Redefining Hardcore & Casual

[Spindel]

Only a Game: Redefining Hardcore & Casual

The persistence of the terms “Hardcore” and “Casual” can perhaps be credited to the simplicity of the audience model implied: people find it easier to grasp an idea that divides people into two boxes than to comprehend what is implied by a more complete audience model.
Furthermore, many people working in videogame design are resistant to audience modelling as a driver for the game design process. Usually this is because the game designer in question wants to trust their instincts as to what is fun rather than a model; there’s merit to this approach, but surely one’s instincts can be better refined by learning the available models? Earlier this year, football game expert Dino Dini contended to me that game design could be driven by intuition rather than theory; I agreed with him – it is certainly possible to design this way, and I often do rely upon my intuition – but also pointed out that whether you used theory or intuition to guide the design process, you didn’t really know what you have until you try it with players who have never seen it before. Whatever assumptions you’re making, the players are the ultimate test.
If transitioning to the widespread use of more detailed audience models (Lazzaro’s Four Keys, Bartle Types, DGD1 etc.) is hindered by a barrier caused by the relative complexity of such models, perhaps we can at least improve upon what we mean by the paper-thin model we do have in common use – the Hardcore/Casual split.

Game Literacy
In August last year, I submitted a post to the Round Table which attempted to look at Hardcore and Casual from the point of view of how much experience of games the player had – in terms of game literacy. There is a lot of merit in what was proposed here, and I believe the key points still stand: the market for videogames does indeed consist of a “head” of game literate players – which I refer to as gamer hobbyists – who buy the most number of videogames, and rack up the greatest number of hours playing. And it also consists of a “tail” of less game literate players – the mass market – who are gradually in the process of replacing the gamer hobbyists as the primary source of cash flow in the games space. Nintendo’s ongoing success with their mass market friendly Wii and DS platforms emphasises this shift in the marketplace.
Despite the saliency of this viewpoint, there are flaws to the substitution of Hardcore for gamer hobbyist, and Casual for mass market. We are coming to the end of our analysis of the DGD2 survey data of 1,040 gamers (both Hardcore and Casual): as with DGD1 one way we divided players was according to whether they self-assessed as Hardcore gamers, Casual gamers, or didn’t know. This allowed us to examine the differences between the two (strictly, three) groupings.
Most of the findings in this regard are trivial. Hardcore gamers rated themselves higher for the importance of all the emotions we inquired about (and all these findings were highly statistically significant) – which is to say, Hardcore gamers were more emotionally invested in their play, or at least more likely to rate the importance of any emotional factor in their play higher. Hardcore gamers also rated themselves higher on every aspect of game literacy or player skills in the survey (and these results were even more statistically significant). Finally, Hardcore gamers were more interested in games of challenge, structured play (Caillois’ ludus) and games of escapism (acting out in a virtual world) – all of which broadly validated the findings from the earlier DGD1 survey.
But these results obscure something interesting about the players who self-identified as Casual. Firstly, Casual players still play games very often. 81% of those who self-identified as Hardcore said they played videogames everyday, but 49% of Casual players also said they played everyday. Hardcore players gave themselves high marks in game literacy (more than 95% of Hardcore respondents claiming the top two marks, and about three quarters the very top mark), but Casual players didn’t exactly rate themselves low on this (around 85% of Casual respondents claimed the top two marks, and roughly half the very top mark). So while some of these Casual players might be mass market players, many of them are highly game literate players who play videogames every day. (Incidentally, those who were unable to choose between Hardcore and Casual looked remarkably similar to those who self-identified as Casual).

What other factors might be in play?

Punishing versus Forgiving
In January of this year, Corvus (our inimitable host for the Round Table discussions) shared his thoughts about what characterised Casual games (as opposed to Casual players). He characterised these games as forgiving, as shown in this extract:
Casual games are typically very forgiving games. They don’t harshly penalize failure, they have gradual increases in difficulty, they don’t demand you spend large blocks of time in one sitting. They don’t have complicated control schemes or complex mechanics. Typically, you don’t even have to read to be able to play (excepting Bookworm and its ilk, obviously).

Corvus’ formulation of Casual games as forgiving is, I believe, a major step forward in understanding Casual players. Because without a doubt, on the basis of case studies at the very least, Casual players are looking for games that are more forgiving – and along the same lines, more welcoming. They don’t necessarily want a big time commitment (but may still spend a lot of time playing a particular game), and they certainly don’t want to be punished for their failures – they want failure to be forgiven.
This was part of the genius behind the design of PopCap’s evergreen favourite Bejewelled. It not only allowed you to excuse yourself from additional stress (by opting out of a timer – a major source of excitement in play, but also a source of unpleasant panic for certain players), but it doesn’t penalise you for making a mistake. Swap two jewels that don’t make a line and you’ll just be warned that you made a mistake – no score penalty, no penalty of any kind. This was a break from a tradition of punishment that runs throughout the history of videogames, and it found an eager audience waiting for it.
Conversely, the gamer hobbyists contain a great many players for whom the “old school” sensibilities of the arcade game and the early home videogame are more desired – games in which you are up against impossible odds, where you will fail often, and be punished for the slightest misstep. Why are these games enjoyed? Presumably because punishing for failure makes success all the more vital to strive towards and so the threat of punishment adds not only excitement to the play of the game, but it intensifies the reward in fiero (the emotion of triumph over adversity) that is received when success if finally attained.
This, then, is the other side of the Hardcore/Casual split – not the division of the market based upon game literacy, but the division of the players according to whether they are looking for a forgiving game (one that will welcome them, and behave in a civil and friendly manner) or a punishing game (one that will raise the degree of challenge and dare the player to rise to the level of difficulty that it demands, in order to earn the maximal payout of fiero when victory is eventually attained).
There will probably be a gender influence at work here, in that the majority of female players would probably prefer a forgiving game, but it is a gross simplification to assume that this is an adequate and complete explanation. There are female players looking for punishing games, and there are plenty of male players who want a forgiving game – Animal Crossing is a quintessentially forgiving game, and its audience appears to show no obvious gender bias. The DS version has sold more than 9.5 million units, almost twice the audience that a punishing first person shooter can even hope to attract.

