Welcome back to another standard edition of Hate Speech, what is fast becoming the source for fuzzy wuzzy let’s-hold-hands-around-the-campfire communitarian schlock. It’s not that I want to be a positive person—I don’t. My tiny, black heart pumps nothing but the condensed syrup of scorn and loathing which sustains me, but these are unusual times. We’re a month and some change away from SC5’s release, and I’m seeing arguments which are as counterproductive as they are wholly unnecessary, so today we’ll be discussing a few more community/demographic issues and hopefully putting everything to bed.
For those of you out there who didn’t catch it, there was briefly a thread in the SC5 forum regarding Famitsu’s Algol and Edgemaster character reveals. The sight of Algol’s majestic nakedness (he looks awesome, don’t you dare argue the point) sent everyone into a predictable frenzy; tempers became short, perceptions of reality began distorting, and several people started actually taking Vincent seriously. These are all dire omens, indeed...
The net result of this burgeoning hysteria was precisely what anyone would expect: a vicious little argument about the relative merits of hardcore and casual gamers as they relate to gaming generally. It was perfectly natural, really. Even so, it’s entirely off-base, as I’ll endeavor to prove.
While one particular thread derailment inspired me to write on this subject, its specifics aren’t particularly relevant or interesting. For the sake of brevity and decency, allow me to offer a general summary:
Person A: I think [opinion]!
Person B: Shut up. [Opinion] must be wrong because I play in tournaments and you don’t!
A: You’re fat irl. [Opinion] is obviously right because we outnumber you and game developers hate you!
Vincent: I have 500 girlfriends and you are all scrubs.
The point of contention is unimportant. The real focus here should be the hierarchical distinctions being drawn between casual players and hardcore players, and that between tournament players and non-tournament players. Let’s examine them in turn.
Binary 1: Casual vs. Hardcore
To begin, it should be noted that the casual/hardcore binary is entirely distinct from its tournament/non-tournament counterpart. In fact, most of us here at 8wayrun.com are most likely hardcore players. To understand this, however, we need to interrogate the definitions of these terms. Since a key proposition in the aforementioned conflict is that developers can’t, won’t, or shouldn’t design for the undeniably smaller hardcore market, we must begin by looking at the terms from an industry perspective.
Richard Leinfellner, then of Electronic Arts, in his talk at the Games Production and Development Conference in Liverpool (2003, quoted in Bateman & Boon’s 21st Century Game Design), discussed EA’s audience model, which consisted at the time of three major segments: the hardcore gamer, the cool gamer, and the mass market casual gamer. In more detail:
Hardcore Gamers: This cluster reads the specialist press (magazines about games), plays demos, rents games before buying (especially in the U.S. market) and can play as many as twenty-five games (or more) each year.
Cool Gamers: A typical Cool gamer has a Hardcore friend who is their primary source of advice about buying games. They are part of big peer group, are swayed in their buying decisions by the opinions of this play group, and tend to play the current top ten hits in the gaming charts.
Mass Market Casual Gamers: The least game literate cluster in this model consists of a huge market of people who are in general swayed in their opinions of games by Cool gamer recommendation and TV advertising. They play predominantly the current top three hits in the gaming charts.
Interestingly, EA also sees the above market clusters as a direct marketing vector. In other words, the hardcore troglodytes each tell their one childhood friend who pities them enough to still say hi (the “cool gamer”) about a new title, and that friend, in turn, recommends it to all of his frat brothers. Cynical stereotyping aside, it’s a thoroughly reasonable, believable marketing model that apparently works quite well, given the available sales figures. As such, we can infer from this that developers understand the real risk involved in attempting to aim directly for the casual market without taking hardcore needs into account, irrespective of each group’s relative size. Thus, even if casual/hardcore truly was a simple as tournament/non-tournament, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Namco or any other developer would be prudent to ignore the former group.
Remember that the distinction isn’t that cut and dry, however. So where do we fall in that spectrum? Personally, I neither buy nor play a lot of games, so a hasty assignment might put me squarely in the realm of the mass market casual gamer. Then again, I’d call sites like 8wayrun.com, shoryuken.com, and others “specialist press,” and while I don’t buy a lot of games, the ones I ultimately do play competitively get played deeply and aggressively evangelized. I’m at least a hardcore fighting gamer and a hardcore Soul Calibur player. Many non-tournament players on this site also engage deeply and passionately enough, albeit in slightly different fashion, to also readily qualify as hardcore from the industry perspective.
