Email Discussion on Casual Gamers

Hey,

Over the summer I received an email from someone who read the casual gamer post in my blog and wanted my opinion on casual gamers buying a gaming laptop. Here are the email transcripts.
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Hi Doug,
i am from germany and i am currently interested in thoughts and opinions related to gaming. I just read your article on casual gamers and i think you are absolutely right with what you said about the differences between casual and core gamers. That is why i would like to ask you whether you can tell your opinion on this topic:
Do you think that a casual gamer (in your definiton) would ever buy a "gamer laptop" (like the ones "alienware" sells)?

Your answer will be treated in strict confidence and will not be passed on to third parties. This is not for selling purposes.

Thank you very much for your help!

"Reader"
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Hi "Reader",

I'm in total shock that someone else besides myself actually read my blog. I obviously have been slacking and haven't posted to it in a while. Right now I'm currently a production intern at a casual game company so I have a lot more knowledge then I did when I wrote that article. My opinion has changed a lot since then and I really should go and write some more posts now that I have some insider information.

To your question, I would say that a casual gamer would never buy a gamer laptop. The company I'm currently at has a goal of making sure their games will run on a computer 5 years old. This is because casual gamers are not technologically inclined and won't upgrade their computers until basic functions stop working. They have no need to have the newest and fastest graphics card because all they are really doing is word processing and checking their email.

I say all of this with the definition in mind that there is a three-way split in the video game industry consumer. There is the core gamer, generally male, who plays games 20 hours a week. There is the casual gamer who is, generally an older female, who plays games only a few hours a week. Then there is this new category that I have just learned about and agree with called the mass market consumer. This is where I would put consumers who like games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band but are not core or casual gamers. Clearly both of those games are not core AAA titles like Halo or Call of Duty, they are just as popular but they are not played solely by the core gamer. These mass market consumers are kind of the middle ground between core and casual gamers. The mass market consumer actually might buy a gamer laptop because they want to become more of a core gamer or are just interested in the technology.

From a completely personal standpoint, I would never buy a gamer laptop even as a core gamer. I know that laptops can now almost match desktop speeds but to get there you pay almost twice as much. I also don't plan on playing a core game while I'm traveling. I would rather have a solid desktop to play on that costs less and is faster. That is not to say that I don't own a laptop that is a little bit faster than is really needed but I would not buy a full on gamer laptop. I bought a laptop that is fast enough so that I could potentially play a game if I really felt the need to but it won't run well and might not run at all.

I rambled a little bit there but I think I answered your question.

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Hi Doug,

thank you very much for your help! Currently we are really trying to find a word for these gamers that are somewhere inbetween casual gamers and hardcore gamers. So your answer was a great help. So in the end your blog will have an influence on the video game industry!! Hope to read some more interesting things from you in the future.

I wish you the best

"Reader"
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I'll write a followup later this week more thoroughly discussing the video game markets. I'll also respond to my earlier post about casual gamers.

Cyaz

Improvement and Innovation

Hey,

The progression of video games has generally followed a very steady upward slope where games get more complex and more design elements are added as technology and player skill increases. People tend to complain that some new game is just like a game that came out the year before and that the game from the year before is just like the game the year before that. This is because games are normally between 60-80% improvement and 20% innovation. The creation of video games is no longer done by someone in their basement in their free time. It costs millions of dollars and oftentimes a large dedicated team. Doing something completely different is so rare because the cost of failure is so high.

Games with that type of balance have proven to be successful. Halo although innovative for the console and a good game was simply moving the first person shooter to the console. There is no huge innovation in the game play. The game is extremely successful though and has had 2 sequels. The developers simply made the first first person shooter to work on consoles. That was the innovation the rest is just improvement on the first person shooter genre.

Another example of a successful game like this is WoW. A lot of the game play is not new or innovative but it is better than its predecessors. Blizzard took what they knew worked in past games improved it and then put it in their game. They did innovate with instances, battlegrounds, etc too but a lot of the game is simply improvement.

The innovation in these games is just as important as the improvements. If the game only had improvements the game would be boring. The innovations do make the game but they shouldn't be the sole focus of the design.

The video game industry needs to study these unique cases of simple improvement and small innovation and learn to create it on a regular basis. Making a complete copycat where all the developers do is improve the last game is generally not successful. Making a game that is completely innovative and untested is also generally unsuccessful. That is not to say that they never succeed just that the chance of success is much less. I think that being able to tell these two types of games apart and specifically classify each aspect will help make better games.

