| Videogirl said: And if it goes the way of the casual (someone who can't distinguish a good game from a shovelware) it will also be remembered as the last generation. |
I find these definitions tough in this way. I’m pretty sure that what makes someone a “hard core” gamer is the willingness and availability of time to spend a significant proportion of their time playing. Someone to whom video games are a very big part of their life and their skill at them makes an important contribution to their self image. This leads me to define a “hard core game” as the type of game that primarily appeals to that group. A game that has a significant and steep learning curve, is intense and competitive, has a long immersive storyline and generally is fairly violent in theme.
The other side of the coin is, to me, much harder to define. Maybe we should borrow a page from VGchartz and call them others. This group ranges from those who share hard core taste and standards for production values but lack the time; all the way to those that only want very easy games to learn for social/party gaming. The game reviewers seem to me to only recognize these two stereotypical groups and to score mainly in terms of the games appeal to one group, the hardcore.
Now here is where I see a problem, what about other games. Does the fact a game does not appeal to the “hard core” gamer make it less of a game. Not if it works well in a different group it shouldn’t. Take children; a lot of games are written for them. Probably more should be. At one time most games were written for them. Now if they are even mentioned in a review it’s in a dismissive way like “kids might like this, nothing here for anybody else.” So what’s wrong with that? Why has the “gold standard” for games become a male old enough that he probably ought not to be spending that much time playing games anyway. If you don’t believe me ask their wives and/or boss/professor.
What about a gamer, like me, who knows and appreciates quality but does not have the taste or time for epics like GTA. My gaming comes in short 30 min packages when I take a quick break from RL. I tend to like games like MK Wii because I can play that brief a time and still have a fickin ball. Am I less of a gamer because I don’t have unlimited time to devote towards it? It would be like assuming that only hookers can appreciate sex because they spend a lot more time at it than I do.
What about someone who only likes a few specialized games? So what? If I buy a tennis racket, no one assumes I also want to play football.
There are so many different types of gamers with different needs and tastes that I just think this male 16-30 centric judging may no longer by very useful and as a consequence scores don’t reflect the ultimate success or failure of a game the way they should. We constantly hear comparisons of Metacritic scores over 90 as some indicator of top games. Is it?
Let’s take our top selling games this week worldwide. Eliminating the bundled games, the top selling games were MK Wii, Wii Fit, and New SMB. None of them is a member of the exclusive 90+ and yet their sales seem to indicate otherwise. Mario Kart Wii only scored 82 but sold almost a MILLION copies in one week, 37 weeks after launch. Wii Fit (is it even a game?)scored 80, selling 800K over a year after launch. There is something wrong with this picture.
What I think is wrong is trying to judge like one judge fits all and that just is no longer true.
