An open letter to the hardcore gaming community

Tek7

Tek7

CGA President, Tribe of Judah Founder & President
Staff member
Dear hardcore gamers,

Get over yourselves.

Some people don't care that you can play Resistance: Fall of Man at 60 fps in 1080i. Most of the teenage girls playing Nintendogs don't even know what that means. Most of the elderly people enjoying Wii Bowling probably don't care.

Not everyone can afford or, alternatively, have parents that can afford the thousands of dollars for a big-screen HDTV, killer sound system, and Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. Similarly, not everyone can afford the latest video card and CPU for their gaming rig.

So keep on blogging about how that next-gen first-person shooter isn't going to be released for the Wii. Go ahead and call the Nintendo DS a "handheld for little girls." Don't stop mocking ideas upcoming games like Wii Fit on my behalf.

Go right ahead and keep whining. Just realize that the majority of the gaming industry is ignoring you completely.

Let the teenage girls have their Nintendogs games.

Let the elderly people enjoy their Wii Bowling tournaments.

Let the mothers in their thirties enjoy Bejeweled.

Let the anime nerds keep dancing to bad techno in DDR.

If you're going to play the latest and greatest "hardcore games," go right ahead. Just don't feel the need to bash anyone you consider "beneath" you.

As someone who used to tease his best friend for playing The Sims, I can say that I understand where you're coming from. Gaming, like the Internet, used to be dominated by nerds. Now your little sister has a DS, your grandma has a Wii at her retirement home, and your dad plays Halo with you now and then.

But is it really so bad that more people are learning to love gaming? Is it so awful when your parents stop talking about "those stupid video games" and pick up Wii Golf?

It's true; gaming is not solely the domain of nerds any more. But are we really missing much? Haven't we had enough of toilet humor, male posturing, and "zomgbbq thta's ghey!!!" forum posts? Isn't it time we shake the stereotype of the male gamer as a Caucasian, socially challenged 16-year old? Does anyone even believe in that stereotype any more?

More of our families and our friends are starting to discover the wonder of gaming. Are we justified in mocking them just because they get excited about different games and different genres? They're discovering the same joy we discovered when we first picked up a controller (or, for the PC gamers, a keyboard and mouse).

Gaming is growing up and it's time we grow up with it.

So to all the little sisters, to all the moms and dads, to all the grandma and grandpas: Come on in. There's room for all of us. You're welcome here.

And to the hardcore gamers: Show some love to the casual gamers. Because let's face it: Quite a few of us started our gaming careers running around as an Italian plumber, stomping on turtles, and eating mushrooms to get big. Do you have a leg to stand on when you make fun of Katamari Damacy?

Don't get me wrong: The hardcore gamers are welcome here, too, as long as they can "play nice" with the casual gamers. I'm just tired of all the arrogance surrounding the gaming community at large. I want to see some love for the casual gamers, and I wanted to start with me.
 
vibrokatana said:
What exactly is this division? Maybe by giving a better example we can understand what exactly can be helped.
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I don't see the issue nearly as often in the CGA or other Christian gaming groups. I hope my post wasn't taken as such (though I can see how that might be inferred).

It just bothers me when I read posts slamming casual gamers because they don't play Counter-Strike, Resistance: Fall of Man, or whatever other first-person shooter is hot at the moment.

With the wide acceptance of the Wii, hardcore gamers, in my opinion and in general, have been even meaner than usual to people who don't fit into their narrow-minded definition of a "gamer."

It can sometimes be difficult to define the divide between casual and hardcore gamer. I suppose I think of it more as an attitude. Hardcore gamers tend to take things more seriously. This is neither good nor bad; I've known several Christian gamers who participate in (scrimmages, matches, local tournaments) and don't look down on casual gamers.

The issue of "hardcore v. casual" hits close to home for me because I'm finding myself slowly becoming less of a hardcore gamer and more of a casual gamer.

I rented Elebits this weekend and I was enthralled. I was thrilled when my wife took an interest in the game and especially enjoyed the game in multiplayer mode.

A few days before renting Elebits, I tried downloading, installing, and playing Insurgency, a new Source mod. It took me a while to download the 700+ MB of install files, even on my 5MB pipe. After that, I moved the install files from my desktop to my file server. I then moved the files from my file server to my notebook. I then installed the main client on my notebook, then installed the patch. When I started the game, it threw an error, which I had to Google, then learned I needed to download the Source SDK base. I started the painfully slow download through Steam, called my best friend to let him know why I wasn't online and gaming yet, and he told me there's a place to download it from a web site. I searched for a link for about 10 minutes before I gave up and sat down to play Odin Sphere instead. After about an hour, I returned to the computer to find the download finished. I immediately hopped onto a server only to find that the game locked up at the "Retrieving server info" screen for about two minutes. I canceled out of the game, searched for answers to my problem for about 30 minutes, gave up, logged back into the game and suffered through the two-minute delay. When I finally got into the game, I selected my team, selected my class, spawned, and walked about 20 steps before getting shot down by an opponent I never saw. As soon as I was aware I was getting shot, I was dead. I tried playing a few more rounds with nearly identical results.

