KungKras said:
RolStoppable said:
The problem with discussing an article like this is that there is not much of a discussion to be had with the Soundwaves and pokokos of this world. They are right in the bubble where they not only perceive gaming as hardcore vs. casual, but are hostile against the very idea that that entire context is imaginary and was set up by marketers (because the old context of branding Nintendo as "kiddie" didn't work anymore with all those adults across the world playing DS and Wii). Admitting that it is bullshit would mean that they've been played by marketing for years. So it's not easy to get out of that self-feeding cycle, also because if they stay in, they get to keep their aura of superiority.
The reality of the situation is that Nintendo became an enemy of the video game industry, because they didn't conform to the rules. They didn't perpetuate the superiority of the young male gamer; it's also conveniently ignored that it wasn't possible for Nintendo to do that in the first place, because the industry's marketing kept harping on Nintendo hardware by declaring it to be for inferior gamers (SNES, N64, GC, Wii, Wii U). Somebody has to be the scapegoat for this kind of marketing to work.
So even if Nintendo conformed to industry standards, their sales would go down; because the industry's target demographic gets told that they should buy PlayStations and Xboxes, and the people who would play Nintendo games would get locked out by high hardware prices and a lame controller. So Nintendo is forced to divert from the industry norm in order to find success; then in turn they get blamed for doing it by the very same people who forced Nintendo to go in a different direction in the first place.
It's a perfect setup for the industry to keep pushing their narrative that Nintendo doesn't get gaming. Just like the great console war between Sony and Microsoft is a great tool. The marketing and PR works in a direction where the declared hardcore gamers are too busy fighting over which version of a multiplatform game has more grass, seemingly oblivious to having their rights removed one step at a time and getting milked with more and more special editions and DLC. And when someone stops for a moment to ask "Wait, wait, wait... what has gaming become? It didn't used to be this way.", then the answer is that all those anti-gamer moves were necessary for the industry to survive and keep the great games coming, accompanied by the notion that it could be worse: The alternative is Nintendo who suck, suck, and suck some more.
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I agree. It's sad to see how people can hold on to such stupid sterotypes about gaming, and how viciously they defend them.
People seem to forget so easily how people spoke about gaming before the Wii. Noone said casual back then. Ever.
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The term casual floated around, but it applied to what is now called the dudebro gamer, the ones who bought Madden and GTA for their PS2s or Madden and Halo for their Xboxes and that was about it. The funnier reaction was how rapidly previously-derided games like GTA and Halo for being too mainstream suddenly became the holy grails of "real" gaming.