Binary 2: Tournament vs. Non-Tournament
This is what most players seem to mean when they cite the casual/hardcore distinction. As we established, however, that’s not an especially useful or accurate way to think about it. What we should do is think about it in the simplest way possible: tournament players play in tournaments, non-tournament players don’t. Both can be hardcore, and if they’re here, it’s relatively difficult for them to be casual, so why the animosity? It likely stems from a rather shaky hierarchical rationale: “I could probably beat you at the game, so my opinion on all matters game-related thus trumps yours.”
The tournament mindset certainly dictates that to the victor go the spoils, but we must be cautious to confine that sort of thing to where it belongs. Truthfully, when it comes to issues of balance, gameplay, etcetera, a tournament player’s opinion does trump that of a non-tournament player, much like a great tournament player’s opinion trumps that of a mediocre one. In matters of aesthetics, game experience, backstory, overall fun, and basically everything else, however, we’re all on equal footing, so deal with it.
That said, non-tournament players (to borrow a phrase from a deeply embittered old man I know), face some uncomfortable truths. Project Soul is making a concerted effort to cater to the tournament crowd, and it is unquestionably correct in doing so. They’re spending a great deal of time and effort not only on working through balance and gameplay issues, but also on engaging with tournament players, getting their feedback, and so on. Think about it: there’s an obvious rationale behind their choice to demonstrate the game at major tournaments—one of which they actually attended, no less—as opposed to general conventions.
Beyond the need to embrace hardcore players mentioned above, I see two major reasons for this stance. First, the Project Soul guys take pride in their creation and want finally to win over tournament communities who have been ambivalent about the last two entries in the series. Second, for those of you who are fans of the game but not competitive players, they already have your money. Project Soul can design with an eye toward the tourney crowd because they are already giving you a game with large-scale customization, amazing graphics, orchestral sound, lush stages, and a ton of cool looking characters, each with its own unique aesthetic appeal. You may pick a nit or two about small elements of design, but no single complaint will prevent you from picking up the game and enjoying it.
Tournament players are actually a much more fickle market. None of the lovely elements listed above matter if the game itself is wildly broken, and often that can come down to a solitary character or mechanic. Competitive players are necessarily pickier than others, they are far more willing to abandon a game over small but crucial flaws, and that abandonment can have a serious negative impact on a game’s overall reception.
Denouement—A Humble Request
If you’ve felt the urge lately to start shouting about casual versus hardcore players, don’t. The primary arguments held by both sides wither under any scrutiny, and the whole issue is relentlessly divisive at a time when we really ought to be marshaling our forces. Remember, non-tournament players, that we in the tournament community drive and sustain interest in a game, and we all really want to put on exciting tournament matches showcasing your favorite characters. Tournament players, we need to remember that our special expertise doesn’t extend to all things SC-related and that need an audience, damn it. Frankly, we all have better reasons to rip each other, anyway.
I’d really like to see tournament players drop the elitism and non-tournament players stop being defensive because, ultimately, I want to see more tournament players. We do this by eliminating as many barriers to entry as possible without sacrificing who and what we are. For those of you out there who aren’t involved in the tournament scene, I invite you to check it out. Post up in a matchfinder thread, locate a nearby community, and dive in. If you don’t like it, you sacrifice maybe an evening or two, but if you do like it, the rewards are immense. When I was first starting out, I never had any aspirations of tournament play—I didn’t even really understand it, to be honest—but over the last ten years I have crisscrossed the country, made plenty of friends, and found a depth and breadth of enjoyment in fighting games that I never imagined possible. I urge everyone to give it a real shot. The release of a new game in the series is a perfect time to begin getting involved, and I hope to be beating the hell out of all of you very soon.
Homework:
As usual, let me know what you think about casual/hardcore, tournament/non-tournament, etc. More importantly, find someone you thought of as “casual” and point them here, or give them your own recruitment pitch. You don’t need to be the best ever (that position’s taken, anyway *ahem*) to discover a love of competitive play. Foster that in somebody. Also, tune in next week for my Chun-Li cosplay pics!