So, for me, the choices are clear: Pop in a game and wait 30 seconds to get from the Wii menu to the game or spend most of my evening installing a Half-Life 2 mod that plays too much like Counter-Strike or Battlefield to be any fun for me.

I used to look down on console gaming--before I got married, started working 40 hours a week, and decided I didn't want to spend several hours just installing a game and getting it to work.

</rant>

EDIT: Don't worry: I still love Starcraft and Unreal Tournament 2004. :)
 
insurgency is builtupon realism. Rarely will you take a shot and NOT die. Also insurgency is in a beta phase. I think it's a great mod..:)
 
Hescominsoon said:
insurgency is builtupon realism. Rarely will you take a shot and NOT die. Also insurgency is in a beta phase. I think it's a great mod..:)
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To be fair, I don't like even the most popular "realism" games. (Some would argue that Counter-Strike does not fit into that category.) The first-person shooter genre is flooded with realistic titles; genuinely fun deathmatch like UT2004 and Quake III is the exception and not the rule.

But again, that's my own opinion. Insurgency has a great deal of polish, certainly, but it wasn't fun at all--for me.
 
yeah... that letter really expresses what happens when ANYTHING starts getting popular. I'm tired of it... but... we still have those people out there. If anything starts getting popular the older people who are use to being the only people to do that particular activity get the "Stupid posers, or 'n00bs" aspect of mind. all i can say is that is life. You kinda just have to ignore the older people and just run with the new crowd, or at least help the new crowd get into it. Gaming is really for anyone, not just teh old pro's. I understand the Hard core gamers are one particular crowd... yet it is retarded when they go and mock teh others.

Ignorant people frustrate me.
 
Truth be told, I'm pretty much in the same boat as Tek. I've went from being a hard core gamer to being a casual one.

I've not loaded up a game on my PC since before Christmas when I bought Doom3. And even then with that game, I played maybe 4 levels and haven't touched it since. I'm now considering taking it (and a few others) into EB Games as a trade for credit against a Wii title.
 
You're completely right in your post. The "PRO" mentality that started with Quake 3, Counterstrike, and Starcraft, has seeped into every corner of the gaming world these days, and for basically no good reason other than plain old snobbery.

The original Unreal Tournament is, in my opinion, how video games should be designed: the gameplay appeals equally to hardcore shooter fans AND casual gamers... and by attracting casual gamers, it essentially recruits more people to become hardcore shooter fans. The greatest thing about UT wasn't that it had such a large hardcore base, it was that a large percentage of my usually non-gaming friends and family could get into it. ANYONE could score kills, but only the best could win consistently. For the casual players, it was just fun to run around and wreak havoc, and for the hardcore players, it was a technical race to items and weapons. I got several of my friends into video gaming because of UT.

UT2004 appealed to the hardcore segment of the UT99 fanbase by providing a faster and more balanced experience, but alienated all the other players, who, if they didn't stop playing altogether, moved to consoles or to Counterstrike, because even though it was a more polished and (in some ways) more balanced game, it ensured that the players that knew how to really work the item system could become basically invincible, and if a casual player can't say at the end of a game, "well at least we got some good frags in," then they are going to quit.

I am hoping that UT3 restores the gameplay we need to reinvigorate the community that surrounds arena-style FPS. I just hope that the super-pretty graphics are also super-scalable so there's not a significant barrier to entry in the form of expensive hardware.
 
That snobbery applies to MMORPG players as well. I think some MMORPG people look down on others simplify because they don't understand some item/crafting system, internet acronym, or haven't grinded their way to uber level and are asking for help. People assume everyone asking is just too lazy to look something up, but, a lot of information is hard to find or you may not understand it even if you find it. Note there are some lazy people in MMORPGs, like the ones begging for 1k when you can walk outside town and pick it up free -_-. I guess that's better than the ones that lie and cheat though. Not that I make fun of people regardless.

The Gerbil has never been a hardcore player of anything. No matter how much I try I always seem to fail T_T.
 
That letter should apply to the Korea Starcraft gamers, to see if they are offended or encouraged. After all, they are addicted to Starcraft. :rolleyes:

Though, I'd have to agree to the letter.

As soon as I hear a player or player's using trashtalks to me in a game while I'm winning/losing/killing/dying, sounds like they don't have a life.
 
Who is that Hypocrites comment directed at, may I ask?

(No, your post wasn't exactly crystal clear on that...)
 
