This term seems to pop very often in the comment section of Youtube, Kotaku, RPS. But it refers to who? Casual gamers? Console gamers? Spunkgargleweewee players?
What do you think it means in the gaming scene?



Please, try to keep this civil.

every op which contains the words "Please, try to keep this civil." makes me want to get some popcorn.

I trust the peeps here at the site. If anything happens, I'll contact one of the Blues AND take full responsability.

Yes, basically it's used to mean that something is made to appeal to a mass audience, including more casual players or players who may not be as familiar with a given genre. The phrase can be used in a negative way (and often is), but in some cases distilling complex game mechanics into a simple and elegant game that has appeal outside of a very niche group of hardcore genre fans could be viewed as a brilliant achievement, and often one that is difficult to pull off correctly. In other cases, a less aware game developer might end up removing the mechanics that make that type of game compelling in the first place in an attempt to streamline the game, ending up with a shallow and stripped down product (see: many mobile games). So it's not an entirely black-or-white concept.

Here's a pretty good overview: Lowest Common Denominator on TV Tropes

is it TinyE?

Some examples please.

I don't think people like my own mother is part of this, "Lowest Common Denominator" for "SpunkGargleWeeWee" games heck even my own father (also real fucking mature Yatzhee)

Its fascinating because when game devs try to, "dumbed down" thier games to appeal to a wider market, I call that into question because until my own Mother and Father plays games like Dragon Age II and Resident Evil 6, 2 games that were solely made with the goal of getting the wide market, they will never sell to everyone including Non gamers. Besides I don't think selling them an M-Rated game is the right way to do it.

Oh im waiting for the response on that ;)

I think the perfect example os Resident Evil 4 for 2 reasons:

1. The game was exclusive to Gamecube for time and sold reasonably well until Capcom caved in and ported it to the much larger audiance of the PS2.

2. The old-school Survival horror style established by the First RE games and Silent Hill were dragging and the fans of that kind of game style were not big enough so RE4 appealed to people who did not liked that kind of game in the first place by making it less about survival horror and more about Action with Attitude.

In all fairness, I don't believe TinyE can be qualified as "common", perhaps "lowest uncommon denominator".

I used the term "spunkgargleweewee" because I think it's funny.
Back on topic: I also have the doubt of: "When streamlining becomes dumbing down". Those are also terms that comes a lot when discussing modern gaming(at least in my experience).

Personally, I think he is "lowest rare denominator". Hell, I could even say "lowest unique denominator".

Well put.

It can mean different things in different contexts. One that springs to mind is that of broad appeal vs niche appeal in game design - here it would refer to a game designed to be somewhat liked by much of the market as possible while avoiding elements that may be loved by some of the market but potentially confusing or disliked by others. It is often used as a term of derision by those of the opposite school of thought - that it is better to make a game which appeals as much as possible to a subset of the market, even if it's not everybody's cup of tea.

Well, that's the "nice" interpretation, with emphasis on "common" instead of "lowest", but it can go the other way too.