For those of you out there who didn’t catch it, there was briefly a thread in the SC5 forum regarding Famitsu’s Algol and Edgemaster character reveals. The sight of Algol’s majestic nakedness (he looks awesome, don’t you dare argue the point) sent everyone into a predictable frenzy; tempers became short, perceptions of reality began distorting, and several people started actually taking Vincent seriously. These are all dire omens, indeed...
The net result of this burgeoning hysteria was precisely what anyone would expect: a vicious little argument about the relative merits of hardcore and casual gamers as they relate to gaming generally. It was perfectly natural, really. Even so, it’s entirely off-base, as I’ll endeavor to prove.
Idle: Having a mental block on pics. Feel it's in poor taste to do the usual funny insults for a serious article.
Hates: You might just have to use Kittens.
Setting the StageWhile one particular thread derailment inspired me to write on this subject, its specifics aren’t particularly relevant or interesting. For the sake of brevity and decency, allow me to offer a general summary:
Person A: I think [opinion]!
Person B: Shut up. [Opinion] must be wrong because I play in tournaments and you don’t!
A: You’re fat irl. [Opinion] is obviously right because we outnumber you and game developers hate you!
Vincent: I have 500 girlfriends and you are all scrubs.
The point of contention is unimportant. The real focus here should be the hierarchical distinctions being drawn between casual players and hardcore players, and that between tournament players and non-tournament players. Let’s examine them in turn.
Binary 1: Casual vs. Hardcore
To begin, it should be noted that the casual/hardcore binary is entirely distinct from its tournament/non-tournament counterpart. In fact, most of us here at 8wayrun.com are most likely hardcore players. To understand this, however, we need to interrogate the definitions of these terms. Since a key proposition in the aforementioned conflict is that developers can’t, won’t, or shouldn’t design for the undeniably smaller hardcore market, we must begin by looking at the terms from an industry perspective.
Richard Leinfellner, then of Electronic Arts, in his talk at the Games Production and Development Conference in Liverpool (2003, quoted in Bateman & Boon’s 21st Century Game Design), discussed EA’s audience model, which consisted at the time of three major segments: the hardcore gamer, the cool gamer, and the mass market casual gamer. In more detail:
Hardcore Gamers: This cluster reads the specialist press (magazines about games), plays demos, rents games before buying (especially in the U.S. market) and can play as many as twenty-five games (or more) each year.
Cool Gamers: A typical Cool gamer has a Hardcore friend who is their primary source of advice about buying games. They are part of big peer group, are swayed in their buying decisions by the opinions of this play group, and tend to play the current top ten hits in the gaming charts.
Mass Market Casual Gamers: The least game literate cluster in this model consists of a huge market of people who are in general swayed in their opinions of games by Cool gamer recommendation and TV advertising. They play predominantly the current top three hits in the gaming charts.
Idle: Do you approve of this?
Hates: As long as they are in adorable outfits.
Interestingly, EA also sees the above market clusters as a direct marketing vector. In other words, the hardcore troglodytes each tell their one childhood friend who pities them enough to still say hi (the “cool gamer”) about a new title, and that friend, in turn, recommends it to all of his frat brothers. Cynical stereotyping aside, it’s a thoroughly reasonable, believable marketing model that apparently works quite well, given the available sales figures. As such, we can infer from this that developers understand the real risk involved in attempting to aim directly for the casual market without taking hardcore needs into account, irrespective of each group’s relative size. Thus, even if casual/hardcore truly was a simple as tournament/non-tournament, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Namco or any other developer would be prudent to ignore the former group.
Remember that the distinction isn’t that cut and dry, however. So where do we fall in that spectrum? Personally, I neither buy nor play a lot of games, so a hasty assignment might put me squarely in the realm of the mass market casual gamer. Then again, I’d call sites like 8wayrun.com, shoryuken.com, and others “specialist press,” and while I don’t buy a lot of games, the ones I ultimately do play competitively get played deeply and aggressively evangelized. I’m at least a hardcore fighting gamer and a hardcore Soul Calibur player. Many non-tournament players on this site also engage deeply and passionately enough, albeit in slightly different fashion, to also readily qualify as hardcore from the industry perspective.
