There are no casual gamers.

[Ratman_tf]

http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html

"There is no casual gamer. There is no hardcore gamer. There is only the downmarket and the upmarket."

Oh, and it has graphs and charts! 

[Margalis]

Some good content but the dude needs an aggressive editor. Same point repeated 5 times.

[schild]

Basic RPG is more casual than those 3D titles? The most important chart there is just outright wrong.

And his examples are terrible. Early Final Fantasy was more hardcore than today's Final Fantasies.

Epic RPG is more casual than Tactical Shooters. In fact, I'd put Tactical Shooters (short of MAYBE Call of Duty) above SRPG. jSRPG needs to be seperated from dorkass 4x Space Sims and shit also. They're far more casual.

[Ratman_tf]

Basic RPG is more casual than those 3D titles? The most important chart there is just outright wrong.

And his examples are terrible. Early Final Fantasy was more hardcore than today's Final Fantasies.

Epic RPG is more casual than Tactical Shooters. In fact, I'd put Tactical Shooters (short of MAYBE Call of Duty) above SRPG. jSRPG needs to be seperated from dorkass 4x Space Sims and shit also. They're far more casual.

While the tiers of gaming are debatable

The middle is going to be different for different people. You can't make a "one size fits all" list for Joe Everyman. Especially factoring tastes in games and generes. But Brain Age and Wii Sports definitley belong on the bottom of the list, while Turn Based Strat games belong on the top. Basic idea seems very sound to me.

[Aez]

Great read.  It's a fresh angle, helped my general comprehension of the market.

[Slyfeind]

Interesting. I always thought "casual" meant Solitaire, not NintenDogs. I've been so confused until now! Of course, "casual" is just another buzzword thrown around to attract investors, but maybe it's time to redefine things.

The trick with any successful design is filling a niche. Nintendo was brilliant when they not only advertised to the family, but showed them how to have fun. There was no barrier of entry, other than paying some money. Suddenly video games aren't strange things that the son or daughter did with the headphones and the mouse and keyboard. Video games now are families laughing and cheering. That was a market sorely untapped. Is there another niche out there? Maybe, maybe not. I wouldn't invest millions of dollars trying to find it....

[Ratman_tf]

I'm going to quote something from the article, in regards to WoW, and what I meant here when I said that I don't want to be challenged by games.

Blizzard studied MMORPGs like Everquest and realized there were too many barriers in the game that kept many people from ‘kicking ass’. “How do we fix this?”

Look at the alt-itus in WoW, and the divide between the raiders and the "casuals". Time investment is one factor (which I think is solveable as well, but a different topic) but another factor is that when the game gets difficult you are being told that you suck by the game. I rather don't like being told that I suck. I'd like to think that I rock. That (IMO) is one of the big factors in WoW success. You rock at the low levels, you're about even at the middle levels, and then you suck (are challenged) at the top levels. Something like old school Everquest (for example) tells you that you suck at the very beginning. The game tells certain players not to play! Now a MMOG vet will not suck. They will blast through the content, and master it early. But those people who "suck" are still there. Maybe it's taking them longer to master the content, or maybe they just aren't going to be alble to...

So how does a company keep the beginner and intermediate players? By providing more beginner and intermediate content.

So when I say I don't like to be challenged by WoW, what I really meant is that I wish there were more content at my ability level.

[ahoythematey]

I thought it was a damn compelling read.  I think he intentionally repeated the same points for effect and not so much due to a lack of editing.

[Jain Zar]

A damned good article, and it looks to have a shitload of truth to it. 

It even points out how the accessible stuff leads to the more complex things.

And how too much me too leads to fuck you.  (Hell, I used to play a lot of MMORPGs, FPSes, and RTSes.  Now the genres are so prevalent I pretty much LOATHE them outside of a few select titles.)

Just take SHMUPS for example.  Tons of people to this day continue to play Galaga.  The amount playing "Loli Bullet Hell Adventures" is probably 1% that.  The old SHMUPS were easy, accessible, and fun while still giving a good challenge.  The games kept trying to appease the hardcore by getting tougher and tougher, eventually killing the genre.  You can see the same in Fighting games too.   Too many of them all competing for an ever decreasing ever more nichey hardcore who demand more.

You can even see it in tabletop games.  It is the REAL reason wargames went from selling 50,000-250,000 of most major releases to being a breakout hit if they sell 1000 copies.  They went from a variety of easy and fun games like Ogre/GEV, Gettysburg Anniversary Edition, and even the more complex Squad Leader into stuff like Advanced Squad Leader and Starfleet Battles which were so complicated that almost nobody outside of an ever decreasing ever more demanding group (there they are again!) even bothered.

Which is how come the Eurogames like Catan and its ilk came in and swept the market, being incredibly HUGE in Europe, and having a rather dedicated fanbase in the US.  I can get most total nongamers to play Catan.  These people probably wouldn't approach most hobby games at all.  And some of them might be slowly brought into playing more involved titles.

The part about players feeling like they don't suck counts too.  When I play a modern SHMUP, I always feel like I suck.  Its just not fun.  Its too hard and I cannot even come to grips with it.  If Guitar Hero and Rock Band only started on Medium I would have probably returned the game the very day I bought it.  Because missing notes makes me feel like I suck.  But i can play it on Easy which is a hell of a lot of fun for me and I have gotten pretty good on it.  Some of my friends are the same way.  The guy who was in Band in high school was good enough and had the desire and he usually plays at Medium, and has begun to play on Hard. 

Ease of use.  Start small, go big ONLY IF YOU REALLY WANT TO.

Its why Magic the Gathering is such a god awful game these days.  Its almost always too complicated, and especially unless you are playing people of the same card access and skill level as yourself you ALWAYS FEEL LIKE YOU SUCK, since most Magic gamegroups are built of tourney players with badass decks who have no reservations about stomping you.  Old Magic was kinda fun.  Not as many rules and complexities, and far more casual gamers playing it.

[Venkman]

I think this part summarizes it best:

Nintendo: “We are following the strategy of disruption!”
Journalist: (yawns) “Is that all they say? (becomes excited) Ohhh! Look! A new hardcore game is being made with fresh textures.” (runs off)
Analyst: “Obviously, Sony and Microsoft are branching with casual games themselves. Poor Nintendo. Too bad they are out of tricks. I expect Playstation 3 to be surpassing them in a year or two. The market revolves around technology you know.”
Third Parties: “My casual games aren’t selling? Why!? I do not understand!”

Like the biblical Babel, nobody is quite getting the other person.

I don't agree with the eventual extinction of PS3 and X360 though. Continually reaching non-core gamers is much much harder than attracting them in the first place. I see more services coming to the Wii to wrap those folks with features that keep them there, much like how the labeled "casual online games" have evolved to be less about games and more about the total experience of being there.

Different crowds though. One group is far more numerous, but spends far less money, so is better for service providers, agile small-team developers and advertisers. The other group is far less numerous but spends much more money on less titles supported by traditional large-team development approaches. To me, it's like comparing Habbo with WoW. Except them both being MMO, everything about them is different, from user experience to tech to business to audience to their measure of relevance to groups measuring them.

Oh, and only the PC serves both well 

[UnSub]

Oh, and only the PC serves both well 

... once you've got the right drivers installed and have visited the tech forums to work out why things aren't working.