Nintendo's Doing Something Right (response to Hating on the casuals thread)

[pakidan101]

Ay ya ya... I disappeared for a little while and from a five-post thread, it became a 50 post debate on what fun means...sigh..

I'm not going to try to debate with you guys on mediums of storytelling, visuals and such...I don't know much about cinema and I don't want to try to pretend that I do. But what I do understand what the term "fun" is and that is what I am trying to discuss.

I brought this article up to try to quell the argument about what the Wii was for. Lately I have been lurking around lately (in my spare time) and I have noticed that a lot of people have just recently been bringing up about the Wii and how it is a fad (again), how the games are just for casuals (again), the clear cut line between what a hardcore game and a casual game is (again) and how the hardcore game is always better than a casual game (...you get the idea).

My question to you is: says who?

Obviously the answer is simple: You.

But...who are you?

Most likely a person who has played many, many games over the course of his/her short life. Which means you have developed a taste or expectation of what a good game is and what a bad game is. Over the course of playing these games, you have figured out what kind of games you like or dislike. For example, I love the MGS series because I like stealth games, but I hate Silent Hill and even RE games because I hate horror games. But does that mean that now I should tell people that RE games suck because I personally hate the horror genre? Of course not. I understand that there are quite a few of you (in fact, millions of gamers) who love the RE games and can't wait for RE5 to come out.

The same thing can be said about casual games in general. Even though the disparity and this example is quite different than the one I gave about RE and survival horror games, the same rule applies. Just because you don't like that style of gaming, the quality of gaming, or how Ubisoft sucks (I know it prolly doesn't fit in this sentence, but I had to throw in my opinion about Ubisoft somewhere....), doesn't mean others feel the same way you do.

This opinion of mine was probably expressed by many before I do, but it seems that everyone has forgotten to realize that there is many different ways to have fun with video games, from the epic story-telling of MGS4, to the star collecting of SMG, to the puppy rearing of Nintendogs. Yes, there are many casual games out there right now that have sub-par graphics, bad framerates, horrible storytelling, etc. etc. (I'm looking at you, Ubisoft), but time and sales will tell us if casuals really do like these games or not. We have no right to tell them that their choices are wrong.

And this especially goes out to all of us here on these forums. Nobody can say what is the right way to have fun when it comes to gaming....only us individually can decide what is fun for us individually. This goes to those who favor the HD games and those who favor the Wii games (also PC elitists as well). If you say that a game must be a technological marvel in order to know that you are having fun, then that is great for you. You enjoy art. If you believe that primal fun, ie. feeling like a kid, is the only way to have fun, then great for you too. That doesn't mean, however, that one is better than the other. Even if hardware sales say otherwise, for us gamers it doesn't matter at the end of the day.

That is why I posted this article; to show you all that even though the author would really enjoy his "mature" games like Ninja Gaiden, he understands that you can also have fun with a 3 year old when playing Mario Party. I think in order for this gaming industry to grow, we must understand this concept and display it fully.