Forbes: Hardcore Gamers May No Longer Be Relevant

Hardcore market is a dead end. See Japan.

Core Gamer is where it's at. Make games for normal folks that play fucking games.

It's the people who grew up playing games but have lives, jobs and kids. They want to play a game, something that's deep, mature and engaging.

Bioshock, COD4, Uncharted are all examples.

Ninja Gaiden 2, MGS4, not so much.

Core Market buys 10's of millions. Hardcore buys 1-2 million.

Casual, well, those fuckos don't even like games. We shouldn't make games for them.

I personally think a 'hardcore' gamer is just someone who has refined tastes based on what they have played in the past. I consider myself pretty hardcore, but only because I seriously spend at least 5 hours a day most days playing games and I know what I like.

I don;t bitch and whine about minor issues in a game until it's released and I play it myself. If I dont like it, that's it, i call it shite and forget about it. It seems to me that this guy thinks that the people who believed a game like Bioshock or Crysis were shite is because we obsess over trivial matters.

It really isnt that simple, we slate games like that because THEY ARE GENUINELY SHITE EXHIBITIONS OF GRAPHICAL TECHNOLOGY. I mean, take a few years back......we had Deus Ex, System Shock 2 Thief, Sim City 4, Call of Cthulhu, Theme Hospital ( a few I can think of). Games that may or may not have been groundbreaking visually but were loved because THEY WERE FUCKING FUN TO PLAY.

That is the whole point of a game. They offered fun to both casual players and those looking for an immense challenge, and THEY LASTED MORE THAN 10 HOURS. Have these idiots not realised that we don't need graphics to be photorealistic? We just need a game with substance and content and replayabilty....which the games of old HAD TO INCLUDE because the graphics technology was limited.

I mean, the games i'm playing at the moment are Civ 4, Uplink, Call of Cthulhu, Thief 3, Company of Heroes, Oblivion, Diablo 2 and Hitman Blood Money. What do all these games have in common? Substance over pretty lighting and plastic-wrapped monsters.

I think he makes a great point about how the hardcore gamer tends to harbor the hype--in addition to scream "SUCK" from the rooftops about any perceived issue with the title after release, although they helped to keep abuzz for months or years. Some times I wonder how hardcore game fans really think they are "fans" of games, with as much as they bitch about them.

Has he heard of World of Warcraft? What is basically the biggest money making game in the history of video games.

All hardcore gamers. Fuck off warren spector, your games have sucked a cock for a long time.

"The hardcore is completely safe," asserts Spector. "They are less relevant to major publishers, but they are more relevant to independent developers."

The question being how do we get more independent developers so I can get spiritual sequels to Deus Ex and Thief that I like? More PC games that I like?

They're plenty relevant to ATi and nVidia. Casual gamers don't spend $200 on a video card, much less $500.

Whether I agree with the article or not. He certainly hit the nail on the head with this comment.

"They obsess over games before they're released and then often savagely rip apart the very thing they were so eagerly anticipating. They argue passionately about the most minor of details, and they demand to be catered to by developers."

We see it here on the Shack constantly where games are ripped on before release and after release by people who don't even own the game they are ripping upon. <shrug>

Again, you will have your Ford Escorts and Honda Accords for the masses. But you will always have those BMW's, Nissan GT-R's that represent the best and in demand by enthusiasts.

The irony is that the game industry business pundits really don't have a clue about enthusiast gaming or competition level gaming. They should just stick to their soft market. Even many developers are out of touch with the actual details and inner workings of the high end enthusiast competition market. Many game developers aren't even into games. Its just like flipping burgers for them. A job.

So again we have far more Ford Escorts and Honda Accords. Seriously to Forbes and all these market analysts who study gamers, do you really think most of them have any clue at all? They delve into the mere icing on the cake and assume they understand the depth and breadth of this market. They are so very one dimensional at this point. I can hear them in conference calls already (Based on our recent market segment data we've found 50% of respondents between 18 and blah blah).

I don't understand what the fuss is all about. Hardcore Gamers are a lot like serious art film fanatics; they're hard to please, they obsess about their chosen medium and they're generally a bunch of dicks.

And I'm one of both crowds so please don't think I don't know wtf.

That being said, there's still a bunch of art-house movies being made. Do you think David Lynch makes money off the casual Will Smith Summer Action Movie Blockbuster crowd? No, but he still makes movies.

There's plenty of hardcore gamers reviewing games out there who prove me right. Hell, Yahtzee's the kind of guy who, were he reviewing movies, would shit all over Children of Men because he didn't like the lens the DP used for most of the film (read: FOV setting or too much bloom or something). Of course, he'd be damn funny while he was ripping it up...

Anyway my point is that even if major players in the industry agrees that us hardcore gamers are irrelevant to the industry that won't keep people like Stardock from cranking out the Eraserheads and the Inland Empires for us to enjoy. In the meantime, EA will be squeezing out huge, successful turds like Titanic: 2009 every year and making huge bank off the rest of the gaming crowd.

