I am more interested in who that girl is. Kind of looks like Christina Aguilera, but I don't think it is. But the fact that she's hot, naked, AND on a beanbag just makes my trifecta of awesome.

I've always believed that the Sims is not a casual game. Just because it has a wide appeal doesn't make it casual. People lost their social lives to those games for a few months. Doesn't sound like casual gameplaying to me.

Guys, I know I'm putting a damper on things, but can we make the pictures on the front page a little less risque? Some of us are trying to slack off at work!

@Darth Navster: Second that.

Its actually from the underrated Pulp album This is Hardcore.

Dunno who the chick is, just some model.

BOI-OI-OING!

anyone know who that picture is? co worker really wants to know lol

@PapaBear434: NOt sure of her name though I guess you could search for it, this is the album cover of Pulp's album 'This is hardcore' [www.play.com]

@uppitycracker: It's the cover of Pulp's "This Is Hardcore".

@Dannon: Damn you, Trebek.

@uppitycracker: I don't know who it is... but I know what it is. It's the album art for the british band Pulp's album named just "This is Hardcore".

So it's not less NSFW that browsing a CD store ;)

@futurebiblehero: The day is mine!!!!

@futurebiblehero: and @Dannon:

duh! at self. I'm truly lazybones...

She is a Russian model named Ksenia Zlobina.

haha thanks guys

i wasnt aware it constitued a game to begin with.

What is a casual game?

Something you can pick up quickly, put it down, and come back to later with no drawbacks of forgetting which quest you are on.

You can be a hardcore player of a casual game. I'm sure there are a lot of hardcore solitaire players out there.

To me, The Sims is casual. Baldurs Gate is not.

So I'm waiting for someone to come up with an approximate definition for "hardcore" now.

Sims is not casual teh same way Petz is not casual. But with Petz you play with puppys, and with Sims you play with humans.

That's it, I absolutely give up on trying to differentiate between the two purported styles.

The Sims is another Sim game, with everything that name entails. Whether that makes it casual or hardcore can be someone else's problem.

@Blackspirit: So, Ninja Gaiden is casual? Ikaruga? Gran Turismo? Virtua Fighter?

Only boring-ass fetch-quest games count as hardcore, right?

People are definitely using casual and hardcore differently.

I always imagined it labeled not the player but rather if you can just jump right into a game or if it was a drawn out process until you started having fun.

New system of labeling:

Casual - Wii Sports
Hardcore - World of Warcraft
Softcore - Sims

@Darth Navster: Although nice... Thirded.

her ears are a bit weird...

This is hardcore... you make me hard... you name the drama... and I'll play the part...

Incredible song.

one of the best albums of the late nineties. period.

My fiancee once spent a few hours each night for weeks crafting a perfect neighborhood before even getting to creating all the sims to populate it. It took a lot of dedication and it ended up being pretty damn amazing. That's not exactly casual. Actually this is getting pretty stupid- casual, hardcore- I mean, if the writers at Kotaku can't even figure it out, it's probably time to just forget about the whole thing.

@i_am_ben:
someone needs to send that to Photoshop Disasters ;P

@jourdanmerritt:
So agree.

@Blackspirit:
So Tetris or Street Fighter 2 are casual, but Puzzle Quest or Dog Island are hardcore.

She has plenty of actually NSFW pics out there, if you're interested.

I would argue the Sims is casual because anybody can jump into it and enjoy themselves. GTAIV is a counterexample to this. GTA is essentially a hardcore game for the masses, which if you're just interested in driving around causing havoc, becomes casual hardcore.

Perhaps that makes Sims hardcore casual?

I never thought the Sims was casual either. The game is way too complex to be casual.

Just because something is wildly successful with people who don't normally play games doesn't automatically make it casual.

WOW could be considered casual in that case.

@vanderblade: My girlfriend spent at least as much time with Sims 2 as it took me to reach 98% in GTA:SA.

Actually GTA and The Sims have very much in common. They are both Sandbox games with an open end. The main focus is on interaction with AI. And they both have the same kind of toy appeal to them, just very gender specific.

This is about a step away from the infamous "omg tubgirl is on kotaku" post.

@jourdanmerritt: I agree. When it came out, the album actually got fairly lukewarm reviews because it wasn't as great as common people. But as I approach my 30s, it becomes more and more relevant to my life (specifically "Dishes" and "Help the Aged"). And nothing can top the "Hardcore" as one of the best over-the-top sex songs.

I'm of the opinion that what makes a game casual is low learning curve (including story and goals), relatively minor loss consequences, and the ability to easily stop playing whenever you like (i.e. short sessions, or the ability to save whenever you like without loss of progress). Sims is a "casual game" by my definition, because it can be picked up and played by someone without making it necessary to fill that person in on controls or goals.

Casual gamers aren't uninterested gamers, which is where I think people get confused. Many are quite dedicated to the games they play. I think casual gamers just don't want to get locked into their games, even if they do play for hours on end voluntarily.

Fighting games, for instance, are in manageable blocks, but the learning curve makes them hardcore to me, not soft.

@Ghede: it's a virtual dollhouse. there is no end goal to reach for in that game, sandbox or not.

Nice pic dudes !

@skullivan: Yeah. To be honest, I think most people define 'casual' as 'any game that doesn't obviously appeal to the average mostly-male, mostly-teens-to-thirties gamer who likes shooting things'.

I think we should get rid of 'casual/hardcore' and bring back 'simple/complex'. The Sims, World of Warcraft, GTA4, Pokemon? Complex. Wii Sports, Zuma, Space Invaders, Wii Fit? Simple. (This is kind of the definition Kanik, above, was using.)