Too often games are made that are copycats that are boring or innovations that players simply don't understand. A balance is necessary. Game design seems to be based on that balance.

Cyaz

New Start...etc

Hi,

I've been pretty bad at posting anything here and by pretty bad I mean not for several months. A lot has happened in that time and most of my old views about the video game industry I no longer agree with. That is the point of a blog though. To state my opinion on something at the time and get other people's comments. The comments part has not been happening so far but hopefully by actually posting I'll get some attention at some point. Anyways.....

Over the summer I managed to get an internship through a family friend at a casual video game company. It was the best learning experience I have ever had. Learning how to be a producer is incredibly hard to do while in school. It is very much a hands on kind of job and the only real way to learn while in school is to make games. Making games is exactly what I got to do.

I was ready to get an internship where all I did all day was follow a producer around and basically do busy work. This was not the case at all. I was a full assistant producer on a game. The producer I was working under tried very hard to give me an entire section that I could work on during the seven weeks that I was there. The game I was working on was in pre-production and all of the sound had yet to be worked out. By the end of the internship I had set up all of the sound for pre-production. The game I was working on was the first at the company to use voice over and I had to work with the 3rd party sound design studio and the game designers to gather all of the information necessary. I got an initial estimate for voice over and then added it into the schedule so that the producer could move forward with it after I left. I also did a preliminary revision of the sound request form adding in all the new sound effects we would need.

All of the sound work was only half the work I did over the summer but I it was the most significant. Near the end of my internship I realized that I had really worked on a making a video game and there was tangible evidence of the work I did. It was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had.

All of the work I did over the summer was a great learning experience but also just simply working in a video game company gave me insights that would have been impossible to get otherwise. That is one of the main reasons I want to start writing here again. This will be an exercise in seeing what I now think compared to before my internship and just a general way to track my thoughts. In the future my posts will hopefully be less about me and more about opinions about other people and the video game industry. We'll see what happens.

Cyaz

Nintendo's Seal of Quality

There was a feature article posted on Gamasutra a couple of weeks ago that talked about Analyze This's opinion on whether or not Nintendo should bring back their seal of quality. Their opinion was that the seal of quality was really only created to stop piracy and ensure the game was suitable for the whole family. I agree that the seal of quality did those things but it also ensured that games made for the Nintendo were decent games. They would not let in games that they thought were bad. Nintendo forced companies to let them do a final review of their game and if they didn't like it Nintendo would tell them how to change their game. I'm not saying Nintendo should start such stringent monitoring of games that they allow on their system but they should do something if the publics opinion is that there are a lot of bad games. Even if the opinion is not correct Nintendo needs to do something besides putting out great 1st party titles which only makes the problem seem worse.


Cyaz

Why Casual? What Direction?

I haven't posted in a while because I've been busy with school and life. I also just haven't seen anything that has compelled me to right a response to. I finally read a feature on Gamasutra to that was an interview with one of the developers of Twisted Metal and God of War, David Jaffe. Twisted Metal was one of my favorite games on the Playstation and I was really excited to read the interview. The interview went through the normal steps and asked what he was working on and what he had done in the past but at some point Jaffe started talking about where he thought the industry was going. He kind of started talking about it when he was asked what he was working on now.

He mentioned that he was one of the youngest people working at the new development studio he just started at age 36. To me at age 20 that seems really old and although I know it is not that old I still have the perception from society that at some point I should stop playing video games. When I think about myself I hope to be playing games all my life but society says otherwise. He then mentions that at age 36 he no longer has as much time to play games anymore and that the mainstream titles are just not in his realm anymore. That is not to say that at his age he doesn't enjoy them anymore he just no longer has the time and can't devote the time needed to really enjoy the game. (Examples: Bioshock, Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4) Because he can no longer play these kind of AAA titles anymore he doesn't really want to make that type of game anymore. What does this say of the direction of the video game industry?

This is why there is this sudden boom in casual games. The developers that used to be making the hardcore games are now older and making casual games. The casual market is not a new thing, just no one wanted to create games for it. This is also probably why a lot of the great recent titles have come from smaller studios that are still taking in new and young talent. Studios that are older and have an older age employees are starting to move into the casual market. This is not to say that all studios are falling into this just that it is a trend that I have noticed. I think the industry will survive but for a while the focus will be on casual games until the gap that is being created in the hardcore market is filled again.


