Launch Telemetry

In response to “The Gamer Within” from The Escapist Forum: I’m on the marketing/advertising side of gaming and not only have I noticed that there are more woman gameplayers out there, many of them are moving from casual games to MMOGs. We just to produce games that interest them.

– trosaire

In response to “The Gamer Within” from The Escapist Forum: When a person says of games, “What’s the point?” or “This story is terrible,” this is what they mean. The story is just a knowing wink and an excuse to go out and do what everybody knows you’re coming there for (in this case, killing boars because a person told you to so you can go kill better boars). If you don’t already know that you want to go kill boars, then either the story will bore you because it’s a tailor-made excuse to kill boars, or it will betray you because it goes on about all this great stuff that’s happening, and then it tells you that your part in the story is to go and kill boars.

Civilization lets you interact with the story in a way I don’t think any other kind of game has, which in my opinion is why it was the closest to a success in the little experiment. Lumines doesn’t make excuses. Black and White doesn’t make excuses. The game is the setting is the story. We can make games like that now, and more than anything else I think that’s what we should be pursuing. It makes sense.

– Bongo Bill

In response to “The Future of Massively Multiplayer Isn’t You” from The Escapist Forum: The primary difference between hardcore and casual gamers is their willingness (and desire) to fully explore all the options a game provides. It is also a question of skill and experience.

Time is not a factor, in my mind, when determining the difference between a hardcore and casual gamer; hardcore gamers may be more willing to dedicate a lot of time to a game in general, but casual gamers can spend a ton of time playing games, and hardcore gamers can spend little.

For example, I am a hardcore min/max style gamer. I almost never spend more than 10 hours a week playing any given MMO these days, but the time I do spend is carefully approached and maximized for efficiency.

On the flip side, while I was a Community Relations Manager on EverQuest II, I met a number of gamers I would consider casual, in that they spend most of their time in the game hanging out and slowly advancing, but they played the game 4+ hours a day. They never maximized efficiency, watching TV while playing or wandering in and out of the room in which they played, casually chatting with friends, looking around, etc.

I understand part of this can be that what I view as a hardcore player has different goals than a casual player (character advancement being one of them), but I look at a casual player as being someone who simply doesn’t put forth a great deal of effort while they are playing a game as compared to a hardcore player (whether their motives are character advancement, monetary gain, socialization, or otherwise).

– Ryan Shwayder

In response to “The Future of Massively Multiplayer Isn’t You” from The Escapist Forum: I think, Ryan, you are defining a “Power Gamer” which is not the same as a “Hardcore Gamer”. My friends are definitely more hardcore, in my opinion, but they have a strong focus on developing a character in terms of background, social relations, etc. They are “Hardcore Role Players”.

I, on the other hand, spend less time in the games that I play but I spend almost all of it leveling up. My play style of choice is “power gaming”, but I have trouble considering myself a “hardcore gamer”. I feel that my style reflects what I like to do in the game, not necessarily how devoted to it I am.

I agree, though, that the statement is an over-simplification. We can’t boil down the formula into time played = level of hardcore.

– Blaxton

In response to “Business Casual” from The Escapist Forum: I’d like to verify the sales figures that you list in your article about the Buzz! games. You mention in your article that 4 million units have been sold. I’d love to know the breakdown of that number in terms of US sales vs. Europe in 2005 and 2006.

I’ve done quite a bit of research to try to get these figures but to no avail. Perhaps you can help?

– Laurie

Editor’s Reply: Thanks for your inquiry (and your interest).

The figure you mention was printed as a direct quote from David Amor, Creative Director of Relentless Software, developers of the Buzz! series of games. It is, therefore, a reflection of how many units he believes were sold of his game, rather than an estimate of our own.

The closest we came to editorializing on the number of units of Buzz! sold was the suggestion that it was the PS2’s best-selling title of 2005, which, it would appear, is a typographical error. Buzz! was “one of the” best-selling titles of that year, but not number one. That error has since been corrected. Mr. Amor’s words, however, are his problem.

– Russ Pitts