It might not provide quite such a convenient way of sneering at people you don't like but it'd probably be a more definable category.

And, once we've got away from casual vs hardcore toward an easier-to-understand simple vs complex distinction, we can then stop using it because most of the time it's irrelevant.

Luvly Jubblies ;)

I'd hit it.

My wife definitely spends hardcore amounts of time on the Sims 2.

And if you take a close look at it, its got alot of things associated that many of the typically considered hardcore games do.

-Its got cheats.
-There's a very active hack and mod community
-Its a game that encourages its players to buy better machines and upgrades (have you seen the load times on that game?)
-Its players look forward to every expansion release
-Its got strategy guides, for every expansion
-Its got fansites
-Its got level grinding (Gold level in sewing? see you in a week, brederan)
-It involves strategy and resource management (needs management, but if you're playing it straight, you're always watching bars)
-it has publisher provided DLC (for years now)
-Developers hold information sessions on upcoming expansions

Wii Sports, Solitaire, Cooking Mama? None of them hit all those points on that list, for whatever that's worth to you.

Its pretty amusing how 'casual' has become such a four letter word now. When you think about it though, it makes sense. Most of the 'gamers' out there, from kids that play games to hardcore nerds, pretty much think 'mom and your retarded aunt Edie who can't work the controller' when they think casual.

Thanks Nintendo.

@Darth Navster:

Funny you mention that...

I was browsing kotaku this morning on the computer stations in the break room @ work (waiting for my carpool who gets out a different time).

Anyway, the kotaku page loads and this is the first thing that pops up on the main site(it was the latest blog at the time) and of all the times the computer decided to freeze like a f*****, it did and now that image up there is stuck on the screen and since people are walking back and forth the place to pick up their stuff to go home I had no choice but to cover the jubblies area, which didnt help exactly since it made it more obvious and they can still see the naked body around my hand. Luckily nobody saw (too busy talking to each other I guess) and the browser worked again and I just exited the window as fast as I could.

Pardon the life stories. Theres actually been several times before this where something risque makes the kotaku front pages and it usually involves having the browser freezing or a person who works there awkwardly looking at me like im some loser who cant wait till he gets home and decides to look at pr0n at work =/ . There was actually one time where one of the ads on the sides had something semi-nsfw about it and the supervisor happens to walk over and luckily I manage to scroll down jsut in time or that would've been the end of me.

I know some will just say "well you f'n idiot just stop browsing kotaku at work lol" but the fact of the matter is I CANT HELP IT!!! I need my kotaku fix T_T. pr0n images after the jump next time plx?

ps: girl has some nice.... *runs*

I think Nintendo put it very well when they release the Nintendo Channel. The recoommendation system has two seperate questions:

This game appeals to: Anyone or Gamers
This game fits which *MOOD*: Casual or Hardcore

Casual/Hardcore really fits well, in my mind, as a mood, rather than a statement of what the product is by design.

@Super_Nintendo_Chalmers:

Definitely a hugely underrated album. Reminds me of the brief period when "alternative" British music went all porn-obsessed, records like Add N To (X)'s Metal Fingers In My Body and suchlike.

It is really hard to follow the comments with constant scrolling up to the top every 2 seconds. Have mercy.

they were one of the first to "bought in woman"?
assuming that was meant to be "brought" i still don't believe it for a minute.
my sister used to love sketchin on the Sega, and my GF is a GTA fan.

many female gamers are also known to dwell within the depths of MMO's including the original EQ, Asherons Call, and Ultima.

as for not being a casual game.... whats not casual about it?

This Is Hardcore is a great record, but Different Class will always be closest to my heart.

Disco 2000, Mis-shapes, Common People, Sorted For E's And Whizz, Feeling Called Love... Not to mention Underwear, which is easily the best song about being a fifteen-year-old boy. So much awesome on one album.

His'N'Hers isn't too bad either.

Pulp were an awesome band.

What was this post about again?

@GrimCW: Well you know, I'm a female gamer, and I've been gaming for about twenty years now.

While I may be not alone, "hardcore" gaming women are still not the norm, and probably won't be for quite a while, although it's getting better, I guess. I still don't personally know any other woman or girl that is into gaming half as much as I am.

Haha this post was about Pulp! Pulp > Whatever the article was about.

It's called an editor, you need one.

the sims is more of a toy then a game, so it isn't casual?

it's a serious toy?

it's too casual to be casual?

her comment confuses me.

This Is Hardcore was such an uderrated album, as was the follow up album to it We Love Life.

Anyway, the whole Hardcore/Casual argument is bogus, the terms mean nothing. Why would anyne concern themselves with whether a game is hardcore or casual?

@Kanik: WoW is not hardcore. This would be an example of a working labelling system:

Hardcore: FPS, RTS, (some) MMO
Softcore (that is, casual games that can be played hardcore): Simulation, MMORPG
Casual: Sports, Puzzle

@PapaBear434:

@Darth Navster:

I agree with both of you. I'd love to know who it is, but yeah, the picture isn't exactly work-safe (and I'm at work!)

I don't care about sims lives. I just build the houses.

Labels suck anyway.

Holy crap @ image. I clicked the article so fast that I don't even think the signal came from my brain. It was a pure spinal reflex. I also have an open wallet in my hands now for some reason. How did I become such a tool?

I always thought the sims would be a nice game for therapist to use :P because the way you make your sims and based on the actions you do says a lot about you. I usually make female sims that are smart and then male sims that are lazy and stupid and they get married to the girl who then has an affair after their first child is born..... yea..... the sims is a casual game

@Kanik:
yes!

The Sims is pretty complicated, and modding for that game is huge. I'll have to agree with EA on this one.