Casuals? Hardcore?

[KingVamp]

What makes a "hardcore" or "casual" gamer.
What makes a "hardcore" or "casual" game.
Are the words for gaming just stupid?
What do you consider yourself?

I think if it has to be a label then "hardcore" is people who play games a lot and "casual" is
people who didn't.



-Kinda sleepy and in a rush.

 

[prowler]

i like how you put quotation marks around hardcore and not casual.

kingvamp casual gamer confirmed.

 

[KingVamp]

i like how you put quotation marks around hardcore and not casual.

kingvamp casual gamer confirmed.

Is missing "" that serious?

Seriously tho, what do you think?

 

[BoxmanWTF]

I think it's just stupid,
casual gaming sounds like something a douche would bring up at a date
hardcore gaming sounds like you have no life outside games
Why does everything have to have a label on it?

 

[Veho]

It's spelled "casual".

 

[alidsl]

I'm a hardcore gamer because I never play on a DS or a Wii and just play Call of Duty 4 and Halo 1

 

[Ritsuki]

Hardcore gamer : a gamer who spend a lot of time on video games.
Casual gamer : a gamer who spend less time on video games.

Hardcore game : A game with a certain level of difficulty, with a great challenge (Demons souls, Persona 4, Super Meat Boy,...)
Casual game : A game in which you can play 5 minutes when you have some time (mini-games, racing games,...)

Anyway, I find that the way we use these words now is stupid. This Hardcore Vs. Casual war means nothing. For most people, a hardcore game is a violent game, a game for adults (who said FPS ?). I think we already have a lot of more precise words to describe how is a game, and what type of people it attracts. No need to use some "cool" and unaccurate words for that.

 

[MasterPenguin]

If it doesn't have screaming 12 year olds, it's not hardcore. Very simple definition.

 

[PolloDiablo]

tetris is hardcore.... everything else is pure casual bullshit

... pong is hardcore too

 

[retKHAAAN]

defining a gamer as "casual" or "hardcore" is silly. if you're playing a game for any reason other than to have fun (or for charity) you really need to re-evaluate where you are in life.

 

[mario5555]

King Vamp if you want to be as generalistic as possible, then here is an easy way how people (or the industry) label or identify gamers/themselves.

Again this is generalizing things before someone goes off on "well I'm a core gamer and I play that too..." so please understand this statement before going on about trial labels.

Casual plays Angry Birds, Just Dance, Petz, other shovelware and dabbles in things like CoD, Halo as gateway games.

Hardcore plays FPS, (Halo, CoD), Uncharted, GoW (Gears/God of War), and other more niche things.

However the line is beginning to blur if you believe any of those game tracking firms as one did a "study" here lately that more hardcore gamers are playing more casual fare (Angry Birds, Facebook games)

Frankly if you want to identify them look at their game collections, how much they play, etc. that is the MAIN difference between casuals and hardcore gamers. And YES it is a label construed by game companies to lure more consumers into the market to play. And Nintendo was the first one to target this market hard with both the Wii and DS (see early Wii and DS commercials with Mom, family, elders playing games, Ie. the segment of folks you RARELY see depicted playing any of these titles)

And there is a broad, semi-defined answer to you, whether you believe it to be true is up to you (since you seem to believe there is no such thing, which is not the case) But there is a definite divide between casual and hardcore gamers, and the casuals sometimes become core gamers or they don't like any other hobby it depends on how much time and money you put into it, simple enough I'd think.

 

[emigre]

*Troll rant about how I'm a mature hardcore gamer and how you guys should sell your Wiis to buy CoD'

 

[BlueStar]

Hardcore game : A game with a certain level of difficulty, with a great challenge (Demons souls, Persona 4, Super Meat Boy,...)
Casual game : A game in which you can play 5 minutes when you have some time (mini-games, racing games,...)

Funnily enough, you'll find Super Meat Boy under the 'Casual Games' section of Xbox Live.

Also, I reckon if Angry Birds had come out on the Amiga rather than iOS/Android it would be considered a 'gamers game' like Lemmings.

 

[Hells Malice]

It's a bit less about time spent and more about what you prefer a game to play like. Time CAN matter. I mean obviously if you're playing videogames an hour every 3-4 days, you're gonna get classified as a more casual gamer. But I don't like relying on time as a factor.

Casual games have simplified, or completely removed, features to provide a much simpler experience. Generally these features are mechanics the genre typically has that are seen as "too much" for the "general public."
The General public I might add, is a casual crowd. I just woke up so i'm having trouble outright explaining myself, so i'll give some examples.