Hardcore gamers: Forbes never was relevant to gaming analysis

what about casual hardcore gamers? i guess that'd be like playing bejeweled for 48 hours straight all strung out on bawls and shit

Why do we see so many movie, comic, music and other IP turned into games? Because the casual gamers dont expect more from games so the pubs can just strong arm the devs into making games out of whatever is hot at the time and then market the crap out of it so people will buy it *cough**Piratesofthecarribbean**cough*.

This means the bar for real innovation and *originality* in gaming will continue to be lowered. Im not saying there arent exceptions but seriously....Does anything think that Half Life as an original IP introduced today would even appear on the radar of casual gamers?

You should be fucking thankful for every gamer you get you assholes.

If you don't get em, don't come here and whine and bitch about piracy. You can keep your casual gamer crap.

I bet in years to come... today's casual gamers will become more hardcore-like. All those people who were introduced into games by the Wii, DS and flash games on the PC... after years of playing wouldn't they start to expect more depth to their games? Right now all these casual gamers are discovering games in the way we (as 'core' gamers) might have first found games when we got started as kids or whenever. They are learning the ropes and getting into the medium. Kids today who grew up with one of those 12 million or whatever Wii's in the US... will probably grow up with a hunger for more mature advanced games as they get older. I wouldn't be surprised if this current surge is like the flood which first expands quickly to a larger area... then slowly gains depth. Just a thought.

Hardcore gamers are a developers best asset. A critical eye is one of the most important skills, the more the better provided as a developer you're willing to have the vision to know what's right for your game.

The hardcore gamers that are still relevant are the ones that consider games a hobby, IMO. Not because they drive the market financially, but because they know and have seen what makes good and bad games, and they can and will inform both developers and other potential gamers. They're the ones who are introducing their wives, girlfriends/boyfriends, and kids to gaming, and showing them what's the cream of the crop and what's not.

You might liken them to cinemaphiles, or to people who read a lot as a hobby.

i've played myst for 15 minutes and hated it. i never tried the sims, does not appeal to me one bit. spore is becoming more a of disappoint each time i try to eek out a few more hours of the space game. i gave my wii to my nephew for xmas last year.

I AM HARDCORE.

I used to be hard core, now I'm just hard of hearing. Eh, what did you say?

I don't think Warren Spector is relevant anymore.

Hahah, and once again the Shack wins at article image choices. Just noticed that.

Warren make up a room for me when I get there. I am taking my house back

While what he says is true, it shouldn't be used as a cop-out to make games with shallow gameplay. FPSes seem to re-hash the same gameplay with shiny new graphics, then add a small gameplay tweak like CoD's perk system and everyone thinks its awesome. Watering down the game so people can 'get it' isn't the way. Could a game like MechWarrior II or Descent sell well with the influx of the core gamers? I'm not sure I'd say yes, most likely they'd say it is, "too complicated."

I think this is the key disconnect that is the source of a lot of the "PC is dying" talk. It is possible to develop a very simple game on a relatively cheap budget that will appeal to a huge market. Just look at PopCap, for instance.

Even if you put pure profit motivation aside though, a number of factors are converging to make "hardcore" games simply nonviable. It's just manifesting first in the PC sector because that is a smaller total audience than the console market. What you have though is gamer expectations increasing very quickly, which increases the development costs associated with making a game that can grab their attention, while the neither the price of games nor the size of the hardcore market has increased at anywhere near a proportionate pace.

*insert comment because you think you know more about the industry*

Forbes may no longer be relevant.

Development of hardcore games pushes technological advancement (improved graphics hardware and software, real-time physics, real-time spatial audio, etc) in the gaming industry and leads to more creative, original, and imaginative games (The Witcher, MGS4, The Orange Box). Ignoring the hardcore gaming community will result in stagnation across the industry.

I only disagree with the assertion that Myst didn't cater to the hardcore. Here's the key part of my claim, BACK IN THE DAY, it was totally hardcore. Adventure games were still a very viable, vibrant genre and Myst required you to own a CD-Rom and Soundcard - two hardware upgrades that were rare for gamers to own back then. So regardless of how wimpy you thought the gameplay was (or wasn't), it most certainly catered to a hardcore gamer back when it was released.

I agree about The Sims and the Wii...they're definitely for casual, more simplistic gamers.

hardcore gamers are the vocal ones that post on websites like this or neogaf and usually try to get their friends to buy into the console they own

the casual gamers are people buying the Wii or guiltar hero and having those family/friend parties where they play them and they probably never visit websites to talk about games or anything like that

You write an article about the relevance of hard core gamers, by...asking...the leading casual game developer of all time and a guy who hasn't shipped a game in 8 years....

What is it about that 80-20 rule?
I would venture to say that the hardcore gamers still account for most of the money spent in the videogame world.

While it might be true that you don't NEED hardcore buzz to have a hit game, I'm sure it definitely helps a lot in many cases. The hardcore buzz can have a large effect on what more casual gamers read about if they check websites and such. Plus a really well done game that caters to a hardcore audience will probably get great reviews.