I’ve always been a pretty hardcore gamer. I know that’s a label that gets peoples backs up, but I just see it as a fitting descriptor. Off the back of the amount of time I put into my hobby, I may be guilty of being a little snobbish, but then who isn’t? Heck, I used to look down on youngsters that drank a couple alcopops and started exaggerating about how wasted they were. Mother fucker, I drank 15 stella’s last night and woke up covered in my own faeces; don’t presume to know anything about getting wasted. That doesn’t mean I wield the term around like some badge of honour, or title that grants me access to a special club though: I just think it is calling a spade a spade.
I don’t see hardcore as equalling good and casual as equalling bad. I’m about as likely to boast about being a hardcore gamer as I am about being a hardcore wanker (I’m probably more befitting the title “pro” when it comes to that anyway). It is just a fitting term. To substantiate my point, I’ve come to realise I’m probably now a casual gamer; or at least become a lot more casual in my gaming habits. The amount of time I spent playing and talking about games (in fact, me even writing this blog) kind of makes it hard to truly argue the “casual gamer” label, but I’ve seen a noticeable change in my gaming habits.
I don’t have the time, or maybe it’s the inclination, to invest in deep games any more. I find this quite peculiar, as it’s that depth that used to hold all the value for me. I don’t think it was ever really snobbery as such, but casual games just looked shallow to me. I liked games with complexity and some meat on their bones. I actually found myself getting annoying at what I saw as a trend of “streamlining” games to make them more casual. Mass Effect, to pick one example, went from an RPG to little more than a cover shooter. In fact, those are still very logical standpoints to me, which is how I know this is all about how I’ve changed, and not about how I think games need to.
My most played game these days is Clash of Clans (CoC), on my mobile phone. Even as I read that sentence back to myself, and acknowledge the truth of it, I still struggle to swallow it. It’s like when an alcoholic has to say the words out loud; it may help combat the denial, but you’re still left wondering how you got there. In this case it was a friend that introduced me, and before I knew it, I found myself favouring CoC in the evenings over my console games.
Clash of clans has enough depth to allow for some degree of skill, but not so much that you get bogged down in complicated details. It’s got a good social aspect to it, where you clan up with people and wage war on rivals, which also requires a degree of team work. All this is done in a little and often fashion, where you’re constantly dipping in and out throughout the day. For me, this provides a consistent gaming hit over the course of the day, which may actually be why I don’t feel the need to game every night now. I often compare my gaming habits to that of an addiction, so it actually feeds into the analogy; that a weaker prolonged hit would reduce the need for an more intense one every evening.
Of course it could be argued that “causal” games are now just another string to my bow, on top of all the other gaming I partake in. I do still play those “Hardcore” games – just not as much – so maybe I’ve merely expanded and diversified my gaming. Maybe, rather that dial back, I’ve rounded out my gaming repertoire. Maybe I’m now a hardcore and a casual gamer. Maybe I’m an UBER-GAMER!