Cyaz

What Is a Casual Gamer?

I read an article posted today on gamasutra, it was an opinion piece about what are casual gamers. It was written by Russell Carroll who started righting a weekly column on casual games. I basically agreed with everything she said in the article except when he listed the reasons casual gamers play games versus the reasons core gamers play games.

I consider myself part of the core gamer category. I easily play 20 hours a week when I have a game to play. In the article he states that the core gamer plays games for entertainment purposes but that is not enough for casual gamers. I think that some casual gamers do play games just for entertainment. Entertainment is defined as "amusement or diversion provided especially by performers or something diverting or engaging" on Webster. All video games give you some sort of diversion from life meaning that all games are forms of entertainment. Core and casual gamers may be looking for different amounts of entertainments but I believe one of the main reasons anyone plays video games is for entertainment.

The other part of the article I disagreed with was what the different types of gamers expect out of a game in terms of reasons to play the game. The article says, "they may be looking for stress relief, learning, distraction, self-improvement, or simply a pleasant way to spend time with friends. Instead of looking for excitement, adventure or competition like the core gamer, casual gamers often want to feel that their time is being used beneficially." I don't agree that you can really separate the differences between casual and core gamers besides for time constraints. The biggest difference between casual and core gamers is that core gamers will spend more time playing games than casual gamers. Both types of gamers like playing the same types of games they just play at different skill levels and get different things out of playing. There are some games that are just too difficult for a casual gamer to play because they don't have enough time to practice but most games both types of gamers can play.

There seems to be a large stereotype that games for casual gamers need to be a certain way in order to appeal to them. But if you take a step back you can see that casual gamers are casual gamers because of time commitment not because of a particular preference for a certain type of game. The day someone figures out the way to make it so both casual and core gamers are able to get the same experience out of a game the game industry will go through a revolution...


Cyaz

Reply to "Opinion: Is The Industry Ready for Its 'Game Noir'?

After reading Opinion: Is The Industry Ready For Its 'Game Noir'? on Gamasutra. I felt like the author was pointing out the obvious a little bit. In the past before WoW as I watched MMOs come out, play them for a short bit, then get dragged back to Asheron's Call, I started thinking about why I still played AC years after it had come out. The answer was simply that I liked the game play more than I cared about fancy graphics or sounds. I distinctly remember telling my friends that game developers should just make a cartoony game that looks good but uses significantly less computing power than a comparable generation game.

Blizzard seems to be thinking with this mentality with World of Warcraft. The game did cost many millions of dollars to produce but the graphics were not anywhere close to state of the art when the game was released. I love the cartoony art style they used but it was a change from previous MMOs where each new MMO tries to one up the one before graphically. WoW instead of playing that game went for using just good graphics rather than spectacular and focused on the game play. I think this is the key to making a successful noir game. They need to make sure the graphics are good (meaning not state of the art but still fun to look at) then focus the rest of their attention on game play. This is comparable to what they did with movies where they cut the huge explosions, sets, etc and focused on individual characters doing more mundane and simpler things.

I still believe that the game industry should continue on as it has despite the argument for following a 'Game Noir' strategy. The game industry is still overall successful and profitable. It is a real competition for the movie industry and is growing each year. I think this opinion piece was a plea for the little guy who can't get funding. Yes, many potential great games are probably not being made due to lack of funding and game design is stagnating and progressing slow than it should because developers are scared to try new things but how can we change that?

I think the only answer is to continue on and eventually the industry will become large enough to let the little guy in. The Playstation 2 is the best selling video game console to date and because of this anyone could design almost any game they wanted. The market was so large that niche games could be created and still be successful. Right now most game developers are focused on this race to have the best graphics and coolest effects but at some point they are going to realize that making the next Halo or Mass Effect is not necessary to stay profitable. Enough people will have consoles or PCs that game developers can make the games they want to make. However, I do believe that the most profitable video game titles will always be the ones that had the best funding and best equipment because they will always have the best graphics and effects. People seem to like things that are pretty and shiny and so they will buy the prettiest and shiniest video game.


For those who don't know what film noir is click here.

Cyaz