Casual VS Hardcore: the future of gaming

[J T]

This has all been interesting food for thought. One of the things I haven't been thinking about until now is that the casual gamers of today may become the hardcore gamers of tomorrow. Tastes change, as many of you have pointed out and there is still hope.

General Norris' analogy to music makes me think that casual games are like the auto-tuned pop music that dominates radios now. Good/innovative music is still out there, you just have to listen closely through the din of crap rock and pop poop to find any of it. I suppose I'll just have to get used to digging through piles of Diner Dash 12 and Cake Mania 2014 to find the games I want in the future.

I also think that Otaku and equalsign's points about 'putting your money where your mouth is' are important. I buy a lot of used games which just keeps cash circling in the secondary market, but doesn't help the developers of games much. The only games I actually pay full price for anymore are Atlus titles where I'm afraid they will quickly cost double the retail price on the secondary market because supply is so low. However, I do put a lot of money into new games that are cheap, and I buy a lot of them through digital distribution (Steam) where there isn't the cost to the company of creating a physical product. I don't buy $50 presales, but I do buy LOTS of bargains. This year alone I've purchased over $500 dollars worth of new games, but nothing was over $20 with the exceptions of Fallout 3 for $25 and Left4Dead at $34. In fact, most of the games were $10 or less. I think that's where the hardcore gamer is still valuable even in the modern gaming world- we may not buy the games at full price, but we do buy a LOT of games overall.