Gaming in America: What Happened?

In continuation of the ideas Blast of Silence started with his anime-related series, I wish to start one on the same subject pertaining to the video game industry instead.

In my first foray, I'd like to ask a simple question that may seem rhetorical, but is, in fact, not.

What happened to all the hardcore gamers who take pride in gaming?

When I was growing up, everyone I knew was proud to say that they had beaten all the games in their collection (or at least come close.) They were proud to show others their skills in a non-competitive way and many others were happy to watch. People loved games even though there was no such thing as "online multiplayer." There were people who played games simply for the challenge of overcoming what the developers could come up with or getting a high score. What happened to all of these people? Am I the last of a dying breed here?


Many may take the obstinate route and say something like "they grew up" or "got a life," but in most cases, I'd hardly say working yourself until you're blue in the face and miserable or getting married at 20 and having kids before you're even personally stable would hardly qualify as having a good life, and that's what we all want, isn't it? Most people I know who still play video games into their post-teens are having a lot better time in life than many of those who choose to shun them and think of them as kids' toys. The industry has changed in such ways that most of the time, more games are made specifically for mature audiences than they are for anyone under the age of 10 (with the exception of Wii and DS..)

And being a hardcore gamer doesn't necessarily mean that you have to play games 30 hours a week, or even anywhere near that much, but just play the games that challenge you more than they do appease your senses, so you can actually get some self-fulfillment out of overcoming a challenge. And hell, I work over 40 hours a week and still have time to play at least 40 more hours of games a week, so I wouldn't take "because I work 40 hours a week, I can't play many video games anymore" as a valid counterpoint. I'm able to play as much as I do because that's what I enjoy doing and I can motivate myself to play them very easily, like any hardcore gamer should be able to.

I attribute a lot of (or all of) this decline in hardcore gamers on the laziness of this country as well as the marketing that is involved with casual gaming becoming the norm within the industry right now.

The laziness and disinterest of our countrymen is seen most clearly when any hardcore gamer attempts to talk to others about gaming, since the conversation will often turn to more specific details of the gameplay of the game in discussion at the time, and through a few questions, a hardcore gamer can quickly tell whether or not the other person actually played the game to any appreciable length. This becomes an issue because for whatever reason it may be, between having the attention span of a chipmunk or just feeling its not "worth it" to invest a lot of time and effort to progressing through a video game when you could be out eating junk food or smoking pot or something equally valuable, Americans just generally don't explore games to anywhere near their full potential. Someone will still say "yeah, I played _________" when they only played the first level or chapter. This can also lead me to another discussion pertaining to the video game site/magazine/review industry, which is a whole separate article for another time.

The marketing involved with this downfall didn't change overnight, but has been a steady process since around the mid-90's when Sony's original PlayStation was released. I don't know if it was just something about 3D graphics in general or if it was the games they were releasing at the time, many of which were tying into older franchises or sometimes even popular movies, but lots of people who never played games before ended up buying a PlayStation. It was likely a combination of both, since at that point, any random schmoe who loves sports could play their favorite stupid sport in 3D now. I don't know why this was such a difference, but there was clearly some kind of change that happened within the industry to where by the time Dreamcast came out, gaming was an epidemic in the US. Everybody wanted in on this "gaming" thing. All the kids who never talked to you through school instantly wanted to be your friend because you've been "the gamer kid" since kindergarten and now games are all of a sudden fashionable. This was not to Sega's fault in any way, since more than 75% of their games library was very centered towards traditional, hardcore gamers.

At this point, it also became evident that hardcore gamers were on a decline, since the Dreamcast, a system which catered to hardcore gamers from the start (even its mission statements defined the hardcore demographic,) died just barely a year and a half after its release to the public, despite the system still, arguably, being the greatest system that hardcore gamers would ever have. Piracy may have also lead to part of this downfall, since games are so easily manipulated to be playable from a burned CD without even modifying your console, but that's a whole other discussion as well.

When Sony's follow-up to PlayStation, PlayStation 2 was released in the US in late 2000, it was clear a major shift had happened in the industry. Not only had the core demographic already begun to be shunned by the industry, but the new phenomenon known as the "system wars" had been propagated seemingly by fans at first, but the industry began to take this as a serious situation. It soon became the "epic battle" between Sony, Nintendo, and whoever else may have been the competitor in any given generation. First it was Sega, who claimed they were withdrawing from console production for good after Dreamcast, then followed by the next big player with Microsoft's Xbox in 2001. This battle still rages on today between these same opposing forces, and still to no avail besides to alienate the hardcore gamer in most instances and to drive the market towards those people who previously wanted absolutely nothing to do with gaming, making for a huge war seeking to gain nothing more than money.

