People have said games were being dumbed down since tabletop D&D and wargames were licensed for home computers in the early 80s.

edit: 80s. I meant 80s.

yeah i phrased that badly.

Casual gamers are real gamers, but are less intertwined with the whole happening and inner working of gaming as both an industry and games themselves.

and yes it is argued there has been a period of games being less 'challenging" without it being artificial difficulty (enemy takes 10000 hits, you 2) with long running series casualising, although this was also to try to lure in people from other genres as well. I have heard people say a few years ago niche had died, that you had to be stupid to make games for a niche.

And I will argue people have been stepping back from that, especially since +- 2012.
With the succes of the souls series proving challenging could sell, which at one point in time wasn't believed to be the case.
Thanks to XCOM the TBS got a revival with wasteland2 adding to that. XCOM ade TBS popular again (so you would say it got 'casal but i don't believe that is really the case since it sparked popularity in the 'invested' gamer culture but not in the 'FB' culture)

If you did not meet those good but i met them in real life more than once.

And i now realize my annoyance has nothing to do with casual gamers, it is more with 'I always know better than you even though i know jack shit' kind of people. And yeah I've seen that happen. With people who played some FB games actually denying any game they hadn't heard of couldn't be that great or well known or popular.
And then they said that when i asked about fallout series+bioshock (which are not even really cult or niche games)

Those were arcade games, getting access to them was as simple as walking up to a cab in your local bowling alley, bar or Chuck-e-Cheese and sticking a quarter in!
(sorry Americanised that, not checking that you're in Belgium, I'm so used to arguing with Warehall - but you get my point!)

Sorry about the %s. I meant to say. Antigames , IMO are little more than only half a game(ie 50% narrative+1% mechanics) compared to mechanically complex ones. For some reason, I said ''the'' instead of ''they'' and it skewed it all. Anyhow, I didn't say they don't have them at all; nor that they can't be enjoyed. Just that when you're trying to market a near mechanically devoid, narrative only game to gamers who have experienced games with narrative AND mechanics, don't be too surprised if they don't like it.
80s D&D? Really? And what is wrong with saying that? Its the truth.

That's actually a serious time and effort investment as i see it. You can't just go to the arcade hall, play one round, go away. IT took time and effort to go there, and as a result you were inclined to stay a while because well, you went though the trouble of getting there.

I think i might make the difference not in games played, but rather, how high is it on your investment list and how much time/effort/money is poured into it. How deep does it sit with you? If something big happens in the industry, do you care, are you aware? And not unsurprising a certain kind of games like CC seems to appeal more to the FB people who generally have lower investment.

But they can do as they please, as long as I can play the kind of games i like and they can play those they like. Make your 'walk in your yard' games if you want, play them if you want. But please don't start trying to get the long running game series to also appeal to CC people, history shows this doesn't work.

And don't hate on games that have the classic "shoot baddies" concept or start pouring hate on something for the capital crime of having a white male cis protagonist as if that makes the devs monsters.

Not 'quite' true. MMOs are trying to appeal to casual gamers. Not just casual GAMERS. Just.ones that really don't want to do any real work in a game. Check what they're doing in World of Warcraft if you don't already know. Read about the Garrisons and what they've taken and replaced in the game as well.

I couldn't take a lot of shit they were doing and recently stopped playing after several years and I'm not even a raider. >.< I'm one of those called a "casual" gamer because I don't do instances so much and don't have time for raids yet I've made two accounts and filled them a great deal with characters to level over the years. "I" am being called a casual because in that sense, I "am" seen as casual.

...so there's a lot of different types of "casual" going around. ...so...yeah...

Yeah, also complaining that their favorite pole arm hadn't been included by SSI on BBSs. Nothing's wrong with saying it. Those simplified games ultimately gave D&D a little more longevity than it would have had. Baldur's gate (not really dumbed down, the mechanics were just hidden) brought a lot of people back to tabletop D&D after a big slump.

