I would not use the Hollywood movie system as an example for your point.  Hollywood studios gladly kill the souls of movies in order for better profit.  Look at Die Hard 4 as an example.  PG-13 movies have a larger crowd, but Die Hard is a movie that should not be pulling punches and upping the stunt factor.  The vast majority of blockbuster movies are garbage aimed at the center of a target, not trying to create an engaging story.  Luckily there are smaller studios out there to provide some engaging content.

I agree some, disagree some. For fun's sake, I'll summarize the disagreement.

I'm torn on the "looking down" on people thing, because I admittedly don't think much of the idolatry of video game storytelling. I'd be a bit of a hypocrite if I didn't mention that I share some of that snobbish attitude, albeit aimed in a different direction. The sort of dreck for which we would rightly mock Hollywood is praised and exalted on the internets if it happens to come with a controller and a 30-hour-plus running time attached. It's a very strange blind spot that this particular subculture has.

Then again, I'm the first to say that quality is subjective. I don't like Smash Bros., Guitar Hero, or Gran Turismo, to pick three, but I don't think they're bad games. On the contrary, I think it's clear that as far as their genres go, they're at or near the top. They just don't appeal to me. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, to each his own, c'est la vie, insert tolerant cliche here.

On one ofyour other notes, I don't think that the Wii audience is going to look all that different from the PS2's in the end. I see both as largely mainstream-oriented machines. The casual segment is definitely more visible this time around, but I don't know if it's significantly larger. If anything, it's probably just natural growth of the indsutry as the population grows and new generations find gaming. There have always been new gamers - it just happens to be highlighted this time around, the way "mature gamers" were mistakenly thought to be a new breed in he 90s.

I agree with most of this, but I think the root of the matter is that the snobcore are smart enough to realize what's happening: daddy's got a new kid, so the they're no longer gaming's only little princess.

That sound harsher than I intended, but I think it holds true nonetheless. They've said it outright themselves several times: they have a problem with casual gaming because they fear more and more developers will start making games that appeal to people beyond their narrow niche. The fact that the current arms race is unsustainable, and that it's driving the same developers they count on out of business doesn't mean squat to them.  Your last paragraph in particular nailed that.

So no, I actually think that the snobcore understand what's going on perfectly fine. And that's why they're afraid.

This is a very good post, primarily for the bolded sentence as well as the term "snobcore" which I've never encountered before (your invention, or...?)

The fact is, these guys aren't hardcore, at least not in the way that I or anyone that played games before the advent of the PS One really understood the term. They like a very narrow group of IPs, genres, or templates and anything that falls outside of them is viewed with effete disdain. Gaming isn't a hobby to these guys--it's who they are. And when I read screeds like this all I get from it is that it's also a quasi-religious faith; that they are the priests that decide what is holy and what is heretical.

And, to them, nothing is more heretical than 'casual' games or the people that play them. Therefore, for the good of the flock, they must be cast into hellfire to safeguard the purity of the faith. The bitter irony (for them, if they could see how foolish they sound), of course, is that the casual gamers have no idea fools like this exist and would probably be pretty amazed to read such vitriol coming down from the pulpit of the angry arch-nerd, venting his impotent fury at a blindly-supportive audience.

But what makes me most upset about idiotic screeds like this is simply that they find the time to get worked up about franchises and genres that are in no danger at all of not seeing yet another sequel, spin-off, or remake. There will always be another Metal Gear or Final Fantasy or Gears of War (or some other title that fits that template) coming down the line and in large numbers. These games, like the dread scourge mini-game compilation, make money so there will always be more. How you could sit down and type something like this up, with the snobcore gamer as the central victim in some epic pity play, when literally all of the evidence flies in the face of your table-banging, red-faced screeching beggars the abyssal depths of logic and imagination.

Lastly, let me just throw my two cents in on what I think, classicly, a hardcore gamer is:

You're open to playing games regardless of:

*Graphical or aural presentation.

*Apparent age suitability.

*Lack or thinness of storyline.

*Difficulty level.

*Platform the game is on, be it portable, console, or PC (and drilling down to, say, Wii, 360 or PS3).

*Territory in which it originated.

There's more, but I think that's a reasonable start to what it actually means to be "hardcore" (at least in my eyes) and why a snobcore gamer can't possibly be hardcore, at least in regards to the screed featured in the OP.

Note: I also want to stress that what a lot of these people consider "awesome" in games would be laughed out of the building in literature, movies, etc.

It seems we're in perfect agreement (and yeah, snobcore's mine). I would say though that it's probably best not to segregate ourselves into "hardcore" and "others." In my mind, you either play games, or you should. I don't much care if you're in the Halo/Gears/Metal Gear crowd, or if you just play Diner Dash and Peggle once in a while. Either one makes you a gamer, and the snobcore's insistence on having you meet their criteria before they consider you a real gamer makes me sad. It's exclusionary and ultimately counter-productive.

It's even worse than that, though, because the definition of whether a game/gamer is "hardcore" or not seems to shift every year. Where once it was those damn Madden-playing PlayStation people who were killing gaming, now it's those retarded Wii Play owners. Where GTA III was considered to be a casual game four years ago, now it's the king of the hardcore. I don't know, but that whole attitude just makes me depressed.

This is a very good post, primarily for the bolded sentence as well as the term "snobcore" which I've never encountered before (your invention, or...?)

The fact is, these guys aren't hardcore, at least not in the way that I or anyone that played games before the advent of the PS One really understood the term. They like a very narrow group of IPs, genres, or templates and anything that falls outside of them is viewed with effete disdain. Gaming isn't a hobby to these guys--it's who they are. And when I read screeds like this all I get from it is that it's also a quasi-religious faith; that they are the priests that decide what is holy and what is heretical.

And, to them, nothing is more heretical than 'casual' games or the people that play them. Therefore, for the good of the flock, they must be cast into hellfire to safeguard the purity of the faith. The bitter irony (for them, if they could see how foolish they sound), of course, is that the casual gamers  have no idea fools like this exist and would probably be pretty amazed to read such vitriol coming down from the pulpit of the angry arch-nerd, venting his impotent fury at a blindly-supportive audience.

But what makes me most upset about idiotic screeds like this is simply that they find the time to get worked up about franchises and genres that are in no danger at all of not seeing yet another sequel, spin-off, or remake. There will always be another Metal Gear or Final Fantasy or Gears of War (or some other title that fits that template) coming down the line and in large numbers. These games, like the dread scourge mini-game compilation, make money so there will always be more. How you could sit down and type something like this up, with the snobcore gamer as the central victim in some epic pity play, when literally all of the evidence flies in the face of your table-banging, red-faced screeching beggars the abyssal depths of logic and imagination.

Lastly, let me just throw my two cents in on what I think, classicly, a hardcore gamer is:

You're open to playing games regardless of:

*Graphical or aural presentation.

*Apparent age suitability.

*Lack or thinness of storyline.

*Difficulty level.

*Platform the game is on, be it portable, console, or PC (and drilling down to, say, Wii, 360 or PS3).

*Territory in which it originated.

There's more, but I think that's a reasonable start to what it actually means to be "hardcore" (at least in my eyes) and why a snobcore gamer can't possibly be hardcore, at least in regards to the screed featured in the OP.

Note: I also want to stress that what a lot of these people consider "awesome" in games would be laughed out of the building in literature, movies, etc.