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Veknoid_Outcast on 26 October 2012
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RolStoppable said:
Veknoid_Outcast said:
RolStoppable said:

Let's look into the opposite direction. Name five M-rated games that are casual.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Halo 3

I just took these from the best-sellers list. There are only so many dedicated video game enthusiasts out there. The vast majority of people who purchased these games are only marginally interested in video games.

By the way, I think there are no such things as casual and hardcore games. Someone can play Angry Birds for 8 hours every day, and someone can play Halo 3 on multiplayer an hour every week with a couple of friends.

Yeah... no. I don't think you will find people agreeing with your list.

But anyway, the terminology of hardcore and casual is of course stupid. The only reason why people started to divide things in two camps is because first the DS was beating the PSP and then the Wii was beating the HD consoles. People could either accept that Nintendo was winning or they could go the route of breaking it down into different markets (with hilariously arbitary definitions), so Nintendo sales were acknowledged, but they were not really beating Sony and Microsoft. Others went the route of not being willing to categorize the Wii as seventh generation console, but that has died down ever since the Wii started to get outsold by the HD consoles on a regular basis.

I am confident in saying that had Nintendo lost the crown in the handheld market with the DS and had the Wii gone the way of the GameCube, then the market would have never been broken down into hardcore and casual games. After all, nobody ever seemed to be offended by the sales of Singstar and Guitar Hero on the PS2, as well as the countless licensed kids games like Spongebob Squarepants.

What's wrong with my list?

I guess people would disagree if they think a "hardcore" game is a game with sex, gore, and adult content. But I don't buy that. We have a ESRB rating system to tell us what is meant for adults and what is meant for all audiences.

Why do we, as video game fans, need to separate games into "hardcore" and "casual"? I've never heard someone call The Godfather or Schindler's List hardcore, or Singin' in the Rain casual. It just doesn't make much sense. And it's not productive at all.