Men ashamed of casual gaming
I'm not ashamed to admit my past addiction to Bookworm - are you?
The odd thing is though that, according to a new study reported by Reuters, although everyone plays casual games men are less likely to admit it than women and are actually a little ashamed of the fact. The study shows that although women tend to buy more of the games, play is actually split equally between gender.
The study, which was done by the Casual Games Association, suggests that men are ashamed to admit they play casual games because they want to be seen as part of the more male-dominated Hardcore market.
"We knew these guys were playing these games, but the hardcore gamer who is playing Halo with his buddies isn't going to brag that he just beat the next level of Zuma." Said Jessica Tams, MD for the CGA.
It's not all that shocking when you think about it, though as far as I've always thought hardcore gaming has been about an obsessive attitude to a game and not about the actual game you're playing. I think you can be a hardcore casual games player, if that makes any sense, you just have to approach casual games with a certain tenacity - though that relentlessness is one more commonly found aimed at non-casual games.
So, let me be the first to 'fess up. I like some casual games. True, I can't stand Peggle, but I did waste the first year of my University life mastering Bookworm Deluxe until I eventually finished the game. I bet most of you didn't even know that game actually has a true win scenario. Thankfully it does, or I might have spent the rest of my life playing it.
So, do you play casual games? Which ones and why might you be ashamed? Let us know in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyPeggle was pretty fun but I do like a good bout of Hexic (360) or Bejewled every now and then though it's pretty rare these days as I currently have my head sunk into Tabula Rasa. MMO's eat my life :(
there's little casual about that though.
portal can almost be considered a casual game IMO.....
Not for me, for a start Portal is just too damn fun to be considered a casual game. Casual games for example the ones PopCap make work because you need to burn some time and they suck time up so effectively yet the only reward you get is trying to beat the score you got last time.
Casual Games = Big time spent for little to no reward.
Portal = Little time spent for the most rewarding game I have played this year.
I freely admit I play the odd casual game, but as UncertainGod said, they just not worth ranting about (and yer it usually resorts to ranting) in comparison to the larger games ;)
This site is a very casual gaming site which has games like chess/backgammon etc where you can take as long as 3 days before you make a move. The amount of time you invest in the games you play is negligible and I use to play them as and when I checked my emails.
As for "reward", most "hardcore" games I come across don't have any real reward. Unless the game is a clever puzzle type game (like Portal), most titles only prerequisite is for you to spend X amount of hours playing a game and your guaranteed to finish it, as you have unlimited saves and no real penalty for making a mistake. I would go so far as to say, almost all online games I've played are unrewarding as a game. Where they excel is in the ability to allow players to interact and achieve goals together in a community/clan environment. The tasks themselves tend to be very bland and repetative. The most rewarding parts of Online games come in the PvP variety from my experience.
I always wondered though, what actually happens at the end? Do you get a little message that said "I can't believe anyone actually managed to finish this?"
I don't know about that, Peggle is awesome as awesome pie.
Casual and hardcore are really a mindset IMO, all games are casual until you decide a certain game is so good you want to play it a lot more than average.
There are some games that people tend to play pretty "hardcore" (I still find this amusing) like say Halo 3 and Assassins Creed, "proper" games if you will. There are also ones that people will only play for half an hour to burn up some time like Peggle.
But then there's nothing stopping someone playing some hardcore Peggle and someone else casually playing Halo 3.
Gaming is one of my biggest hobbies, so I would put myself under "hardcore" banner, but that doesn't mean I'm one of those people who only plays M rated games because everything else is for kids. I'd say "casual" games probably take up more of my time than "hardcore" games as I'm pretty fickle with my gaming, I'll play something for a week and get bored of it for ages, and I often need something to fill the gaps when I'm finding a "real" game I want to play.
In my mind (and I freely admit that the tag of casual or true game is very subjective) casual games are games you can easily pick up, blast around with and then just as easily put down. Games like Super Collapse, Peggle, Painkiller, etc. True games are ones, like movies that suck you in, make you want to see what is next, like the HL series, etc and also games where you don't really care what is next but you are having to much fun to stop, like Portal.
Whether a game is casual or 'hardcore' has nothing to do with it's intended audience, more on it's design philosophy as I'm sure the dev's at Pop-Cap would admit.
Because many "hardcore" gamers take the only play M rated attitude. I know a lot of people who didn't buy the GC even though they were big fans of Nintendo before because of the sole reason that they were too hardcore to play a kids console.
<3 for pocketpc :p
EDIT: Just to add, I would define a hardcore gamer as someone who devotes a lot of their time to gaming and goes out of their way to personally research games they want. Someone who owns a 360 with only GoW and Halo 3 because their friends bought it wouldn't be hardcore imo (not ripping on those games I own them too hehe).
Makes sense I guess...
:|
No, and this kind of attitude is more prevalent than it seems you imagine.
Women ashamed of casual sex...
... according to another study reported by Reuters, although everyone engages in casual sex, women are less likely to admit it than men and are actually a little ashamed of the fact. The study shows that although men tend to pay for more sex, sex is actually split equally between gender...
...okay, so that was just the tweaked second paragraph of the article...
:)
-ken
.. this is my first post btw (long time reader tho)... so be kind...
I rofled.
haha good one and welcome to the forums ;)
Great first post
as for the subject... I was never ashamed to say I own at Tetris Attack on the Game Boy :D
Precisely. I'm completely gay for games like Race to Galamax (you'll probably only find it on antique-warez sites now) and even crap like the Windows bundled games.
Although I can't decide, now...is minesweeper casual or hardcore? Because different sectors seem to treat it like both.
I'm not afraid to say I like casual games. I play su doku on my phone more than I play anything else.
How come F T W is comming up as cheesecake???