Nintendo's impressive achievement.

[HaemishM]

Mario Strikers Charged is most definitely a casual game. It's got really simple controls, doesn't really use the waggle a lot (so not much coordination needed) and yet has a good bit of depth and strategy for those who go after it.

I have no problems with games like Metroid on the Wii, I think it's a good thing. Metroid is a hardcore gamer franchise, and will sell based on that. What I bitch about is the people who take unholy offense that every single game isn't a hardcore game on the Wii, or take such zealous stances like "teh Wii's non-hardcore games will stop hardcore games from being made!!!!1!!1" It's horseshit and you know it. The point of the Wii's success is that you don't have to go HD to sell a video game console, you don't have to tailor ALL your games for the traditional hardcore gamer crowd, and you don't have to iterate the same formula that video games have been stuck in since the Playstation 1. You can do other things, so long as you don't count out those potential customers you've ignored for years.

I'm not dumbing down the casual gamer definition, the definition has to expand with new data. That new data has to take into account that there's a lot of people out there who traditionally have never owned a video game console, and if you want to make money off of those people, you don't need to forget them. The Wii's success just means there's more than one model for success in video games. Goddamnit, hardcore gamers should be HAPPY about that, not offended that the Big N isn't stroking their joy button with every release.

The PS3 was made for nobody BUT the PS2's hardcore base. It reeks of hardcore catass gamer. And it's sold for shit, while the Wii hasn't. The 360 has sold well because not only did it have a year head start, it's also kicked ass in terms of getting games out there for the hardcore gamer and its price isn't so crazy as the PS3's.

[schild]

Hardcore gamers aren't complaining about the lack of hardcore gamer games on the Wii. They're complaining about the lack of motherfucking games period. I think everyone is more than flooded with mini-games and bullshit life training simulators as well. In fact, gamers could say STOP and Nintendo would just keep pumping them out. I hope that entire genre dies with this generation.

Edit: Basically, what I'm saying is gamers are OK with fun, casual games that are actually games. Like Peggle. Peggle is _awesome_.

[HaemishM]

Guess what? Those are games to the bajillion other people who are not schild. They have money too.

[murdoc]

Halo and Madden are hardcore? Fuck off. Like Rasix says, I know people who purchased a console to specifically and ONLY play either one of those games. They are the very definition of casual. They own 2 games, Halo and Halo 2 or whatever the last couple of Madden games are. They have no idea what World of Warcraft is, or what an timesink an endgame is.

I rarely do, but I agree with Schild on this, the Wii severly lacks in games. It's an electronic boardgame, and there's nothing wrong with that, but that's all it is at this point in time.

[HaemishM]

For those saying it lacks games, how many games do you have for the Wii? That you buy and own?

[LK]

At least the Wii has more games that I want to play than the PS3.

[schild]

Guess what? Those are games to the bajillion other people who are not schild. They have money too.

A bajillion? You're using non-number to describe non-gamers playing non-games?

And they might have money, but they won't be spending it on games.

Edit: I have Cooking Mama, a copy of Wii Sports that will go to Ebay, and Trauma Center. Cooking Mama is not open. Trauma Center requires a precision that the wiimote just can't achieve. If something doesn't come out soon, my Wii will have not been turned on for the entire last year. We're on month 10 now (obvious?)

[HaemishM]

Guess what? Those are games to the bajillion other people who are not schild. They have money too.

A bajillion? You're using non-number to describe non-gamers playing non-games?

If they bought a Wii, bought a game for the Wii, they are gamers. Your insulated little world is no longer protected from the drooling masses.

[schild]

Man, my world hasn't been insulated since the first sports game. That's not the point, gamers implies something completely different than casual gamers and whatever is below that. We haven't even defined what's below that.

Let's go with Non-Gamers.

[LK]

Guess what? Those are games to the bajillion other people who are not schild. They have money too.

A bajillion? You're using non-number to describe non-gamers playing non-games?

And they might have money, but they won't be spending it on games.

Edit: I have Cooking Mama, a copy of Wii Sports that will go to Ebay, and Trauma Center. Cooking Mama is not open. Trauma Center requires a precision that the wiimote just can't achieve. If something doesn't come out soon, my Wii will have not been turned on for the entire last year. We're on month 10 now (obvious?)

If you haven't picked up Metroid or Zelda, well, then no, you're not going to get a use out of your Wii.

Mario Galaxy in 2 months.

[schild]

I bought Zelda twice, you weren't around for that. Horrible, horrible fetch quest game. And shitass Wiimote controls.

As for Mario, I'm done with Nintendo first party console games for good. A sidescrolling kid icarus is about the only thing that would even get me to rent a home nintendo game now.

