Hardcore vs. Casual

Its Manifesto's stated policy not to carry casual games, and I'm wondering, with all the hype about the "casual" market in recent times, what is it really the defines a casual game, versus a hardcore game? I'd be interested to hear everyone's opinion.

I think it's mainly an aesthetic thing. Pick three puzzles and word games, right out. Primarily, we're interested in games that people who consider themselves gamers will buy, not people who have historically not been gamers. Not that it isn't cool that a market exists that sells to them, but, well, that market is well served elsewhere.

My understanding of the difference is that casual games tend to be more pick-up-and-play types, whereas hardcore tend to be ones that you make you weep in shame over how much you suck before you can get truly good at them. Casual tend to be accessible to anyone, but hardcore seem to require some sort of genre indoctrination or understanding to appreciate and get into.

What if "hardcore" developers can learn things from "casual" games in terms of accesiblity, UI design, smoothness of progression and so on, and apply them to traditional genres and mechanics?

Personally I can't help but define a casual game as sort of a simple puzzle/card/skill(as in pool or golf) game, usually made in flash and on websites like Yahoo, or written in Java and run on mobile devices like phones.

I think manifesto is doing some real good with the market they chose, the casual games market doesn't need much help but the Indie games market could use alot.

-Twixn-

EDIT2: Ok i think there is a problem in the forums. If you edit your post it appears to move to the end of the thread.

I think the distinction is nonsense. The notion of calling a game "Hardcore" makes no sense to me, and seems only to serve those who are happy to spend hours getting frustrated by the complexity of a game before they actually get to have any fun with it, and then want to wear the pain element of it as some sort of badge of honour. The so-called casual game market may be composed of games that use well known game mechanics (words, cards, pick-3 or tetris-style elements), but there are many ways that this can be utilised to make great games. Two examples on this site alone - there's a pseudo-RTS version of BattleShips, a venerable pen-paper game. And there's a (very good) version of Snake of all things on this site - a game that most people used to learn how to program basic back when computer games were still a totally new concept.

Call the card games "Card Games". Call the word games "word games". Call the puzzle games "Puzzle games". Call the games that take 12 hours to learn the game mechanics "Non-fun games that people who like to call themselves 'HardCore' will lose their life to" ;). But some of these so-called "casual" games can and do have infinitely more fun and depth than these so-called "Hardcore" games, which is revealed once you get under the surface of them and realise that fundamentally, they're just another blow things up game or some derivation of rock/paper/scissors with pretty pictures and more commands.

Ultimately this site is (and should be) about independant gaming, and interesting game concepts - the sort of stuff the conservative gaming houses won't touch. A twist on a classic "casual" gaming mechanic can be just as enjoyable and addictive as anything else featured here, and for small developers, making something like this is actually a more realistic and achievable goal.

Maybe the relationship between casual games and niche indie games will turn out to be a bit fluid.

I tend to think (or rather, hope, based on no data whatsoever!) that for a good chunk of players, casual games will act as a kind of gateway drug. I reckon at least some of these 40 yr old housewives who initially got hooked on getting a easy quick fix with 5 minute games of Bejeweled would find themselves tempted to look for increasingly more substantial hits. They might not go out and buy a game console and a copy of Oblivion right away, but maybe they'll look for stuff in between. Even if 2% of these casual gamers stray towards the harder stuff that could be significant.

I thought you had to own a bit of harware with SNK written on it in order to be called hardcore?

Cheers
Charlie

Good comments.

I'd say the market segments are distinct for lifestyle reasons, middle aged women won't typically move to more involved games because they can't devote the time. However, it maybe be possible to see some crossover, which would have non-trivial effects.

I think designing with a low barrier to entry and slick UI is a GREAT policy for indies trying to develop their first commercial game. Provided the dynamic has some life in it, you can be fairly sure to sell at least a trickle, and sometimes a healthy enough trickle is all you need to profit when your burn rate is really low.

Charlie: I really dug your game, it can be played casually, but I played it hardcore in trying to get a high score, restarting in a grind whenever I'd die by accident. Painful, but also rewarding, like a rain of endorphins, when the score finally comes through. I actually beat yours. When you start pushing yourself to beat the creator's high score, you know you're playing a "hardcore" game.

However, the really interesting projects will make use of a fluidity between indie niches and casual mainstream appeal, and recent studies by NPD and Parks Associates ssems to indicate that the audience ecology is becoming much more complex and varied.

Yeah, great comments.

To me, casual games are "Happy Candy Gem" games, "Emperor Chang's Funny Monkey Mahjong" games, "Wild West Word Wrangler" games, and the like. Perky, squeaky clean, rated G, and previously known, where a single twist on an old design combined with a different (but always generic and corny) art theme (and maybe some kind of contrived "metagame") can yield a whole "new" game...that we've played a zillion times before --except that this one has that funny monkey! ; )

It generally has seemed to me that the distinction is not truly a distinction in content or form but (as is alluded to by soemone else here in the comments) a distinction in target market. Casual games are designed to be sold to a sepcific segment of consumers - one that tends to be older and less tech-savvy. This is not universally true, but it leads to many of the features we think ubiquitous in casual games, and the friendly g-rated skins are made to appeal to the stereotype of the casual gamer. Likewise, harcore games tend to be more violent and provide 40 hours of gameplay broken into convenient 4 hour chunks - because teh assumed market is young, responsibility-free, and violence obsessed. As much as market demographics affect genre and genre choices - market segments should not, in of themselves, be considered genres. But they usually are. Anyone wanna see a chick-flick this weekend?

