How do you feel bout casual gamers

Agreed. My high school Cisco class once held a LAN party at a nearby college where our teacher works. My class all chipped in for food and drinks and our teacher even managed to round up some swag at a local gamestop to use as prizes for the tournaments we set up (basically Halo 3, Counterstrike, and Battlefield). Things were starting out pretty good until some guys that take a few classes at that college got wind of things and decided to crash the party. To add to that, apparently a couple of them were "professional gamers" that regularly compete for money. They completely slaughtered everyone in the Halo 3 and Counterstrike tournaments, taking most of the prizes (and food) in the process. The whole thing was total bullshit. At least we kicked their asses in Battlefield and I had plenty of revenge in COD4, though there was no tournament for that game...

Did they also teach you in economics 101 that if the low standards people will still buy the product regardless of the quality, then the company has no reason to make them higher quality?


Higher quality = more cost to produce. If anything, that would lower the profit depending on their market (which is pretty much decided by genre). The fact that there are high quality games is a testament to the fact that the big boys already take advantage of the other people who want the good shit. By producing high quality and shit games, they win.

The way I word it makes them sound like assholes, but we both know that's how business is.

What I want to see is a steep slope decline in the sales of their shit games. That would make things interesting.

If they make more money with higher quality, then actually they don't really have a reason not to.



Totally depends on the production costs and the increase in income due to that. No definitive answer there.

If a game is TOO shitty, nobody would buy it either. That's what I was referring to when I said "Video Game Crash", people didn't even want those shit games for free.

The problem here is the selling price. More work to produce better quality casual games will increase their selling price. Higher selling price as we all know, isn't an attractive sight to the consumer. Let's say you have some companies who actually think like you do and want higher quality games for their customers. If the other companies can get away with selling shittier games at the same cost (or at a slightly lower cost), then that's what it will mean to not have a reason to make higher quality games.

Also, CVP analysis ftw.

I think with the somewhat standardized prices for video games (I don't know about you, but over here almost all new releases are priced the same - and at an outrageous price to boot), it's not actually true that higher production costs = higher price for consumers.

Though what you say may be true, I don't see it like that the way things are now.



I think it basically all boils down to marketing. Not wanting to point fingers at anyone, but that holds true to some series in special.

Now, if you have a big publisher like EA, yeah they can get away with lower quality because their marketing is so strong usually. Small developers don't have the funds for that...

So, essentially you're saying companies are just catering to the consumers desires, which are shit games? Because that would be the implication if one were to say that shit games sell so much, because there must be demand for that right?

Guess that makes the system broken beyond repair.

More like fuck'em they'll be the death of the industry. I disagree with Yahtzee when he pretty much says that the casual industry and "hardcore" video game industry are exclusive of each other. They are very much inclusive of each other, and if casual gaming becomes big enough why waste big bucks making a technical game when you can make more by catering to that person's 50-year-old mother. -_-

HA! Even more reason to not have higher quality.

^
^Not in that case, but it sure is going to cost the company more to care about quality.


If only I could sit there when these companies have their "strategy" discussions.


No, the consumers just tolerate shit games and the companies like that. Remember that shitty or not shitty is subjective. The consumer might think they're buying a decent game, you know, for entertainment purposes, and the company knows they didn't try too hard to make it.

Haha, consumers desire shit games.

Hmm got a point there. Keep production costs low, make more profit.

I don't know what to say anymore lol.

I dont have a problem with "Casual" gamers at all, Someone dissed me cause I was playing Monopoly on my PS3 while taking a break from the constant FPS games.

Sometimes you just want to chill with a simple game.

No shit?

Is there pinball for PS3?

Im a hardcore gamer, but I like to take a break every once in a while, It only pisses me off when I see tons of shitty games moving on one of my consoles, If you go to your local videogame store and ask for Petz for the Nintendo DS, there are about 30 titles

...what really pisses me off is that there's nothing casual about "casual games". It's just that most publishers don't relize that these games are for a different audience - those who want to boot their console and have fun for a while with everyone.

Only Nintendo puts 1st rate developers onto Wii projects and the results show. These games are simple, easy to play, hard to master - and tons of new ideas are tries with them.

Nintendo has done the same when they introduced the SNES over the NES. With the Cube they got bogged down into a war and it was a massacre for them.

http://malstrom.50webs.com/

For all the bitching about how "simple" (or retarded) casual games are, I hope that other companies beside Nintendo will finally put some talent into the field. For all the money that goes into a big budget title, hardcore games are pretty shitty. Take Final Fantasy 13 or the Fallout 3 games for example: really shiny, with high production values but game-play wise they're outdone by games almost a decade old. (Planescape Torment, Fallout 2 or Deus Ex - all had better gamplay and story than either of these).

The golden age of gaming was around 1997-2003. Back then graphics didn't take up all the resources and lots of game-play types could be experimented with. Graphics were finally good enough to allow artist to put something nice and unique on the screen but it wasn't the damn budget sink (at the detriment of *everything else*) it is today. Not to mention that they hired good writers every once in a while (instead spending all the dough on big name voice actors to read utterly crap and cringe worthy dialog).

Did you just call Final Fantasy "hardcore"... like, really?

Think of that series what you will, but when I think of hardcore games, I think more along the lines of Atlus games, Katamari Damacy, Tales Series (in the US, in Japan that series is pretty mainstream actually).

Final Fantasy has become so big in the last few years that calling it hardcore would be a bit besides the point.

And that diagram made me lol. So only people who don't like video games buy game consoles...

I'd agree with most of those though the Tales series is on it's way to becoming main stream. Gust is also a company which puts out alot of hardcore Jrpgs =)... And City Builder games, i'm pretty sure only a handful of people play those.

Flaser - From your rant I assume you're a fan of indie games. I suggest watching SOWN 09's videos. I think I had made a thread about this and everything, but upon searching it seems it was deleted. I can't figure out why some would delete it though. :\


That is not necessarily true. It is true that a lot of new game ideas were thought up during those years, but the same has been happening since. And there was just as much unoriginality as there is now. But now some stuff are more easily advertised than they once were, making it seem as thought the video game market is only currently comprised of big budget games. Which is untrue.


Oh and Nash, have you gotten We Love Katamari yet?
edit: Nash, I disagree with your definition of hardcore gaming. I would in no way say that Katamari is a hardcore game. But then again, I'm not sure what I would define as a hardcore game either.
A hardcore gamer is another entirely different thing though.

Yeah, bought We Love Katamari, but I haven't got it yet =\

Lol yeah, I guess I was way off with Katamari there, on second thought it is pretty casual actually. I was more thinking of the game design there, which is just way out there. Guess you wouldn't see stuff like that games I'd call casual.

Yes, games like Katamari are better filed with an Indie tag. There is quite a number of awesome indie games, but they usually get so little recognition. Which is kinda sad. :\

edit: btw, try clicking that link I posted for flaser. Ideas like Shadow Physics and incompatible block could really make for awesome games.

Oh and fun fact, one of the juries of that contest is the creator of Katamari. Sticking up for his genre, what a guy.

Mmmh, Alien Hominid.