Heads Up, Hardcore: You Don’t Matter
by Michael Camilleri
Wired’s gaming blog, Game|Life, canvassed their predictions for the upcoming year in terms of gaming and the issue of the hardcore gamer, particularly vis-à-vis Nintendo, came up. Whenever this issue is raised I pray someone will say what should be plain for anyone to see. Namely that the hardcore demographic vastly overrates their importance and needs to come to grips with the fact that, by and large, they don’t matter.
Game|Life’s editor Chris Kohler almost got there:
But really, Nintendo can afford to put many of its eggs into Wii Fit‘s basket. The “expanded audience” doesn’t need to be constantly shovel-fed a never-ending supply of new games. Look at how well Wii Sports has done as a killer app that’s had a fourteen-month lifecycle and shows no signs of slowing.
And regular contributor Susan Arendt correctly predicts Nintendo’s response but pandered to the choir when explaining why:
As for the hardcore gamer, Nintendo will throw them a few bones over the course of the year and largely ignore them the rest of the time. Why? Because Nintendo has learned that their core audience will stay loyal with the barest of attention paid to them.
Similar sentiments were echoed in the 2008 predictions on 1UP’s 1UP Yours podcast.
In some respects this is understandable. These guys represent gaming enthusiasts and these are issues the hardcore care about (seemingly the only thing they care about as far as Nintendo is concerned). But while I expect such issues to be addressed I’m disappointed no one has the courage to explain what the place of the hardcore is in the modern marketplace since it neatly explains away most of the questions raised.
In light of that failure, allow me. The hardcore gamer is of interest to gaming companies for one reason: they’re early adopters. They cultivate and care about them insofar as they fulfil that role. Beyond that, they’re really more of a nuisance than anything else. Their vocal fanaticism and crazy antics serve to only alienate the more mainstream market the platform makers are really going after.
Companies need them to get their product moving initially. In the case of Sony, this means they’re still needed. In the case of Microsoft, they kind of wish they didn’t need them but haven’t quite worked out how to move beyond them. Crucially, in the case of Nintendo, they don’t need them. The reason Nintendo will ignore the hardcore isn’t because they know their core audience will be loyal. It’s because their core audience aren’t the hardcore any more.
This isn’t something to be up in arms about, either. It’s the way things go. Gamers have been clamouring for gaming to be taken seriously by the general public for as long as I can remember. Now that it is the sting of realising you’re going to be outcasts regardless of whether your hobby is a billion-dollar industry or not is starting to be felt. Then, to add insult to injury, the pride of place the hardcore enjoyed in previous generations appears to be coming to an end as the focus shifts from the Halo 3s to the Brain Ages.
I guess that’s why they say be careful what you wish for.
Comments
I don’t follow what you mean by hardcore gamers and hardcore gaming agenda. Do you mean long games? Difficult games? Sequels to franchises that have been going on for years?
I take ‘hardcore gamers’ to mean those who take their gaming seriously. They are the Penny Arcade audience and the people who buy and play games regularly. I wouldn’t really consider either of us hardcore gamers any more although we probably would have fit the bill when we were in high school.
Anime/manga otaku (especially Western ones) have of course known this for a while now, even if they don’t like it.
No, I mean what do hardcore gamers want that casual gamers don’t? How do you pander to them in your releases? Just more single player games, less party games?
Oh, right. I consider the following to be some of the things that constitute ‘pandering’:
Most Wii titles don’t do this, for instance, and then are largely decried because they aren’t ‘real’ games.
Hi Mike!
Sorry for this off-topic-comment, but I would like to ask you how you managed to make the “Share this”-plugin use a URL with the “/share”-endpoint?
The code you once provided here is no longer available.
Best regards Jan
It was a while ago but I think what I did was to add a function called share_rewrite. This was way back in version 1.4 and I haven’t bothered to upgrade Alex’s plugin since (it works fine for me as is). I probably should have just made a new plugin rather than hacked his but feel free to do that!
Function: Share htaccess ReWrite Rules
add_filter('generate_rewrite_rules', 'share_rewrite'); function share_rewrite($wp_rewrite) { $r_rule = ''; $r_link = ''; $rewrite_rules2 = $wp_rewrite->generate_rewrite_rule($wp_rewrite->permalink_structure.'share'); array_splice($rewrite_rules2, 1); // Pops off everything except the first element $r_rule = array_keys($rewrite_rules2); // Selects the key for the first element $r_rule = array_shift($r_rule); // Pops off the key and sets it to the variable $r_rule = str_replace('/trackback', '',$r_rule); // Replaces /trackback with an empty string $r_link = array_values($rewrite_rules2); // Selects the value for the first element $r_link = array_shift($r_link); // Pops off the value and sets it to the variable $r_link = str_replace('tb=1', 'share=1', $r_link); // Replaces tb=1 with share=1 $share_rules = array($r_rule => $r_link, '(.+)/sharepage/?$' => 'index.php?pagename='.$wp_rewrite->preg_index(1).'&share=1'); // creates array with two keys $wp_rewrite->rules = $share_rules + $wp_rewrite->rules; // Adds the new rewrite rules }
Oh, and this is largely
taken frombased on Lester Chan’s WP-Print so full credit to him for the PHP mastery.Thanks for your quick reply! I’ll try to add it to my blog :-)
No worries. I probably should write a proper entry for this so other people can find it without needing to look through these comments :)
Hmm, I have problems getting this to work on my blog. Where do I add this code? Somewhere in share-this.php?
I have it inserted at line 410 which is just after the share_variables function and before the share_this function.
Oh, and from memory you need to refresh your permalinks for it to work (from the WP Admin dashboard go to Options -> Permalinks and click ‘Update Permalink Structure’).
Surely even the most casual of gamer wants more than 5 hours of play – although perhaps you’re talking about single player mode.
I imagine most people want to be able to play games multiplayer for at least three or four big group sessions of 3-4 hours each to get the price of the game back – at least that’s what games like Guitar Hero 2 and Mario Galaxy seemed to yield at my friend’s houses.
Yep, I did mean single-player mode. In terms of multiplayer, then sure, things like Guitar Hero or Singstar are where you want to be (almost endlessly replayable so long as each play session lasts no longer than about an hour).
Is comment nesting broken?
Comments are no longer being indented but they are still being nested. I haven’t worked out quite how I want it yet. Nesting was fine for a while but I prefer the look of the page when the comments run straight down.
Do you think maybe get rid of nesting if they’re not being indented?
> Do you think maybe get rid of nesting if they’re not being indented?
From a design and psychology point of view; yes.
Right. I’ll see if I can’t undo this mess I’ve made.
(Really shouldn’t have hacked that plugin like I did.)
OK, I think that’s fixed it.
Fair enough :-)
Here’s a post I recently came across on Newsweek’s Level Up blog where a father laments the lack of time to play ‘hardcore’ games.