Tek7 said:
Let the mothers in their thirties enjoy Bejeweled.
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Hey! I'm a woman in my thirties who likes puzzle games. Watch it, bub! ;)

I also play MMORPGs, including serious PvP, and I run the gamut in between. I've yet to understand why one is "okay" and one is "lame." If it's fun, it's fun. And I can't exactly play GW on my PDA, now, can I?

Frankly, I'm just thrilled by the slightest shift in the media away from, "You wear black, and you play D&D and video games? Run! Mass murder in the making!"
 
MaidMirawyn said:
Hey! I'm a woman in my thirties who likes puzzle games. Watch it, bub! ;)
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My open letter is dedicated, in part, to you then. :)

I'm saying that the gaming community should welcome gamers past their teens, female gamers, gamers with children, and other groups of gamers that have been looked down upon by the hardcore contingent in the past.

(Besides, maybe an influx of female gamers to the vocal gaming community--forums, in-game chat, blogs--would cut down on all the male posturing that continually plagues us.)

And on a side note: I love a good puzzle game. The first thing I do with any new cell phone, besides changing the default wallpaper and ringtone, is load whatever version of Tetris will play on the phone.
 
Tek7 said:
(Besides, maybe an influx of female gamers to the vocal gaming community--forums, in-game chat, blogs--would cut down on all the male posturing that continually plagues us.)
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Hey, don't think I haven't tried recruiting! And you left off TeamSpeak...

One time I logged in to TS and went to one of the Guild Wars PvP channels. I said hey to everyone, and got a response from a new person along the lines of, "You're a woman!"

Wow. Thanks for the insight. That really cleared up some questions I had... :rolleyes:

Some of you can probably even guess who it was, though he's no longer in our guild. But he was genuinely shocked to hear a woman on TeamSpeak, much less one who was logging in for PvP.

And might I mention I reached Rank 3 before he did? :D

Now Raven is on pretty regularly, and occasionally Starr or Kel, but it's very guy-heavy. Not that I've ever had a problem holding my own!
 
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Tek7 said:
Dear hardcore gamers,

Get over yourselves.

Some people don't care that you can play Resistance: Fall of Man at 60 fps in 1080i. Most of the teenage girls playing Nintendogs don't even know what that means. Most of the elderly people enjoying Wii Bowling probably don't care.

Not everyone can afford or, alternatively, have parents that can afford the thousands of dollars for a big-screen HDTV, killer sound system, and Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. Similarly, not everyone can afford the latest video card and CPU for their gaming rig.

So keep on blogging about how that next-gen first-person shooter isn't going to be released for the Wii. Go ahead and call the Nintendo DS a "handheld for little girls." Don't stop mocking ideas upcoming games like Wii Fit on my behalf.

Go right ahead and keep whining. Just realize that the majority of the gaming industry is ignoring you completely.

Let the teenage girls have their Nintendogs games.

Let the elderly people enjoy their Wii Bowling tournaments.

Let the mothers in their thirties enjoy Bejeweled.

Let the anime nerds keep dancing to bad techno in DDR.

If you're going to play the latest and greatest "hardcore games," go right ahead. Just don't feel the need to bash anyone you consider "beneath" you.

As someone who used to tease his best friend for playing The Sims, I can say that I understand where you're coming from. Gaming, like the Internet, used to be dominated by nerds. Now your little sister has a DS, your grandma has a Wii at her retirement home, and your dad plays Halo with you now and then.

But is it really so bad that more people are learning to love gaming? Is it so awful when your parents stop talking about "those stupid video games" and pick up Wii Golf?

It's true; gaming is not solely the domain of nerds any more. But are we really missing much? Haven't we had enough of toilet humor, male posturing, and "zomgbbq thta's ghey!!!" forum posts? Isn't it time we shake the stereotype of the male gamer as a Caucasian, socially challenged 16-year old? Does anyone even believe in that stereotype any more?

More of our families and our friends are starting to discover the wonder of gaming. Are we justified in mocking them just because they get excited about different games and different genres? They're discovering the same joy we discovered when we first picked up a controller (or, for the PC gamers, a keyboard and mouse).

Gaming is growing up and it's time we grow up with it.

So to all the little sisters, to all the moms and dads, to all the grandma and grandpas: Come on in. There's room for all of us. You're welcome here.

And to the hardcore gamers: Show some love to the casual gamers. Because let's face it: Quite a few of us started our gaming careers running around as an Italian plumber, stomping on turtles, and eating mushrooms to get big. Do you have a leg to stand on when you make fun of Katamari Damacy?

Don't get me wrong: The hardcore gamers are welcome here, too, as long as they can "play nice" with the casual gamers. I'm just tired of all the arrogance surrounding the gaming community at large. I want to see some love for the casual gamers, and I wanted to start with me.
Click to expand...

CAN I GET A WITNESS???
 
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