Hardcore Gamers: Extinction Imminent?
Jamie Hall, aka Genki-Rocket, is a blogger at Fragcast and also a long-term contributor to the comments section of Three Speech. We got in touch with Jamie due to a comment he made and asked him to come and write a post for Three Speech, and here it is. If it inspires anyone else to get involved then mail us at
blog@threespeech.com. Over to Jamie
Its been an ongoing theme on the personal blog I share with some friends that the nature of the games industry is changing weve seen great swathes of people introduced into the industry whove never played games before and modern consoles perform a huge array of tasks many of which only have a peripheral use for games purposes.
All this change has got me thinking: Are hardcore gamers becoming irrelevant?
There. I said it out loud. The sound of it is hanging in the air all around me, filled with menace and tainted with an odd sense of regret. What, you might ask, has lead me to such a question? One which basically declares my own mortality, and lays a great many of my close friends low
I am talking, of course, specifically about the rise of non-games.
Its a slightly odd feeling, having been a gamer for nearly 20 years, to suddenly find that a large section of the market is driven by games which dont interest you. By which I dont mean games that arent interesting - Im sure the people buying the products in question are having a simply wonderful time.
I mean that these types of games hold zero interest for me: male, just shy of 30, raised on a staple diet of console classics for 18 years now. I find it shocking and strange that Cooking Mama can sell 1.6 million copies in North America
Not to suggest for a second that its a bad game, although I have no idea whether it is or not.
Even more shocking is the fact that many of the people who bought this particular title, and the dozens like it, probably havent even heard of many of the games that are currently making my radar light up like a set of nuclear powered fairy lights. If I mentioned Metal Gear Solid 4, Killzone, Resistance 2 or Final Fantasy XIII to the average person buying any one of a growing number of mini-game compilations or Brain Training clones, Im fairly sure theyd find my entertainment choice as obtuse as I theirs. Not, you understand, that I begrudge them their fix of cooking and chopping of an evening far from it.
What worries me is where this trend will take us. Are the types of experiences that have been the bread-and-butter of my gaming life for two whole decades about to vanish? Crushed not by any sense of apathy from those who desire them, but by bigger profits to be made in low-tech, quick-turnaround non-games? Scarier still is the fact that I am completely irreconcilable to this change. If non-gaming titles were to continue their rise at the expense of the rich tapestry of graphics-meets-story-meets-gameplay that the traditional console gamer in me is used to, then my days are numbered. I currently feel like much like the dodo probably did when a rat stole its eggs for the first time I think I can get over this, but it might not end well in the long run.
Casual gamers are nothing new of course, its simply that the balance of the market is tipping as companies learn to mine them as a source of revenue in them same astute manner that theyve been able to empty my wallet time and again. Again, I cant say that I really begrudge this a broader appeal is probably good news for the whole industry in the long term.
Sony, during the course of the last three generations of the Playstation family, have actually done more than most to further both the casual end of the market alongside the more traditional gamer.
What theyve been able to do, in some ways uniquely, is release casual products like Eyetoy and Singstar into their portfolio without a lapse in the volume of titles aimed at the core gamer. Its here then, that I find my solace.
With the advent of new technologies borne of a direct result of the more casual experiences offered by Eye Toy, were starting to see tantalising glimpses of future gaming that, well, excite me to the point of embarrassment. The face tracking and tank drawing Playstation Eye demos show that the convergence of ideas initially designed to service very different sectors can create wonderful new experiences capable of appealing to a very broad church even old farts like me who are set in their ways.
Appealing too, is the chance that, with the combined output of Worldwide Studios, Sony might even just cross the yawning chasm between the needs of gamers like me and the less traditional elements of the market. The potential for this is obvious in something like Little Big Planet, where the simple joy of playing with the tools on offer to make cool stuff looks to be rewarding in its own right regardless of how you actually play the game.
If the fall of the hardcore gamer as a dominant force in the market actually leads to more gamers like Little Big Planet which revel in social creativity while still tipping their hat to the types of games that we all hold dear
Then, well, I think I might just cope.
Cooking, chopping and the three times table, though? Count me out.