Before I played hardcore games, I was into casual games. Hidden Obje.ct Games (HOGs), Match-3s, and Time Managements, mostly. I also liked word games and solitaires. One really interesting thing was back then, maybe 90% of the games had women as protags. In fact, one of the rare times there was a male protag, a user commented in approval. It was a guy, and he said that it was nice to have a male protag for once.
I kinda laughed because welcome to the other side, bro! Every other anything at that time was heavily male-dominated, so I didn’t have much sympathy with that complaint. In fact, I was thinking, “Let us have this one, my guy.”
I mention this because I think the fact that the gamers in this case are overwhelminingly female is a big part of the reason why what I’m about to complain about happens.
In the hardcore gaming community, there is always griping about how certain devs just make the same game over and over. Two of the most notable examples are the endless iterations of Call of Duty (which I call Collar Duty, and the dev is….well, ultimately, now it’s Microsoft. Let’s leave it at that) and AssCReed (Ubisoft).
They come out seemingly every year, and there is very little to differentiate between them. At least that’s how it seems from the outside. I will give some credit to AssCreed in that at least it’s in a different country each time.
You can’t say they don’t spend money on each iteration, though. You have to give them that. And, they do iterate and innovate in some of the games. From what I’ve seen, anyway. I’ve only played one AssCreed game (Syndicate) and no Collar Duties.
I still have a membership to BigFishGames, which is a site that sells casual games. And develops some of them (though not under their own name). They’re the Steam of casual gaming, but unlike Steam, they have not really pushed casual gaming forward in any significant way. Plus, their client is not great, and every iteration of it seems to either stagnate or be slightly worse.
I still play casual games in between my sessions of hardcore gaming–especially if I’ve gotten obsessed with a hardcore game for several weeks. And, wow. There is such little innovation in the casual gaming world.
On the one hand, I can see why. The genres are pretty rigid and rely on so many tropes. In addition, they are an easy sell–especially because the standards are so low.
To be clear, I’m part of the problem. I will buy a casual game if I’m halfway interested because I get a free game per month with my subscription to BigGameFish. I have so many freebies, I will spend them on anything halfway interesting. Or, to be brutally honest, repetitive enough to scramble my brain weasels.
The solitaire genre used to mean mostly one up, one down. Meaning, you had to place a card that was one higher or one lower than the one on the field. Devs try to have themes and mini-games and upgrades you can buy, but that was the basic gist of it. Now, there are match-2 solitaire games and Add up to 14 (two cards) as well. Some games let you choose which you want to play in the next level.
HOGs were my jam. Most of them were about a missing sister, fiance, child, and you had to go find them by looking through a bunch of disparate items to find that one random item that will help you at some time and some place. I have griped about point-and-clicks being so tedious about pixel hunting and combining very disparate items to make a key.
HOGs do something similar in that you have to find an item that you won’t use for another three scenes and making you do things that are so ridiculous. Such as finding a lost key, fixing a broken zipper, getting the strange artifact that will transport you to a magical realm, etc.
From a story perspective, it makes no sense. I can’t find the key to my own house? My purse zipper is always broken? What the hell? I wouldn’t even mind it (as much) if it wasn’t in every single fucking game.
Also, allow me to get to the option menu before the opening cutscene. I hate listening to them, but if I could mute them and read the dialogue, I would do that. Since I can’t, I skip them completely. It never matters, really, beacuse all the stories are the same. Truly. I have not seen a story that evoked any emotion in me ever.
For all the shit hardcore games get for their stories, they are light years ahead of casual games. And, again, it’s because of very different audiences. No one plays HOGs, Match-3s, or word games for the plot. No one is questioning the motives of the demon who is possessing people in countless HOGs, for example.
One thing I do like about casual games that I think influenced hardcore games is that there are demos for every game. At least an hour if not longer, and usually the first chapter or two (of a HOG). This is a great way to see if I’ll like a game or not (or tolerate it) without paying for it. And while it doesn’t matter as much for a seven buck game (which is the price of a casual game. Well, $6.99 for a standard game and $13.99 for a collector’s edition. Here’s a funny thing, though. Steam has started selling casual games, too. I don’t know why, but it’s just funny to me.
I think the fact that my expectations (and other customers) are so low for casual games is part of the problem. As I said, I accept things from them that I never would from a hardcore game.
I think of the trailers from Shadow of the Erdtree and then the prologues in the HOGs I’ve demoed recently. I’m not expecting casual games to be as brilliant as FromSoft games, of course, because I’m looking for very different things when I play a From game than when I play a casual game.
Still. I have a hard time believing that they have made so little progress in the fifteen years since I played them regularly. In HOGs, they have made an effort to make them more ‘actiony’, which means making the hidden objects two-parters rather than one. What I mean is that in addition to finding, say an airplane, a ribbon, and a hairbrush, you also have to find a black cat. but there is no black cat in the scene! So you have to run a toy mouse across the scene so a black cat will pop up. That’s the action, bay-bee!
I’m done for now. I may write more about it tomorrow.