I mean, having your favorite franchise dumbed down sucks. But then having something like demons souls/dark souls come out is awesome. Plus mechanically simple games are the gateway drug for most kids.

I blame high res graphics for the dumbing down of games personally. It's not really the programming that costs a lot of money. It takes a lot of time and money to make a detailed high res 3d model and animate it. With the price of the assets so high, the publisher can't afford to take a risk that people will say its too hard. To give you that amazingly detailed world, they have to sell as many copies as possible. Remember how the Wii U had a drought of games for the first two years? It was because Nintendo hadn't counted on the costs and time it took to make HD games. This is just my opinion of course, I have no data to back it up.

Liking it or not was not the case, it was about being "more tolerant spaces" - which you then do not really want? You just want tolerance towards the games you like?
What you are experiencing is ebbs and flows in genre, which is also nothing to with "hard" or "soft" core. P'n'C games, for example, was a time out of fashion.

Anecdotally, didn't square blame the cost of HD development on taking out half the things that defined the series with FFXIII?

don't many of the old fans of the series dislike the newer installments for dumping things that partially defined the series?

I naturally have more respect to games that are more mechanically complex. That's because I play mostly complex games. I can respect good game experiences, but in my mind, using mechanics and narrative is superior to just using a linear narrative fleshed through cutscenes or paper scraps. Hence I will always respect mechanical games more.
I do respect the antigames; but I don't see why many radical antiGGs are trying to push that while shunning mechanics. Tolerance of course is needed. But its a two way street.

Ebbs and flows are not the best. There is evolution and revolution. Demon Souls->Dark Souls-> DS2 was evolution mechanically. DMC4->DMC Devil May Cry was a revolution that used the old name to sell a different product; geared toward a different audience.

Seconded, although I see it more as the natural outcome of the focusing on the "cinematic" presentation rather than publisher's decision.
If every story-relevant situation should be accurately rendered, every word of dialogue dubbed and so on, everything must be planned in advance because changes are too expensive. No last minute additions in equipement or location layout, no "ad-libbing" in branching dialogue, no "wait, scratch this quest, I got a better idea". This push the creative side of developing to "playing safe".
Also, if they created "that amazingly detailed world", they want the players to see all of it and never felt bored. As a result, games are more linear and more segmented into separate chapters (well, this IS publisher's decision).

I personally prefer roughly sketched maze full of detours and dead ends before lushly decorated corridor.


About the casual vs. hardcore gamers, I thing there is no real division. More demanding "hardcore" games cater to different needs than the "casual" ones, but both can be played and loved by the same person; just on different occasions and for different reasons. it's also false dichotomy. There are also gamers invested into gaming for some outside reason: wargamers for example can be "totally hardcore" in regard of strategies and just "casual" in all other games.

I was speaking about game designers.... all the criticism is from users, not makers. So with the cooks allegory - the cooks like the food but the diners do not. Maybe it means cooks likes gourmet food, while the diners just want BigMac's? Maybe the allegory don't work?

YOU dont like them. YOU think they are boring (and many others too), but dont you actually think that some people have different taste than you and find other things interesting and fun? I liked Gone Home and think it was both fun and very interesting.

Off course it is not. Tolerance can very much be a one way street. it is either something you are or you are not. If the other party is not tolerant, it is not an excuse for you to not be. It just mean you are the 'better' and more adult person.

no - ebb and flows in fashion. Genre follows fashions also.

Not all devs like those games. I have not seen non idie devs actually praising those games. The only persons I have seen praising those games are "critics" and indie awards, however those two groups are compromised by corruption. Most of the individuals that praised Depression Quest were in fact financially or emotionally involved with Quinn. The validity of their praise is into question.

And it is not only that I don't like those games. MANY gamers, specially hardcore non hpster gamers don't like it. It is a common consesnsus that they are not fun, that even led FullMcIntosh to say games should not be fun to play.