Games that I hopefully will be able to play are:

Penumbra: Black Plague
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
Black & White
Saints Row 2
Skate 2
Hobocop 2: The Drunkening

And maybe some otter suprises.

DDDDD

http://www.ganggarrison.com/

(welcome to last year)

It’s not exactly my birthday, btw.

I love you Kaskade <3<3<3<3<3<3<3

After opening it I found this:

D’aaaawww ;_;

And this:

Thank you very much Kaskade, you’re a real bro <3

Today’s topic, CASUAL vs. HARDCORE.

First off, people are going about this whole subject the wrong way.  My main argument is that the games themselves are not inherently casual or hardcore.  Yes, some of them do not offer all the intricate gameplay mechanics or different modes of play or online competitive play, and while sometimes these features (or lack thereof) can cause a game to get good or bad reviews, this does not necessarily make the game hardcore or casual.  Instead, you should focus on whether or not the GAMER him/herself is casual or hardcore.  Obviously, one person can react differently to different games or types of game, but generally, people’s reactions to games in general should be able to tell you whether or not that person is casual or hardcore, not the games they play.

Let’s get some examples in before you completely discredit me.  If you already have, you’re not reading this sentence.  If you have, and you are reading this, you really should question your own sanity before you start questioning my blog posts.

GAME NUMBER 1:  Peggle.  The most casual of casual games, right?  WRONG.  The game itself is not inherently casual or hardcore, remember?  I hate having to repeat myself, you should pay more attention.  Anywho, from this one example, we shall take a couple different people.  They aren’t going to have names or genders or races or ages or anything else that might be slightly descriptive, so feel free to be biased, as no one will be offended for the wrong reason.  Person number 1, let’s call him or her… um… Person Number 1.  This person plays Peggle when bored, or when trying to avoid doing homework or chores, or in between page loads if they happen to still have a 56k modem and are trying to load up youtube, then they’re casual.  They’re trying to find a game that distracts them for a small period of time, and they want something fun to do in between tasks.  Not a whole lot of time gets spent, they probably will end up exploring all the game modes, but they don’t check the achievement page to see what they’ve accomplished, they’re just trying to keep busy by having fun.  This person number 1 is a CASUAL GAMER, at least as far as Peggle is concerned.

This does not make the game, Peggle, CASUAL, necessarily, and here’s why:  we’ll call this one Person Number 2.  They play for hours at a time, they take time out of their schedule specifically to play Peggle, they check the achievements page for the next medal to accomplish, they try (and whether or not they succeed just means they are a BAD HARDCORE GAMER, see my next rant for a possible explanation of why then continue to play this game if they suck at it) to clear 100% of every single map, beat the computer in duels at the hardest difficulty, beat all the ace scores for every map, complete all the challenges, post their high scores for dominance on the internet, whine and listen to Linkin Park when their scores are defeated, then spend the next week trying to retake the top spot, and they find expansion packs and do the same to those games.  Basically, they absolutely crush and demolish the game as hard as they can.  Person Number 2 is a HARDCORE GAMER, at least as far as Peggle is concerned.  Whether or not they deserve to be praised or ridiculed for their dedication to this game is all a matter of opinion (I believe yes).  Some games are easier to be hardcore at, and some are easier to be casual at.  Other examples, where this might be relevant include Rock Band/Guitar Hero, where Person Number 1 will play it at parties, typically while drunk or trying to fit in, while Person Number 2 will probably even play it alone, trying to get the best scores possible on each instrument (except singing, unless they’re REALLY HARDCORE and will actually learn how to sing just for this game), complete all the achievements and trophies, and places themselves among the top ranking players of the game online.  Again, the ridicule worthiness is opinion based and irrelevant to the topic of this post.

If you’re good at extrapolating, you might be able to see where I’m going with this paragraph: let’s pick a “hardcore game”, and show a couple different people playing it.  In the interest of protecting the innocent and showing off my creativity with naming people, let’s use Person Number A and Person Number B this time around (I had given thought to using 3 and 4, but I have to keep you (non)readers on your toes), and let’s use the game Diablo 2.  Hardcore, right?  If you’ve heard of this, you’ve been playing games for while, they take up a big part of your life, and possibly is the reason you don’t have a significant other right now.  However, AGAIN, the game itself is not hardcore.  While you might see a lot more people tackle this game from a hardcore perspective, that just means it’s harder to be casual at this game, but it can be done, much like Person Number 2 managed to pull a challenge out of Peggle.

Person Number A plays Diablo 2 almost religiously, they come home from school or work, they go to the bathroom and then eat because they know they aren’t going anywhere for a while: all their time is about to be spent on Diablo 2 until bedtime, which is typically 3 a.m., so they’re not completely exhausted when they have to get up at 7 a.m. to go back to work/school, just mostly exhausted.  They’ve probably got 6 or 7 different characters that they’ve beaten the main quest with, they’ve spend hours grinding in a specific area for a rare item, they defeat every enemy they come across so they can max out their character’s stats and loot, and they continue playing this game until the sequel comes out (and they might go back to it if Diablo 3 turns out to be a pile of horse droppings slapped onto a shiny disc).  That’s pretty hardcore for a video game, if I do say so myself.

However, we look over at Person Number B, and they don’t spend time with it all that much.  They haven’t beaten the whole game yet, they get to a hard part then they restart with a different character because it’s stopped being fun, they play for maybe 10-20 minutes at a time, or, as with Person Number 1, in between page loads or chores or homework.  They don’t check each item for its value or effectiveness and keep multiple weapons for different types of enemies, they just thought that the gameplay was kind of fun and exciting, and something a little different rather than matching up three items of the same color to pass the time.  They aren’t playing this game like it’s hardcore, because the game itself is not hardcore.  They’re a CASUAL GAMER.

Games that are in the middle of the spectrum, or have people arguing both ways, now can easily be determined based on the player.  Some examples include Pokemon, do the players pass the time, collect their favorites, and beat the game and consider it finished, or do they find the “best” pokemon according to some tier chart, do they breed their pokemon for the best possible outcome statwise, do they enter tournaments and do reasonably well?  Those people are casual and hardcore, respectively (again, choosing to respect a person who is hardcore about pokemon is all personal choice).  How about Modern Warfare 2, do people play the single player, probably on easy or normal, they don’t even touch Spec Ops, they go online, never prestige or maybe not even hit level 70, or do they get to tenth prestige, have they completed the campaign on veteran difficulty, have they completed all the achievements and trophies, do they constantly check the leaderboards to make sure they’re at the top?  It’s all based on the player, not the game.

Now that you know the differences between a casual gamer and a hardcore gamer, you can put labels on a game (if you really must) based on its fanbase.  If there are more casual gamers playing it, you could call the game casual.  Likewise, more hardcore gamers playing a game could cause a game to be labeled hardcore.  So now the only argument would be figuring out how many people of each type are playing this game, and that’s not something that can easily be measured, so why bother arguing about it?  It would save a lot of people who think like I do a lot of grief from having to listen to people complain about whether or not a game is casual or hardcore.  Please note that whether or not a game is “casual” or “hardcore” does not make it any less fun to the person who’s playing it.  So, feel free to mock someone who plays Pokemon competitively and takes Peggle to a whole new level.  You have every right to do so, and they also have every right to call you an elitist blow-hard for telling them not to have fun with video games.

So if you want to try out streaming or you’re simply interested in how this works, you can read it there:

Vidya² Videogame Stream Guide 1.0