While trying to still remain as unbiased as I can, just by using pure facts, I can say that I still support Microsoft more than their competitors for not completely giving into the casual gaming market head over heels, though there are shades of it within their decisions, almost by necessity. If you look at any major game that comes out for Xbox 360 (as well as the other systems, for that matter..) and especially Western-developed games, they always have some kind of super-easy difficulty setting to adjust for those people who have no true interest in playing the game, but instead would rather just look at some pretty graphics and listen to the sound, while incurring no personal challenge whatsoever. This is just an unfortunate problem that plagues the industry right now, because people think everything has to be more "accessible." Thankfully, some Japanese developers still keep even their easiest difficulties above the new norm of easy difficulties (see: Ninja Gaiden 2, Dead or Alive 4, Mega Man 9, any CAVE shmup, etc.) and this always puts a smile on my face when it takes a lot of practice and learning just to get through the easiest difficulty.

In respect of keeping hardcore gaming subliminally at the core of the Xbox 360 experience, Microsoft has come up with the Achievement or Gamerscore system, where players can log their various accomplishments within games to a centralized handle or username, which can be viewed by anyone, anywhere around the world. This reinstates pride to those of us who love playing games and challenging our own abilities through these games, which is something that has been overlooked for far too long until now. It seems to be working wonders, since numerous, very large internet sites and forums have been dedicated solely to the process of obtaining these points and this, even if indirectly, helps to strengthen that bond between gamers, no matter where you are in the world, if you're working together to accomplish the same goals.

Xbox 360 has become what many consider to be a spiritual successor to the Dreamcast, not only in its choice of color, but in the demographic it largely targets through its promotion and the games that get published for the system, be it through retail or online purchase outlets. For this reason of being similar to Dreamcast, I sometimes fear for the future of great systems like Xbox 360, since trying to target that core demographic has lead to failure in the past, but Microsoft has been careful about not treading too steadfastly into the hardcore territory, so they can still keep their head above water, but the other sides of the industry are quite the opposite, diving into whatever potential money pit they can, at whatever expense it may be to the hardcore gamers. We have been shunned by two-thirds of the industry that we love, for no better reason than the dollar sign.

The Nintendo Wii and its timely competitor, the PS3, have started what is a cyclone of hype, marketing, and empty promises in the gaming world when they both launched 2 years ago. The Wii is very specifically targeting the demographic of people who honestly probably don't even understand the concept of a video game, letalone being someone who has played them in the past, and the PS3 tried hard to match Nintendo, since they came out so close in time to each other, though PS3 has a little harder vendetta against Xbox 360, since they are closer in terms of hardware and games selection.

The problem with PS3's situation is that they fail to secure what may be some of the more important games of the near future to be released on their system, but try to offer a plethora of other, non-gaming services to make up for the lack of game quality and selection. There are still many games that are multi-platform and released on both PS3 as well as Xbox 360, but when any hardcore gamer makes a list of what games look good to them on either system, the list ends up about 3 times as long for Xbox 360 than it would for PS3. And as gamers, why else would we want anything besides games? We don't care that it can play a Blu-Ray disc or link up with our PSP. We have computers for internet access and playing videos. We could care less about how it can use Bluetooth technology or fry our hamburgers for us. We want to play games, and sadly, there is not enough substance to keep a non-casual gamer going on that console.

The Wii has it far worse in this aspect, since a majority of their games are specifically aimed at people who don't play games, and this ends up with most games containing only a fraction of the potential gameplay and depth that most modern titles have (or should have,) having an avalanche of games for children under the age of 10 and many games that border on not even being eligible to be called a video game in the first place. Games where you learn Spanish? Games where you exercise? I don't think so. They seem to be hard at work on keeping that American idea that video games are just children's toys firmly in place.

Nintendo promised to "do things right, this time" since many people were disgruntled with the decisions they made on the GameCube, but this has turned out to be the biggest of many in a series of empty promises from Nintendo. We won't get too far into the handheld market, since the DS is basically a handheld version of the Wii, taking gaming to lower depths of immersion with pecking on screens with sticks and waving our arms around in the air to accomplish a task, and the PSP is as rife with piracy problems as the Dreamcast ever was, even though they have a much better game selection than the DS. Both companies also feel the need to re-release their handheld systems every year with almost no new features besides some slight design changes and charge twice the price for the product. If this doesn't constitute as shitting on the consumer, I don't know what does.

There will always be the "fanboys" for every system or company out there, but gaming has gone far from its roots to be in the situation it is in right now with the neglect of non-casual gamers, and it doesn't seem to be getting better any time soon.