Kasz216 said: Does the average person who has played Solataire put in 40-50 hours? Or do the occasional person do so... and most people who have played solataire only play 1-4 games and quit? A Hardcore player puts a lot of time into games. Be it multiple, or be it one game like soltaire or minesweeper. A Hardcore game is a game large number of people who own the game put a lot of time into the game. Most people play 1 or 2 games of solatair maybe 20 games of minesweeper their entire lives. Therefore, not a hardcore game.

First of all, no. Most people play 4-5 games of Solitaire per DAY when they go to work at an office, which is a crapton of people. I know family members who have logged well over 300 hours playing Solitaire.

Second, what's the difference between a game played 300 times for 1 hour at a time or 1 game played for 300 hours? Neither spend the entire 300 hours in ONE sitting, of course not. So why is the latter more "hardcore" when both games can be played leisurely and at your own pace?

WoW is another excellent example of where this theory falls apart. I know people who have logged game time of several MONTHS and yet WoW is regarded as one of the most casual games ever because it allows for players to play the game slowly and go at their own pace, just like most JRPGs.

It doesn't matter if a game features 1,000 hours of gameplay. So long as the player isn't being challenged to better themselves so as to beat the game then there are more hardcore experiences out there, like No More Heroes, for example.

I realize you're trying to lay a foundation of definition here, but time put in can't be the sole determining factor because there are just too many examples which sneak past it. 

Smash_Brother said: Kasz216 said: Does the average person who has played Solataire put in 40-50 hours? Or do the occasional person do so... and most people who have played solataire only play 1-4 games and quit? A Hardcore player puts a lot of time into games. Be it multiple, or be it one game like soltaire or minesweeper. A Hardcore game is a game large number of people who own the game put a lot of time into the game. Most people play 1 or 2 games of solatair maybe 20 games of minesweeper their entire lives. Therefore, not a hardcore game. First of all, no. Most people play 4-5 games of Solitaire per DAY when they go to work at an office, which is a crapton of people. I know family members who have logged well over 300 hours playing Solitaire. Second, what's the difference between a game played 300 times for 1 hour at a time or 1 game played for 300 hours? Neither spend the entire 300 hours in ONE sitting, of course not. So why is the latter more "hardcore" when both games can be played leisurely and at your own pace? WoW is another excellent example of where this theory falls apart. I know people who have logged game time of several MONTHS and yet WoW is regarded as one of the most casual games ever because it allows for players to play the game slowly and go at their own pace, just like most JRPGs. It doesn't matter if a game features 1,000 hours of gameplay. So long as the player isn't being challenged to better themselves so as to beat the game then there are more hardcore experiences out there, like No More Heroes, for example. I realize you're trying to lay a foundation of definition here, but time put in can't be the sole determining factor because there are just too many examples which sneak past it.

You missed my point. Casual games are games the average person plays... casually. If MOST people who play solataire actually do spend a couple hours everyday playing it it's a hardcore game. Your median person if you would. I bet for every person that plays solitaire 3-4 times a day, there is someone who has played solataire somwhere between 5 and 10 times in their entire life. The people who have played 1 hour a day on it for a very long period of time infact are hardcore. However the average solataire person has likely played very few games of solitaire. I've also never seen ANYONE call WOW casual. Any game you need support groups to get people off of it, that can destroy lives isn't really what i'd call a casual game. I'm not sure how often low end users play WOW but i'd guess your average WOW user plays it quite often. The question is... how long is the median average player going to put into the game.

If there was any other indicator. It would just have to be that your accomplishing actual in game goals. The only other type of game i've seen people call casual is games like GTA where people buy them to just steal cars and drive around and very few people actually pull the missions. Even then however i'd guess most of those people get bored quickly and just never finish the game.

Here is another example though.

Fire Pro Wrestling Returns. It's a wrestling game that people import but has just been released in the US.

Most people play this game a ridiciulious number of hours. To give you an idea of how hardcore this game is... it's "Create a Wrestler" mode has 500 character slots.

Not only that but it actually allows you to customize the AI to make wrestlers act just like that. Lots of people will tweak the AI spending days just to get one character to wrestle perfectly like he would in real life. Others spend countless hours "playing it" by just simming matches and not actually even playing the game itself. Would you call that game "Not hardcore."

Watching a simmed wrestling federation 200+ hours is hardcore in my book. Even though you arn't even controlling the game as it plays, but just paying attention to it. So is spending a couple months to get characters you designed "just right" so they work perfectly when you sim them. They are hardcore players. Since the average person who plays this are mostly people who are imported it. You can also saftley call the game hardcore. That's why most hardcore games are niche games. The rest is just vanity, as some people just don't want to admit other games which they don't like and want to dismiss as "casual." If everyone who played Carnival games bought it and played it 5 hours a day every day to master the ring toss and shooting the water in the clowns mouth... It would be hardcore game. Yet few would call it such because to do so would bruise their egos because they attach the word "Hardcore" to some games so it doesn't feel like they're just wasting their time on games and instead actually accomplishing something of some importance... when in reality you aren't.

Kasz216 said:  I've also never seen ANYONE call WOW casual. Any game you need support groups to get people off of it, that can destroy lives isn't really what i'd call a casual game. I'm not sure how often low end users play WOW but i'd guess your average WOW user plays it quite often. The question is... how long is the median average player going to put into the game.

Heh, you've never been to the WoW forums then: for a time, half of the threads were about how "Blizzard doesn't care about casuals!", "They said this was the MMO for casuals!", etc. But I digress...

I think what you've brought to light is that there are no hardcore or casual games, only hardcore or casual players.

As with your wrestling example, you can have players who simply play the game on a few occasions when they have friends over and you have people who invest insane amounts of time into it. It's just like Street Fighter: players range from people who screw around with the game against their friends to players who dedicate a huge portion of their life to mastering Ryu so they can play as him in tournaments.

It just like someone who plays 5 hours of Solitaire every night is more hardcore than someone who plays WoW for 30 minutes each week.

So I agree: RPGs can be hardcore games by the amount of time one chooses to put into them, but I fully believe that it's not a genre which is beyond being played casually. I consider myself a casual RPG player and yet a friend and I put 81 hours into Tales of Symphonia on the GC over the period of two weeks. Why am I casual? Because I had another friend who played through it 3 times and got every super weapon and sidequest completed.

It wasn't the game but the players who made the decision regarding how "hardcore" the experience should be.

Man, we've derailed the hell out of this poor thread but this is a great discussion.  

Ultimately Grasshopper were stupid to publish this as a Wii exclusive.

The Wii userbase in Japan is just about as mainstream as you can get, yet this game is out there (as expected). First mistake.

Secondly, they made this so that it landed a 17+ game certificate, which just about wipes out 80% of Wii users in Japan.

Shame, because I love Killer 7. I have to admit though, that the Wiimote flailing gameplay of NMH just doesn't look interesting, regardless of the interesting looking characters/environments/themes etc.

PS

Looks like the US is getting a super gory version of the game, while Europe just gets the watered down JPN version.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=31508