Spoiler: CoD

Call of Duty: Heavily simplified gun mechanics. Guns have little to no variant spray patterns, the guns typically fire in very, very straight lines. The player does not need to take into account bullet variance/trajectory, etc, when they take aim, if you aim at someone and shoot at someone, you'll hit that someone. HP is also low enough that you do NOT require steady aim, a simple burst will do and your opponent will drop. Even someone with very poor aim can pull off something like this. They're getting better with this, but there's also a lack of any real recoil on most of the guns.

Spoiler: WoW

World of Warcraft: Simplified Character Building, Ease of Character Use.
Simplified character building is a big one in WoW. There is very, very little thought that needs to go into a WoW character. Typically your only goal is to pick a set of skills and focus on it, with perhaps SOME branching into other skill sets for "variety". You then gear stack the best gear in the game to boost the stats these skills require. After that Ease of Character use comes into play. There isn't any skill involved in combat. Typically you'll have a standard skill rotation you'll rail out in most every instance. You may have a few different skill rotations to fit different situations, but all the same, WoW is very tied to skill rotating...which requires absolutely no skill to perform. If you explained the simple mechanics of WoW and gave someone who has never played WoW before a max level character in the best gear the game has, teach them the skill rotation they need, they'll dominate PvP the second they start playing.

Fable 2 and 3.
It'd be like describing a murder scene if I went over these two...
Suffice it to say, play Fable 1, and then play Fable 3. There's a disgusting different between the two. Hell if it weren't for the title, you'd probably never know Fable 1 mutated and disgustingly morphed into the morbid abomination that Fable 3 is. Fable got hit by casualness HARD.


Playing a casual game doesn't make you a casual, it's when you prefer these games and seek out simplified mechanics that you start to cross into the realm of casualness.
It's also entirely possible that someone might be a real gamer, with casual tendencies in specific genres. IE, you could be a hardcore RPG/Puzzle/Strategy gamer, and be a casual FPS gamer.

It's a term that's hard to pin down, but there IS a distinction.

 

[MelodieOctavia]

The term "casual" has evolved (read: warped) into what was generally known as "whatever game I don't like" in the most "elite" of gaming circles.

Conversely the term "hardcore" has turned into what was generally known as "whatever game I pwn at" in the most "elite" of gaming circles.

If you ask two members of the same circle, you may find that with any given game, these two terms are not mutually exclusive.


Edit: Excuse my writing style, I have been reading a lot of HGTTG lately.

 

[KingVamp]

I like to as "you" something, what makes a dance game casual?

You didn't just start playing and know how to do stuff. I see people work at those games to get the top stars.

What makes any shooter hardcore? Once you learn to shoot and hide with some luck, you are set.


Better yet, list ten of each (hardcore and casual) type of games.

 

[godreborn]

a casual gamer is someone who plays games for fun without caring if they beat the game (assuming the game has an ending).

a hardcore gamer is someone who's obsessed with his or her gamer score to the point of renting crappy games just to increase it. or maybe one of those WoW gamers who plays for 18 hours straight.

 

[ojsinnerz.]

Well all you need to know is whether one plays Dark Souls or not.

Dark Souls is the single deepest, most challenging, most skill-based game ever created. There is not a single other game in any genre that comes close to the level of skill Dark Souls requires.
This is why Dark Souls discussions contain the best, and the most intelligent . Only the smartest, brightest, and most patient people post in them. Essentially, the very best of humanity posts in them.
Conversely, the only people who don’t like Dark Souls clearly don’t have the skills to handle its depth. It is too hardcore for them. That’s okay though. Games like Halo exist for people like them. Dark Souls fans are too good to hold grudges.

 

[BloodyFlame]

I use the words "casual" and "competitive," I don't think games can be "hardcore."

 

[MelodieOctavia]

Well all you need to know is whether one plays Dark Souls or not.

Dark Souls is the single deepest, most challenging, most skill-based game ever created. There is not a single other game in any genre that comes close to the level of skill Dark Souls requires.
This is why Dark Souls discussions contain the best, and the most intelligent . Only the smartest, brightest, and most patient people post in them. Essentially, the very best of humanity posts in them.
Conversely, the only people who don’t like Dark Souls clearly don’t have the skills to handle its depth. It is too hardcore for them. That’s okay though. Games like Halo exist for people like them. Dark Souls fans are too good to hold grudges.

Dark Souls is for people who think Megaman games are hard and "Skill-based" All it requires is trial and error and constant memorization. If you have beat the game once, you can beat it over and over with your eyes closed. And yes, this is coming from someone who has beat the game twice. I started my second playthrough as Deprived with no gift. Yes, my balls are insanely huge.