[Triforcer]

I bought Zelda twice, you weren't around for that. Horrible, horrible fetch quest game. And shitass Wiimote controls.

As for Mario, I'm done with Nintendo first party console games for good. A sidescrolling kid icarus is about the only thing that would even get me to rent a home nintendo game now.

If you don't like Smash Brothers Brawl, you are wrong. 

[Rasix]

I bought Zelda twice, you weren't around for that. Horrible, horrible fetch quest game. And shitass Wiimote controls.

As for Mario, I'm done with Nintendo first party console games for good. A sidescrolling kid icarus is about the only thing that would even get me to rent a home nintendo game now.

If you don't like Smash Brothers Brawl, you are wrong. 

Super Smash Bros is the one Nintendo first party game that I still look forward to. I have a lot of fun playing that with my nephews.  Nothing like getting pwned by someone a third your age. 

[schild]

Super Smash Bros is great fun but I'm skipping it.

[Rasix]

Super Smash Bros is great fun but I'm skipping it.

I wouldn't see it getting a lot of play as long as you have the arcade cab in your house.

[schild]

Super Smash Bros is great fun but I'm skipping it.

I wouldn't see it getting a lot of play as long as you have the arcade cab in your house.

Correct!

[Big Gulp]

I've got Smash Brothers for my old Gamecube, but truthfully I never really played it.  Maybe it's just that I only ever played it two player at most (does more people equal more fun?), but it felt simplistic to me.  If I need a fighter I'd much rather either play Fight Night Round 3 or Soul Calibur 2.

Did I just not give the game enough of a chance?  What the hell am I missing there?

[schild]

It's deeper than it looks and Capcom hasn't released a Powerstone since the Dreamcast, so it's the king of the hill for party fighting games. It's reasonably fun but quite a goddamn mess. There's some deep stuff going on there, but not enough for me to get a big hardon over the inclusion of the head from Brain Training.

[Triforcer]

Yeah, what Schild said.  Check out www.smashboards.com or watch some videos from top level smashers.  The high level stuff is just fucking crazy deep.  And if you've only played TWO player, you are missing out- it is four player nirvana, rivalling Goldeneye in its heyday.

EDIT:  BUt I disapprove of the unveiling of the Ice Climbers today, my least favorite fighter from Melee and pretty much universally reviled.  It must be one of those Japanese love cuteness things.

[Yegolev]

Hey, I can come out of the closet in not liking Smash Brothers.  Thanks, Gulp, for giving me the courage.

[schild]

Ok, let's see. It doesn't rival Goldeneye OR Powerstone 1 or 2. But that's not a knock to Smash Bros. Not much can top those other games. Well, actually, nothing can.

[Litigator]

I bought Zelda twice, you weren't around for that. Horrible, horrible fetch quest game. And shitass Wiimote controls.

As for Mario, I'm done with Nintendo first party console games for good. A sidescrolling kid icarus is about the only thing that would even get me to rent a home nintendo game now.

You also hated Ocarina even though it's regarded by almost everyone as one of the best games ever.

I can't see how you can bitch about the 3D Zelda games as much as you do. They're marvelous, and they still make 2D Zelda games for portables. Okay. You think Zelda peaked with "Link to the Past." Big ups on your old-school cred there.   

I really like Twilight Princess.  The dungeon design is really incredible.  The puzzles manage to be really inventive, and even though it's a consistent theme throughout the game, the variations keep it really interesting. It's also got really inventive boss fights.

[schild]

It's not about old-school cred. Link to the Past was just the goddamn pinnacle of 16-bit gaming. Ocarina was NOT the pinnacle of 32-bit gaming.

[Litigator]

It's not about old-school cred. Link to the Past was just the goddamn pinnacle of 16-bit gaming. Ocarina was NOT the pinnacle of 32-bit gaming.

Well, the consensus is against you on this one.

[Ragnoros]

Dude HaemishM you seem to be burning with the fury of a couple suns there my man. Chill, it's all good.
Anyway now in my book and, silly me I assumed most everyones. "Casual Gamer" simply meant a gamer who just didn't play a whole lot of games. Be it because they simply didn't have a large interest in them, only liked a few, or most likely because they had to many other obligations to play them as much as they liked. They still played the same games the rest of us do. Be it WoW, Halo, Tony Hawk, or whatever. Now your using "casual gamer" to denote some sort of anti gamer or stick-it-to-the-man and his Halos/GTAs gamer. Or as shilid said maybe even non gamer. However this is just not the right term. IN MY OPINION.

The definition of gamer is growing rapidly. And insofar as our little board is concerned we need better definitions of who is who.

