Purple Dave

Darth_X

Dipperdan

Godzilla-Sushi

Hardcore - Games you like
Casual - Games you hate, but other people like

Huckleberry

Bruticus

Americo

also, i think i'm officially tired of the words "casual" and "hardcore."

Rendo

rawg

Read the part where it tells about the percentage of women playing casual games, and about the learning curve.

As lots of people already said, "casual" is not about the amount of time you can spend learning the game... it's more about the time one have to spend learning how to play it, or perfecting his/her skills on it.

Now, I can't imagine people saying "it took me a month to learn how to play The Sims". Or "I would pwn you anytime on The Sims with my skillz0rz". Or "I'm stuck in this part of The Sims, got any walkthroughs?"

So yeah, Sims is casual. There's no shame in it. It still sells billions.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

Glad I didn't check Kotaku at work today...

Heartless1

Anyways... the guy says "casual" as if it was some sort of plague people should avoid.

The Sims is casual, there's not doubt about it.
Girls being introduced to gaming is only more prove to it.

I don't know what he understands by casual, but at least for me, casual games are those you can sit, play a little bit even if you don't know much about gaming, and stop anytime you want without compromising your current status on the game.

The Sims is casual, period. I should also add that it is almost the definition of casual.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

UltraMagnus

stickfodder

UltimatePancakeSensation

On a typical day, my sims would wake up in the early morning, walk to the kitchen and by the time they got there it would be mid afternoon, they'd go to cook something, but by then it was night time. Then they'd spend all night and early morning walking back to bed hungry.

fuchikoma

Oh my God for the last f'ing time the amount of time someone spends playing a game has nothing to do with whether or not it's casual.

"Casual" in industry terms is not the same as "casual" that you hear used to describe MMO players who aren't "hardcore."

Different. Concepts. Completely.

OneFreeMan

BookbagNinja

KarenaButeo

Knukleur

KarenaButeo

As far as casual games, I always equated those with companies like Pop Cap and Pogo. Has that changed? Are things like Wii Sports really on equal ground with Bejeweled?

kjaydeck3

tincow

Purple Dave

Couldnt agree more mate. Best Pulp track ever.

Basscadet

hollowfreak

In fact, this includes a lot of genres of games that are definitely not casual, such as racing games, and games with good save-load structures, such as the half life series. These games definitely do not appeal to the casual market.

If you are going to measure "casual vs. hardcore" in terms of the complexity of the objectives, then "The Sims" is going to end up being uncategorizable. Most of the the point of the Sims is to establish your own objectives and goals, which can be extremely short-term (throw a water balloon at your neighbor), or long term (build a house, get a high paying job, marry the nice girl down the street, have kids, educate those kids, send them to college, have them establish a flower shop down town, then master robotics, and build an automaton successor to take over the family business once the children die). In fact, a large part of the draw of The Sims is the ability for the objectives to be independently defined by each player, instead of being strictly defined by the game itself.

ludwigk

if its fun then play it.

uselesstomato

Llost

And kudos for name (picture) checking one of the greatly undervalued UK bands.

TearsandScreams

What? Oh, the Sims... yeah, not hardcore. Casual.

ShakeWell

Casual games exist, and they are fine. But all the definitions I'm seeing here about what makes Sims casual seem more about defining their perception of the player. But if all these "casual" gamers are playing what's really a pretty hardcore game, maybe its time we stopped calling them casual gamers. A dedicated Sims player has a lot in common with a dedicated RPG, RTS, or MMO player. Deal.

BStu

Just because you can mod a game or use a level designer does not make it not a casual game.

LDJosh

Shin-san

@Kanik:
yes!

hrabbit

rawg

Labels suck anyway.

Ajh

@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!)

DorkimusPrime

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

Eranmane

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?

Cruithne

it's a serious toy?

it's too casual to be casual?

her comment confuses me.

pasquinelli

slickchris7777

DogManStar

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.

FranUnFine

AlfredaScylla

That's a fairly accurate statement when you think about it, The Sims is essentially a jacked up dollhouse. Something like Raving Rabbids would qualify as more of a casual (pick up and play, with or without friends around, slight learning curve, obvious goals) than The Sims which is barely a 'game' at all, with no real victory but rather just a sandbox to play in.

logan11

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?

StorminNorman

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?

GrimCW

Snake9677

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.

phicaluk

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.

Tubatic

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*

doesntlikedede

Thanks Nintendo.

Phunk

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.

Tubatic

KM91

Jayenkai

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.

quen

diktafunk

jp182

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.

Balius

Super_Nintendo_Chalmers

KaneRobot

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.

Casual_Hardcore

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.

skullivan

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?

Anarchist_Gamer

aldo_14

Brian Ashcraft

_Hayko

Thyrfing

jourdanmerritt

Incredible song.

DogManStar

i_am_ben

thinkfreemind

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

Kanik

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

emag

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

frostcircus

Tei

Gospel X

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.

Blackspirit

underground_slacker

uppitycracker

graphicwave

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

The Whaleman

Dannon

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

The Whaleman

futurebiblehero

futurebiblehero

Dannon

uppitycracker

Rengenki

Dunno who the chick is, just some model.

Hadrian-M

Atrius

Darth Navster

Ghede

PapaBear434