I hope each and everyone of you that thinks casual gaming is good for our hobby just shuts up now:
So what happened to the Halo MMO? “There was a bit of a changing of the guard at Microsoft at this time,” explains Monk. “Microsoft, from its gaming division, was really changing directions. They were looking really hard at the Nintendo Wii and they were really excited by the numbers that the Wii was turning.This was about the time that Microsoft decided that its Xbox platform and XBLA really needed to go more in the direction of appealing to a more casual, broader audience.”
Truly a shame. I for one, do not enjoy the wii. Yet, casual is the future.
In my opinion, if you look at the mmorpg scene, casual, in many ways equals free to play.
I happen to work for a free to play company and the crap we publish is a cash cow. We pay off our publishing deal within the first 6 months. Free to play and casual are the future.
Its a lucrative market and the more companies start realizing that consumers will PAY for the stuff they want in our games, the less we will see of fair, balanced, subscription based games. :(
Industry reaches saturation of traditional user-base, diversifies portfolio and product line-up to widen target demographies; consolidation.
Why is casual gaming a threat? I don’t see Hollywood tent poles as a threat to narrow, sophisticated European films, nor do I see Dan Brown as pushing Gabriel Garcia Marquez out of the market.
Let’s stop worrying about casual games and start wondering why there’s even a distinction between so-called casual and hardcore games, and whether there’s some way of bringing the two consumer groups closer together. That’ll be much more beneficial to us all than worrying about whether games will be “dumbed down” or have “waggle” forcibly inserted.
In short: Casual games will bring new people to game development and design, and their ideas and work practices will influence and be influenced by existing practitioners (providing everyone is civil and respectful). The medium will develop as media consumption habits and platforms change, wishing that things would go back to the way they were in the late-nineties PC market is pointless.
I don’t see a healty balance between those two ends anymore.
Games get easier and easier each year.
I have no problem with a “spectator mode” or whatever difficulty setting for complete newbies / casuals.
However I noticed that the “normal” or “medium” setting which posed a challenge to me for years is becoming easier and easier as well.
I assume that people want to feel skillful yet suck in real “medium” so developers dumb this setting down as well.
How long until “hard” will be touched as well?
Currently I play “Star Wars - The Force Unleashed” on my PC on “Hard” and I’m breezing through the levels.
It just feels wrong.
I give you your “Farmville” if you let me have stuff like “Project I.G.I” with NO saves in a level on “hard” or a “Commandos - Beyond Enemy Lines”.
I’m not saying “everything has to suit my taste” I’m asking for a balance between casual games and well lacking another word: hardcore games.
We will never know how this Halo MMO would have played out.
Blizzard never made a MMO before WoW as well and we know how that turned out. The point is the project was canceled due to a changed policy and not because the prototype sucked (if we believe the guy that talked about it).
An Halo MMO being canceled is good news in my book, MMOs are a sink of resources and money and only a handful of them can really be successful, it’s not like there is a shortage of MMO’s being developed so this cancellation make more room for others
No I’m not very good at games.
I didn’t play hours on SNES or whatever in the golden age.
I beat some harder games mainly by attrition and persistance and I know from back then that the feeling knowing I did beat a tough motherf… was / is pretty sweet.
Point is if even someone average like me notices that today’s games are too easy then something is definately wrong.
Things are made for minorities because minorities buy them. Pretty simple thinking there.
What you may be thinking is why should current game devs continue making games for a smaller market than that of “all games” in general, especially when it includes casual games. And the answer would be because traditional market computer games is where their expertise lies. Just because you know how to make a 20gb game about rolling over hookers doesn’t mean you know anything about making a game suited to every facebook user out there.
Plants vs Zombies is not a truely casual game.
It’s easy to get in and hard to master.
I don’t have a problem with casual games per se (hell I even play a good Hidden objects game from time to time or some “Diner Dash” clone) but I see the balance between them and well “real” games shifting in a direction I don’t like.
There has to be space for both and I see the space narrowing for the games I like.
I mainly posted this because I’m sick and tired of people claiming that this development in gaming has NO negative effect on MY gaming.
Every time I state this someone will rush in, call me a moron and tell me I see things wrong. Here we have an example of a big budget game that was simply canceled because of the influence of casual gaming on the decision makers at Microsoft which illustrates my point.
Not saying you’re a moron, I’m saying your correlation is weak. At best. It’s just entertainment dollars and where the demand is.
The audience for casual games is the culprit? You might as well blame netflix for less money spent on “hardcore” games. Or sports gambling. Actually, both of those have probably sapped more money from your fave genres than the casual game audience.
I don’t think you’re average at all; I think you’re an outlier. I used to spend hours racking up points on Megamania on my Atari 2600 when I was young, and it was -awesome-. But god help me if I’d ever play a game like that today. Today I want to get into a game, enjoy the experience with some challenge but not frustrating repeated deaths where I have to either devote myself to a battle of attrition or give up, and get to the payoff. I don’t have enough free time for every game to be a 30 hour epic slogfest of progressing one inch every 100 reloads; that’s not particularly fun. If I want longevity, give it to my via other mechanics (Diablo II’s near-infinite character building, Civ’s near-infinite replayability, something like Bayonetta’s nicely tiered difficulties which pass you through the -game- but encourage coming back to do better for various reasons.)
Playing a gae through sheer stubbornness is tedious. If my choice is that versus easily breezing through several casual gaes where I actually enjoy the experience, I’ll choose the latter repeatedly.
If I want to accomplish something through perserverence and overcoming difficult probles, well, that’s what work or house maintenance or my other hobbies are for.