An example. I know a woman at work plays Pogo after work. Now considering pogo is mostly word puzzles and simple flash games like bejeweled. Would you call her a gamer? Casual gamer? However nearly any time I question her about what she plans to  do with her evening she responds with something along the lines of 'go play pogo'. I've heard many a boast from her about winning a prize or her latest accomplishment. Indeed she talks about it more then any of the people I know from work who are "true gamers" who play the Halos and GTAs talk about games. Is she a "Hardcore Gamer"? There is also the grandpa who bought a Wii to play with his grandson and thinks it's a blast. (Yes Timmy, the world has stereotypes for a reason.)

Now I'm tired and loosing track of where I was going with this. Guess schild has something going with his one to three line replies.

OK! Raping up. When I think gamers I think of my brothers. Right now one is playing some Diablo 2 mod I have never heard of with his friends. And the other is in the other room playing Gears of War online and yelling at me of his achievements between matches.

I don't think of the woman or grandpa at work.

While they are gamers yes they don't play the games we do and we think of as the definition of games (things with WASD and Thumbsticks). And I agree with schild that they are not gamers as we think of them.

Gaming is becoming a very broad genre. And we need to be able to define when someone is talking about a gamer do they mean someone who enjoys Fallout, or waggling their arms around in Wii Sports. 

[Azazel]

I think we (on this board at least) need a new term for the non-gamers who play games that don't fit into any of our usual meanings. These are the grandpa, the pogo lade, and people like my sister, who loved Fake Bowling but doesn't play any other games, or my 68-yo mum who also likes fake bowling, and also plays pogo. She's not someone who I would call "a gamer" either. So that way we can stop getting people like my mum grouped together with the guy who buys Madden and Halo every year and you guys can stop arguing about pedantic semantics.

Also, I have to agree with Schild on the Zelda thing. SNES was my first console (I was Amiga and C64 before that) and Link to the Past was the first Zelda game I played, and the only one I bothered to finish. Ocarina of Time was ok, good enough for me to put a good chunk of time into, but not good enough to hold my attention long enough for me to finish it. It was a long way off of 32-bit's pinnacle. Regardless of who thinks they decide what the consensus is. And why does the gaming press always seem like they're playing Virtual Blow Job when Nintendo release any new 1st-party title.. even those not developed in-house.. ?

Also, for the record, I bought SSB for GC but found it mind-numbimgly boring, and returned it. Big Meh.

[Trippy]

Just stop confusing "casual games" with "casual gamers" and everything will be fine.

[Azazel]

Tell that to those two...

But seriously, the "non-gaming" people we've been discussing do need a label since they keep getting talked about on this forum, specifically as consumers and buyers for the Wii .

Which I think is a fine machine for what it is and the kind of games it works well with, none of this "these are not games" drivel.
No I haven't turned mine on in several months either, but then again the only use my XBoxes have gotten in months has been on the XBMC one, and the PS2 only gets a bit of GH action now and then.

[taolurker]

But seriously, the "non-gaming" people we've been discussing do need a label since they keep getting talked about on this forum, specifically as consumers and buyers for the Wii .

I really don't know whether I agree about the usage of "casual gamers" describing the people who only buy a single game like Madden or Halo, but I certainly wouldn't put them into the hardcore category either. So, essentially there needs to be three different terms to describe the non-gamer, the one-title gamer, and the part-time gamer, and casual gamer should be left in what I believe was it's original usage: describing part-time gamers. Of course a part-time gamer is also what most "regular gamers" are, so maybe a fourth label is required as well.

I went to sleep with this thought in my head, and came up with these:

regular gamer = "ordinary gamer"
part-time gamer = "casual gamer"
one-title gamer = "informal gamer"
non-gamer = "entrant gamer" or "novice gamer"

This type of breakdown would leave the hardcore gamer description the same, but it's also unlikely that any usage of new labels will appear or catch on as more and more people fit into the part-time gamer subset, thereby making them casual gamers again.

[Stephen Zepp]

But seriously, the "non-gaming" people we've been discussing do need a label since they keep getting talked about on this forum, specifically as consumers and buyers for the Wii .

I really don't know whether I agree about the usage of "casual gamers" describing the people who only buy a single game like Madden or Halo, but I certainly wouldn't put them into the hardcore category either. So, essentially there needs to be three different terms to describe the non-gamer, the one-title gamer, and the part-time gamer, and casual gamer should be left in what I believe was it's original usage: describing part-time gamers. Of course a part-time gamer is also what most "regular gamers" are, so maybe a fourth label is required as well.

