual gamers need to grasp that they are not really "the future" of gaming. They will certainly impact the industry greatly, but they should not expect every game they enjoy to conform to their scheduling limitations.
(2) Both sides need to accept that most of them are in the happy middle ground of people who enjoy a game. Both sides are quick to get up in arms against the other. But not all casuals are morons who want every game dumbed down to their level, and not all hardcores are elitists that believe your input is only valid if you have "uberleet skillz".
(3) Gaming houses such as Blizzard need to stop caving so steeply in favor of the casuals. Doing so is alienating their loyal fanbase whose input is what brought the game to greatness. There can be separate areas of fun for both sides, and the house needs to take a stand and say "Sorry, but if you don't have the time, you're just going to have to miss out on this one. But here are some more casual-oriented things for you to do."
(4) Our culture needs to abandon the self-entitled, lack of personal responsibility, and demand for instant gratification requiring no effort that has become a plague upon our entire culture, not just gaming.

There are more of course. But these four would surely be a giant step in the right direction for relative peace within the growing gaming community.

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