On the topic of films, Die Hard and Wedding Crashers both were phenomenal commercial successes because they appeal both to the traditional genre-fan market segment and a seemingly opposite but adjacent demo. In Die Hard's case, the wife-in-danger hook combined with lots of tension dispelling humor got women to see the movie, allowing in 25% better gross than the average action feature. In Wedding Crashers' case it was the converse, though I'm not sure of the specific numbers. An important lesson there.

I think Rich has a good charicature of casual games circa 2006, but how is the market at large evolving? Anyone read that analysis by Parks Associates, or by NPD?

Interesting report, pdugan. Thanks for posting the link. I do think the "(most) want to play these games with friends and players they meet online" conclusion is kind of obvious, but the "dormant gamers" category...that raised my eyebrow.

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I'm hearing terms like "hard casual" and "niche casual" being thrown around a bit lately, by designers who desire to make small games BUT not traditional casual games. --Which reminds me that when we were making SAIS we were thinking "It's a casual game for hardcore gamers! No, it's a hardcore game for casual gamers!" ; ) But I think it's sort of silly, or wishful thinking in a way. The word "casual" still refers to that particular group of gamers who have zero interest in "niche" or "hard," much less "core." ; )

Casual games (to me) are highly polished but incredibly shallow. Other indie games are usually not very polished but have something meatier to their gameplay.

It seems like something has to be sacrificed somewhere. Indie developers try for something a bit epic, but have little time left to polish their games. Casual developers aim for perfection by limiting what they are doing in the first place.

Maybe what we need is an indie game where a casual developer has been brought on to make the front end :)

Robin Hunicke has a post up on GeeGaw that tangentially touches on this - specifically that audience-proflied fenre tends to actually hide audience goals and motivation, and obfuscate some of the questions about genre and interface a developer should be asking when embarking on a design project.

http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/blog/?p=41630

I tend to see Casual games as being at the other end of the game spectrum from the sorts of things Manifesto focuses on. Games made for gamers tend to move away from the material of triple-A titles by sacrificing a bit of production quality to enable them to focus on more sophisticated gameplay. Casual games move away from triple-A titles by sacrificing complexity to enable them to maintain production quality but still enjoy far lower development costs.

It's not impossible in theory that a very deep game (suitable for experienced gamers) might also be very accessible to a casual player. This happens seldom, but titles like Super Monkey Ball II (Gamecube/PS2) come pretty close.

i would say that the distinction is of the highest importance. if we want the indie scene to grow and proliferate, we must know clearly what we are talking about.

i agree with the above comments, that a more important distinction is between casual and indie.

casual games are low cost commodities games, created to feed a general public tastes. they use simple, easy to grab, gameplay formulas, almost always discovered and well tested in other places. those games are developed with tha main goal of reaching profitability, and almost always, market studies, or at least market tendencies, are observed, and taken in consideration during the creative process, to increase the possibilities of profit.

on the other hand, indie games are created by certain individues, that at some moment in their lives got captivated by certain something in a game. that something growed, and evolved in their minds, to certain kind of idea, that the individual feel compelled to express. so compelled that them often pass a lot of difficulties to shape their ideas on a game. in most cases, they must go on their own and are not supported by corporative infraestructures, and from there comes the "indie" word.

depending on the succes and sophistication of their creator, the indie games, end having a certain uniqueness flavor, that may be in very different places for each game. could be something evident, or in other cases, could be more hidden, not easily recognisable by everyone.

for example, may be certain unique graphic flavor that combined with certain genre history, may hit a chord with certain knowers of the genre. or in others cases maybe something much simpler, like a peculiar gameplay coupled with certain graphic style, or even just some kind of innovative gameplay.

the gameplay could be something very deep, something complex, or even something really simple, that even may have succes among the casual public. the important thing is the uniqueness that the creator express in the game.

with these definition in mind, may be concluded that casual games will tend to be perceived by "indie gamers" (gamers that favour indie games, and that in general have sophisticated gameplay tastes) as crap in MOST cases. also, in many cases, the general public may not understand what is this something special that the indie games has.

this makes indie games the ones that most often, can approach the definition of art.

Most (I may be wrong in saying 'most' nowdays so ill say many) 'casual' games are or started out as indie games! This is because they are quick and easy to bash out and all you REALLY have to think up is a fun, addictive, innovative, gameplay mechanic and there you go, you've got a casual game. But of course Indie games are also divided into games like these and the HxC (

Hi folks. Good reading here. I've been turned down for distribution for my game being to much for a casual player to handle. The problem area for them was that the game gets to challenging to fast. On the upside, the characters where kind of cutey, but there isn't enough flash to the graphics(sfx??flair??). So because of this I'm thinking of making the next game a little longer with 2 different control schemes, and hopefully options enough that it could be considered casual or hardcore. The graphics being overhauled was a given. Shouldn't be to hard, just modifying the old engine. So casual = shiny pretty cute easy to pick up slow learning curve? At least in my experience it is(very little experience). So is hardcore just the opposite then? The grand adventure continues!

So looking at the front page of manifesto games and the amount of "casual gameplay" games listed. Is it fair to say, the word casual when it comes to manifesto games and their embargo, means good? Because what is on the front page is the bottom of the barrel in the casual game market. Uninspired gameplay. Boring old concepts. They bring nothing new to the table past being too crappy for most portals to carry them, even then half of them are carried by other portals. Shitty is not something to strive to and the arrogance here is only surpassed by the crappiness of the actual games presented here.

Sorry the games on the front page today are not to your taste, smark... We update it pretty regularly with new content. But we've got a lot of different games, and probably do have something you'd like. What -do- you like?