Binary 2: Tournament vs. Non-Tournament
This is what most players seem to mean when they cite the casual/hardcore distinction. As we established, however, that’s not an especially useful or accurate way to think about it. What we should do is think about it in the simplest way possible: tournament players play in tournaments, non-tournament players don’t. Both can be hardcore, and if they’re here, it’s relatively difficult for them to be casual, so why the animosity? It likely stems from a rather shaky hierarchical rationale: “I could probably beat you at the game, so my opinion on all matters game-related thus trumps yours.”
The tournament mindset certainly dictates that to the victor go the spoils, but we must be cautious to confine that sort of thing to where it belongs. Truthfully, when it comes to issues of balance, gameplay, etcetera, a tournament player’s opinion does trump that of a non-tournament player, much like a great tournament player’s opinion trumps that of a mediocre one. In matters of aesthetics, game experience, backstory, overall fun, and basically everything else, however, we’re all on equal footing, so deal with it.
That said, non-tournament players (to borrow a phrase from a deeply embittered old man I know), face some uncomfortable truths. Project Soul is making a concerted effort to cater to the tournament crowd, and it is unquestionably correct in doing so. They’re spending a great deal of time and effort not only on working through balance and gameplay issues, but also on engaging with tournament players, getting their feedback, and so on. Think about it: there’s an obvious rationale behind their choice to demonstrate the game at major tournaments—one of which they actually attended, no less—as opposed to general conventions.
Beyond the need to embrace hardcore players mentioned above, I see two major reasons for this stance. First, the Project Soul guys take pride in their creation and want finally to win over tournament communities who have been ambivalent about the last two entries in the series. Second, for those of you who are fans of the game but not competitive players, they already have your money. Project Soul can design with an eye toward the tourney crowd because they are already giving you a game with large-scale customization, amazing graphics, orchestral sound, lush stages, and a ton of cool looking characters, each with its own unique aesthetic appeal. You may pick a nit or two about small elements of design, but no single complaint will prevent you from picking up the game and enjoying it.
Idle: This is more or less the only important thing I do for the article so I don't want to fuck it up too badly.
Hates: It doesn't have to be a pictorial tour-de-force.
Tournament players are actually a much more fickle market. None of the lovely elements listed above matter if the game itself is wildly broken, and often that can come down to a solitary character or mechanic. Competitive players are necessarily pickier than others, they are far more willing to abandon a game over small but crucial flaws, and that abandonment can have a serious negative impact on a game’s overall reception.
Denouement—A Humble Request
If you’ve felt the urge lately to start shouting about casual versus hardcore players, don’t. The primary arguments held by both sides wither under any scrutiny, and the whole issue is relentlessly divisive at a time when we really ought to be marshaling our forces. Remember, non-tournament players, that we in the tournament community drive and sustain interest in a game, and we all really want to put on exciting tournament matches showcasing your favorite characters. Tournament players, we need to remember that our special expertise doesn’t extend to all things SC-related and that need an audience, damn it. Frankly, we all have better reasons to rip each other, anyway.
I’d really like to see tournament players drop the elitism and non-tournament players stop being defensive because, ultimately, I want to see more tournament players. We do this by eliminating as many barriers to entry as possible without sacrificing who and what we are. For those of you out there who aren’t involved in the tournament scene, I invite you to check it out. Post up in a matchfinder thread, locate a nearby community, and dive in. If you don’t like it, you sacrifice maybe an evening or two, but if you do like it, the rewards are immense. When I was first starting out, I never had any aspirations of tournament play—I didn’t even really understand it, to be honest—but over the last ten years I have crisscrossed the country, made plenty of friends, and found a depth and breadth of enjoyment in fighting games that I never imagined possible. I urge everyone to give it a real shot. The release of a new game in the series is a perfect time to begin getting involved, and I hope to be beating the hell out of all of you very soon.
Hates: But bear in mind that we do this weekly, not everything will be perfect or wonderful every time.
Idle: OK, cats collected and incoming then!
Homework:
As usual, let me know what you think about casual/hardcore, tournament/non-tournament, etc. More importantly, find someone you thought of as “casual” and point them here, or give them your own recruitment pitch. You don’t need to be the best ever (that position’s taken, anyway *ahem*) to discover a love of competitive play. Foster that in somebody. Also, tune in next week for my Chun-Li cosplay pics!
