FeedWhy Casual Gaming Is Destroying The PC Platform.
by Veraliis on Feb.01, 2009, under Arcade, Developers, Opinions, PC, Rant
We’ve all seen them on either a flash banner telling us we’ll win a new ps3, or that it’s the newest craze. Truth be told ‘casual games’ such as Peggle, Luxor, and any other cursed Mah Jong game that your grandmother used to pass the time before her next assisted bowel movement are designed for about two things. An addictive nature rivaling methamphetamines, and marketing them to the half wits with the attention span of a goldfish with ADD. With an attractive price point as typically being under 20 bux and the lowest rung of demanding of your computer’s specs it makes sense to the cold and calculating money grubbing corporate business plan. In truth, most of my favorite games to date are from publishers who went the way of the dodo, or were bought out and had their creativity stomped in the name of pandering to the lowest common denominator. There are always exceptions to this whole thing. I remember when there was a flood of shit like this, back in the day and even now in some Wal Marts across the globe you’d see a disc proclaiming loudly ‘5000 fun games for windows’. And if you were ever duped into acquiring one of these insidious pieces of slime it usually came with 500 different clones of about 5 different card games, mostly poker or solitaire based, a handful of point and click adventures, some very poorly done shareware of a game scrapped together on the Build Engine, some Mah Jong tile games and a few inane Breakout ripoffs.
In truth, this is exactly what the internet casual games are doing, selling you a shotgun blast of a million little games that are otherwise shit with a bit of polish and seeing which ones stick. The game Insaniquarium has been
done hundreds of times before it was known as such. It may not have had the same textures or exactly the same polish. But I can assure you that the game mechanics were THE FUCKING SAME.
But all in all, there is one merit to casual games. And that is they keep it old school. And by old school I don’t mean only working off 16 bits. I’m talking about the kind of stuff you can go into an old arcade and find. What casual games capture more than retards in a room full of bouncy balls, is the lure of goofy sounds coming from that Neo Geo cabinet that costs you endless quarters even after you’ve beaten it just for the slight feeling of gamers adrenaline.
Which is exactly where these types of games belong. In the arcade, I suppose you could say that the average PC owner is not really set up for games that require a decent amount of juice, these people all agree with me that casual games suck and are at best a waste of time. I hate to sound elitist here but there’s a sense of pride when you grind 60 levels in a month, your arse sores might not agree but whatever, you’ve got your new set of armor and you could give a shit about some punk’s high score at the casino. If we wanted to play gambling games we’d go get liquored up in a social environment and have women with titty tassles serve us booze while we lose our money, not give it up to some dealer’s avatar on Hoyle.com.
Again I may be one of the lucky ones to have a still functioning arcade in town but wouldn’t you rather see a cabinet with Castle Crashers hooked up to the net to have constant scores and saves? Jesus it wouldn’t take much to set this sort of thing up, a tower in the cabinet with a loader.dll and a front end, hook a few game controllers up to it and what would’ve cost a few grand for a running The Simpsons arcade game is significantly decreased.
Keep the casual games to a casual platform. Like Wii shovelware and the arcade where it only costs a quarter.
-Veraliis
February 1st, 2009 on 8:46 pm
Saying that X is ruining Y without providing any historical precedent or reasoning does not an argument make. Why didn’t you talk about the piracy that forces game developpers to work on consoles? Why dont you talk about the popularity of consoles both as a new cultural medium as well as a one-stop means of entertainment. Not everyone wants to run to the hardware store every 4 months for a new video card. This is a bunch of fanboy bullshit, don’t bother posting it on the website unless youre actually going to say something other than “CASUALLSSSSSS”
February 1st, 2009 on 9:19 pm
the title should have been
“why the casual gaming fad is destroying everything”
and the article should have been one sentence
“case in point”
February 2nd, 2009 on 12:53 am
Hycran, your argument is invalid because with the modern technology of scaling most if not every PC game available people don’t need to upgrade nearly as often as they needed to back in the day. Not to mention it sure beats having to send in your Xbox360 every few months due to the wonderful new ‘cultural medium’ of Rrods.
February 2nd, 2009 on 7:05 am
facepalm.jpg
Are you saying simple 2D games (you like to call them “casual”) are destroying the PC platform, and that those games solely belong in arcades? Ok!
Now I’m off to play Geometry Wars 2 hardout for 5 hours straight to climb the top score ladder. Enjoy your armour and arse sores.
February 2nd, 2009 on 12:27 pm
Veraliis, quit being the stereotype gamer that attacks the 360 for RRoD, first of all that hasn’t happened to new 360s in years, and second it hasn’t happened to me which I’ve had mine for the past year and a half. Second, Hycran is right, you and all the other writers here like to attack your subject without exploring every viewpoint you can. Also, video games have stopped becoming an entertainment medium and have instead become a means of business, a means of quick income. The reason these games exists is because people will buy them because they are simple fun and don’t have anything to do with blood and violence. Also, if you don’t like the fucking game then DON’T FUCKING PLAY IT or DON’T FUCKING TALK ABOUT IT. They are fucking games, not religious beliefs, games. If someone has a casual game, and you have Gears of War 2, don’t start ridiculing them for what they play just because your opinion of it is low.
YOU are the type of gamer that is killing everyone’s opinion of us, and our opinion of ourselves.
February 2nd, 2009 on 8:55 pm
I wasn’t saying that some of these games aren’t fun, for fuck’s sake they’re designed to be fun! The point is that because of bloatware and the lack of releases that are primarily for the PC is quickly leaving the oldschool people with a near useless rig, you can only play through Crysis so many times.
February 2nd, 2009 on 9:06 pm
The greatest games aren’t always the latest ones you know. There are still a lot of people playing Half-Life 1. Maybe you enjoy spending money on the next game that comes out by awesome company A, but the rest of us are content in playing TF2, CS:S, Warcraft 3, WoW, hell even Starcraft is still getting playtime. So just because there aren’t any new titles doesn’t mean there aren’t any good ones either.
February 3rd, 2009 on 8:02 pm
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