I went to sleep with this thought in my head, and came up with these:

regular gamer = "ordinary gamer"
part-time gamer = "casual gamer"
one-title gamer = "informal gamer"
non-gamer = "entrant gamer" or "novice gamer"

This type of breakdown would leave the hardcore gamer description the same, but it's also unlikely that any usage of new labels will appear or catch on as more and more people fit into the part-time gamer subset, thereby making them casual gamers again.

I think the idea has merit, but you are making a spectrum across two logical data groupings, which tends to confusion.

In the above list, you've got two data categories:

--amount of time a person plays
--type/number of games they play

In my opinion, unless/until we separate those two data categories, the definition spectrum will be muddled. I'd break it down something like this (early morning brainstorming--I probably am going to violate my own statement above somehow)

game enthusiast -- general category that covers someone that plays one game, period (could be spread to one genre of game, but our genre terminology is also confused so that's difficult to make a classification on)

Then, within the spectrum of time spent playing, we could have:

xxx gamer -- plays very occasionally (don't have a non-negative connotation name for this myself)
casual gamer -- plays to spend time in small intervals -- "because they can, not because they want to"
core gamer -- plays as primary form of recreation
hardcore gamer -- plays as only form of recreation

[Fabricated]

Even with the release of Metroid Prime 3 the Wii's library is a desert of shovelware.

I'm fine with the Wii not having a lot of games since I'm a Smash Brothers addict and have over a dozen friends who are incredibly into the series. I was hoping the Cube would get more games, but between SSBM, RE4, and Tales of Symphonia I was pretty much happy with my purchase. Is that good for Nintendo? Not really if you think about it.

[HaemishM]

I don't think of the woman or grandpa at work.

While they are gamers yes they don't play the games we do and we think of as the definition of games (things with WASD and Thumbsticks). And I agree with schild that they are not gamers as we think of them.

But they ARE gamers. They are casual gamers, and they have either been under-served, or fed free (ad-supported) shit for years because no one thought they were sticky customers. Only they are, the game industry just has had no idea how to market to them because the game industry is made up of hardcore people who think things like Wii Fit aren't games. Even more, they have the same arrogant attitude that schild does about Wii Fit, like it's BENEATH them.

Fuck that noise. Those people are gamers. They bought a video game console and they will buy games if you give them something they give a shit about. They don't give a shit about sci-fi, they don't give a shit about sword-and-sorcery. They want genres like they see on TV and frankly, so do I. Where are the cop drama games? Where are the soap opera games (other than the anime Japanese stuff that annoys me and that casual U.S. gamers wouldn't touch). We need the game industry to treat those genres with respect, instead of just shoveling out a licensed CSI game that plays like shit. Where are the murder mysteries?

The video game industry has been an incestuous circle jerk of elitist hardcore assbags for years. And now, when the industry is on the verge of mass market acceptance, the old guard of hardcore gamers are pissed because the Wii has games for people who don't care about their traditional games.

But I'll give schild this argument. Yes, the Wii needs a ton more games, of ALL types, for casuals and for hardcores. I blame part of that on the typical hardcore elitist game industry mentality that said if it didn't appeal to the hardcore, no one would buy it. That attitude caused 3rd party devs to shovel out shit like Far Cry or the Bigs instead of putting real effort into Wii game development. It's infested both versions of Madden, though at least there was a kernel of a refined game in that one. I'm hoping that by this time next year, the 3rd party devs will have put out something original of serious quality, like a fixed-up, less buggy Red Steel sequel. But I also want the industry to stop disrespecting the casual gamer market, because that's who bought the Wii.

EDIT: And for those pissy about my use of casual gamer, that's what the industry is calling them, over and over again. They are the people who are NOT US, though we likely will share similar interests in games provided the games aren't shit.

[Ragnoros]

Didn't mean to be pissy. Maybe we need to change our definition not yours/theirs. w/e

All I can hope is that these 9million new gamers can bring us some now games to play. Ones that don't suck.

Also Wiis are expensive. To play the new Smash Bros with my Bros would cost me $500. Thats almost PS3 prices. Them fancy controllers are damn costly.

[Triforcer]

Didn't mean to be pissy. Maybe we need to change our definition not yours/theirs. w/e

All I can hope is that these 9million new gamers can bring us some now games to play. Ones that don't suck.

Also Wiis are expensive. To play the new Smash Bros with my Bros would cost me $500. Thats almost PS3 prices. Them fancy controllers are damn costly.

Er, the game will be best played by GC controllers.  Not that expensive.

[schild]

That came is actually best played on a Hori digital pad.



But I digress, Super Smash Bros does not a system make. I bought my Gamecube - modded for $100 - it can play any regions games, it was worth it. I'm still feeling the burn from the Wii, which is approaching it's one year anniversary of being OFF.