Difficulty Curve? Attention Spans changing?

[Menegrothx]

I don't know who that guy is and don't know any games from Sunsoft offhand. Guess I'm not hardcore or casual. Not good enough for a label? *shrug* works for me.

If I recall a fair amount of their games were ports of games developed by other studios (like Myst for Saturn).
Treasure>Sunsoft

Someone could play an hour or two of a game a day, and it could be a competitive online game, or they could be logging for a raid in an MMO. If they're doing that consistently, week after week, month after month, year after year...that's not exactly casual.

14 hours a week is casual in MMORPGs. Raids last 3-5 hours (could go 6-8 and upwards on hardcore guilds) and you'll raid 2-4 times a week. And that's just the raiding, then there's all the money grinding, gearing and other stuff you have to do inbetween raids. If you are really skilled, you might be able to be competitive while only playing 14 hours or less a week of PvP in WoW today, but chances are that people who train&play a lot more will be better.

[Valkyrie-Favor]

No idea who that Nico guy is, but my favorite Sunsoft game is Blaster Master.

Anyway, I can not have time for 6 hours of games by seeking employment, volunteering, doing odd jobs whenever possible, improving my professional or personal skills, and writing (for pleasure, or maybe I can sell it?). After 18 years of being a kid I'm pretty sick of it, and being jobless is no excuse to do nothing.

2 hours of games a day is a nice luxury though. If I do that I can beat SMTIV in...40 days?

[isiolia]

14 hours a week is casual in MMORPGs. Raids last 3-5 hours (could go 6-8 and upwards on hardcore guilds) and you'll raid 2-4 times a week. And that's just the raiding, then there's all the money grinding, gearing and other stuff you have to do inbetween raids. If you are really skilled, you might be able to be competitive while only playing 14 hours or less a week of PvP in WoW today, but chances are that people who train&play a lot more will be better.

It can vary. Depends on how the game is designed, and how good you are at managing things in it. I don't disagree that the primary skill in most MMOs is the ability to put your butt in a chair in front of a PC...but not all games follow the same patterns.

Point is more that consistently putting even a couple hours in adds up. A couple hours a day could be a tournament-level player for some genres, just keeping their skills up. Consider what putting that kind of time into other hobbies would do. You wouldn't look at someone who puts two hours a day, every day, into playing guitar or painting as "casual".

[TheGregzilla]

But, for the most part, it takes those kinds of extreme hours to be competitive in any MMO these days. Ive completely given up on them after getting tired of playing them hours and hours and not getting anywhere. Most MMO's these days seem to throw the most ridiculous experience curve at you. First few levels you can do in a day, then all the sudden its like a brick wall, and it seems it takes weeks to level up once. The highest level I ever got in an MMO was in Maple Story, I ended up level 40-something. Took MONTHS of everyday playing. Thing is, there were TONS of people over twice my level running around. And that character was started when the game was fairly new.

[isiolia]

I've played FFXI for a decade, have over 700 days worth of playtime on my main character...and the current high end event in that (Delve) has a time limit of 45 minutes.

Granted, gather times and such might take more, and there are other things that can potentially take hours (lookin' at you Wildskeeper Reives), but plenty of other things that can be worked on in small chunks too. That's in an archaic, pre-WoW template MMO. Newer stuff like GW2 or even the FFXIV ARR beta are far more flexible.

Part of it could be not knowing what you're doing.

That said, I think it's also something that should be looked at in perspective. Spending two hours a day on a video game is not, objectively, casual. That person is dedicating a substantial chunk of their life to the game. It might still be relatively little compared to what unemployed basement dwellers put into it...but it's a lot of time nonetheless.

[TheGregzilla]

That said, I think it's also something that should be looked at in perspective. Spending two hours a day on a video game is not, objectively, casual. That person is dedicating a substantial chunk of their life to the game. It might still be relatively little compared to what unemployed basement dwellers put into it...but it's a lot of time nonetheless.

There was a time I would have agreed with this, but I think times have just changed. Honestly I cant think of a single gamer I know that doesn't put in at least 2 hours a day when they can. Obviously things get in the way, but when they have the opportunity they do. And if not two hours, still a substantial amount of time. An hour, an hour and a half. Seems if somebody only plays an hour a day, they are more likely to play everyday, where as the ones playing 2 hours plus, may be more likely to skip a day here and there so it all kinda evens out.

[isiolia]

There was a time I would have agreed with this, but I think times have just changed. Honestly I cant think of a single gamer I know that doesn't put in at least 2 hours a day when they can. Obviously things get in the way, but when they have the opportunity they do. And if not two hours, still a substantial amount of time. An hour, an hour and a half. Seems if somebody only plays an hour a day, they are more likely to play everyday, where as the ones playing 2 hours plus, may be more likely to skip a day here and there so it all kinda evens out.

That doesn't make it "casual", or even normal for most people. It just means you know a lot of people who can/will spend a lot of their time playing video games.

If someone is making a point to play video games on a regular basis, then by definition they are not playing them casually.

[Menegrothx]

When playing an online game, of course you compare yourself to other people who play the same game, not people who play completely different and unrelated single player games.

[oxymoron]

I don't know who that guy is and don't know any games from Sunsoft offhand. Guess I'm not hardcore or casual. Not good enough for a label? *shrug* works for me.

I wasn't aware you all knew each other. I'm just using it as an example. They know basic video game stuff but not really in depth.

[Key-Glyph]

Interesting that the amount of time spent on gaming is such a defining criterion. To me it's definitely more the fervor with which someone pursues the hobby. People who freak the heck out over Candy Crush in mixed company and discuss how intense they are about perfecting their scores (I just witnessed this a week ago), or even just read a lot of material or spend downtime thinking about games, make me happy. Of course there's a lot of overlap between time and enthusiasm. But even when not, we're all on the same wavelength, in my book.