Conclusion
The Hardcore/Casual split doesn’t work any more. It’s an incomplete description because as games have pushed deeper and wider into the demographic landscape the old assumptions don’t work any more. Hardcore might mean game literate, and it might mean seeking punishing games, but there are players who self-identify as Hardcore and yet detest any game that will make them feel angry (a feeling that enhances fiero, and can be associated with punishing games). We have no way of distinguishing between those two state of affairs in our current language.
Similarly, Casual might mean less game literate, but there are a great many players who self-identify as Casual but who are clearly well versed in the language of gameplay. And Casual might mean desiring more forgiving games, but about one in five players who self-identify as Casual still say they looking for (or willing to tolerate) anger in their play – roughly the same proportion as in Hardcore players. Once again, the term describes multiple different kinds of players, between which we cannot distinguish in our current language.
If we want to better understand the marketplace for games, perhaps we should start thinking in terms of two very different splits. The split between game literate gamer hobbyists, and less experienced mass market players on the one hand, and players seeking punishing play (challenge-oriented, fiero-seeking players – perhaps we might call them punishers, or punishing players, that is, players seeking punishing games) and players seeking forgiving play (forgivers, or forgiving players, that is, players seeking forgiving games) on the other. Hardcore and Casual is a compromised terminology – it means too many different things, and it no longer reflects the state of the marketplace. The time has come to move forward into a new language for describing the basic splits in the audience for videogames.
Can we redefine the way we talk about the basic splits in the audience for games? Or will we be stuck with Hardcore and Casual as our only widespread terms for decades to come? Share your thoughts in the comments!

That's it!
I'm a hardcore casual gamer!!!

I still think even labeling games and gamers as "hardcore" and "casual" is stupid. Feels like something made up by kids labeling themselves as "hardcore" and need to feel bigger than other gamers.

There also is some nice paradoxes with the label "hardcore" since most people would classify classic games like Pong, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Asteroids, Tetris etc as true hardcore games. While with modern standards, if those games would be made today would be casual

[Ark]

...i find it unusual that from today people are classifying others with 'hardcore' and 'casual' when back then, it was just hardcore gamer or just a gamer....

[codenamelenny]

of course they isn't a clear split, not everyone is the same.

[boffo]

I think it just works out that video games are in a unique position when it comes to media. Technically the "casual" games are nothing more than different genres of games. However these genres have been directly tied to people that play them mostly due to the fact that they are new genres that have helped get new people into gaming.

It's really just a perception issue from those who feel others are jumping on the bandwagon and they want to think they're better than them. It's essentially the same as me saying you're a casual movie watcher because you like romatic comedies while I only watch independent arthouse movies. Or you listen to rap but I listen to Beethoven so I'm hardcore. You don't hear those comparisons made because more time has passed and people realize that everyone likes different things. Over time we'll likely see the same happen with games.

[Xisiqomelir]

The categorization is very easy if you add the Hardlycores into the mix.

These people were (mostly) born in the 90s, had some form of Playstation as their first home console, and are by far the largest consumers of the mass-market "AAA" titles like Madden, GTA, Gran Turismo and Halo and the mass-market "BBB" titles like Condemned, Crackdown, Too Human and every Unreal Engine game not developed by Epic themselves.

They won't buy or play Wii or DS games because of "omg teh kiddie". As proud Hardlycore gamers, they demand mature, complex themes in their games, like rocket launchers and 720p.

They won't buy or play the real hardcore games like Soukyugurentai, any 2D fighting game or text-based MUDs because "that stuff isn't fun".

Sadly, the Hardlycores and their pedestrian tastes have a disproportionate influence on the industry today. They insist on this hideously unartistic Hollywood model of gaming, and publishers, miscreant mercantile mooks that they are, continue to indulge the Hardlycores in their base tastes. After the debacle that was the homogenized, focus-tested, sterile dullness of the PS2 era, I'm hoping that Nintendo's utter rape and pillage of the 3rd-party business models causes a real shakeup in the gaming world, and we start seeing some creative and original designs again.

[Spindel]

One thing I find funny is that i.e. WiiSports usually is the epitome of "casualisation" of gaming but even if, if we take WiiSports tennis as an example, the concept is very easy "pick up and play" you can do things like curveballs and slices in the game, things most people are unaware of, but that actually makes it to a very advanced tennis simulatior in its own form.