I’ve been playing games most of my life, and I know a lot of people out there have been at video games just as long, or even longer. Something that’s irked me that seems to have come up since the middle of the last generation and has been going full steam now is this concept of ‘hardcore’ when it comes to defining video games. Most people seem to think that if the game gets a Mature rating and has blood throughout the game or violence that it should be defined as hardcore. But, why? This is like saying horror movies and action movies are ‘hardcore’ movies. In reality a movie that does little more than try to shock people with gore and violence has no real artistic merit, or any plot or other redeeming value. I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t consider ‘Saw’ to be a hardcore movie.
In fact, when I was growing up, I always felt that the complicated and nuanced games were the hardcore games, and the simplistic games were the casual ones. Flight simulators or RPGs were the most common hardcore games. In Wizardry or Might and Magic, you would find yourself drawing map after map just to figure out where you were. This was most commonly demonstrated with some of the Commodore 64 and ealrier IBM and DOS based games you would see in the late 80’s and early 90’s. These games demanded ingenuity, dedication, and sometimes quick thinking just to play them competently. The most important distinction between these types of games and the average is that graphics were mostly unimportant when compared to the gameplay and depth of the experience. Now, a hardcore game could have good graphics, but the amount of work they put into the rest of the game and the hardware at the time meant that they just couldn’t afford to do much with the visuals, besides stick figures or brick walls or some very simple poligons.
These style of hardcore games also appeared on consoles, but much more rarely. Consoles generally hosted games for more casual players. However, this level of ‘casual’ game still required a lot of dedication and work to get through in many cases. It wasn’t until most of the way through the lifecycle of the NES that game saves were introduced for that game system, so games had to be completed within the same sitting, or confusing or long passwords had to be written down. Also, with coin operated stand up arcade games being the originator of the standard console game, the difficulty had been exceedingly high. In the arcades, a game that was addictive and almost impossible to beat was almost like a holy grail for the game companies. A lot of kids would want to play it, and since they couldn’t beat it easily, they would come back again and again to try and try again. This had mostly transferred to console games. It would also artificially lengthen the game on the console, to give more play time. When you consider games like Mega Man compared to casual games of today like Bejeweled or Wii Sports, I don’t think they could even be in the same category. I would call NES games ‘core’ games by today standards. They are the typical games that people think of when the term Video Games came up, and for a while were the bread and butter of the industry.
Now, games with blood and gore are not really new inventions. Pit Fighter and SplatterHouse were very gory and had at least some amount of success, despite having little else to the game. However, when Mortal Kombat came out in 1992, there was something about the game that was different. The gore was completely over the top, and they used digitized charaters based on real people. A somewhat baffling advertising later, and now we have what I figured to be the beginning of the gore era. This is where I see some form of casual gaming started. While standard core and hardcore games still came out, companies started pushing the envelope (so to speak) of violence to try and get a piece of the market share that Mortal Kombat now claimed. Decapitations, limb removal, and blood soaked environments were a major factor in drawing new crowds to games. People that would never have played a game before in their lives are now playing games to see people die horribly. Shortly afterwards, with the Sony Playstation coming out and with advertising now being aimed at ‘cool’ kids and teens and young adults, the first major casual gaming influx was now in full swing.
Now we start seeing games being change to market to some of these larger crowds. Games being ‘cool’ and violent start selling more and more, and start edging out the ‘core’ games by a wide margin. Here we see games like Tomb Raider get released, adding sex appeal to games too. This becomes the face of the industry, backed also by the rising First Person Shooter genre of video games that have become synonymous with violence and gore. This trend rises and partway through the next generation of consoles with the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube, how games are defined begin to shift. Now, these bloody games and FPS games are the hardcore games. Why? Did blood and violence really become that important? Are reflexes and ‘gut checks’ now what defines hardcore games? I could never see why.
If I were to blame a single game that caused the change in definition between what I used to see as hardcore and what people now see is hardcore, I would pinpoint it on Halo. Now, I’m actually a huge fan of First Person Shooters, but I’ve never really liked Halo. Collectively, over several gameplay sessions I’ve probably put in 10 hours into it. It just seemed like it was too easy, too simple. Like, there was the graphics (well, when it came out), but not much depth, even compared to other FPS games. I always thought that the story was over-written, taking hours to convey an incredibly basic ‘Aliens VS. Humans’ scenario with some predictable twists and a cop-out ‘to be continued’ ending. It’s like if video games were candy, Halo would be the marshmallow peeps. It’s mostly just fluff, in my opinion.
Now, there’s hardcore games in my view, now how about hardcore gamers themselves? What makes a hardcore gamer? I believe it lies in the reason for playing games. If you’re playing a game because it looks pretty and/or has a lot of blood, and turn your nose up at a well made game made for everyone (something like Super Mario Galaxy) without trying it, you’re a casual gamer. I’ve always considered that it’s not what you play, but why you play the games is what defines you as a gamer. I do think it’s sad that people try and define it by spending thousands of dollars on an HDTV and sound system to feel ‘hardcore’. A big pocket of disposable income doesn’t make you hardcore. Playing certain games only so you can call yourself hardcore makes you a wannabe. Keeping an open mind and playing games despite what other people think is more hardcore than most. Learning intricacies and really becoming involved in your game and doing research in games in general is hardcore. Devoting your life completely to a particular game or type of games to the near exclusion of everything else might be hardcore, but it’s irresponsible too. Playing to have fun is a good reason to play games, regardless if it makes you hardcore.
If you want to know examples of hardcore games in my eyes, I can name off a few. X:Beyond the Frontier and its sequals, the Flight Simulator series, Might and Magic, Ultima, and so many old school RPGs. For more recent examples, I’d say Baldur’s Gate series, Fallout 1 and 2, and Red Orchestra , and there’s a few others worth noting. However, a game being ‘hardcore’ or not, I’ll play what I like.
In the end though, what does this all even matter? Games are supposed to be fun, not pissing contests. If you don’t complete a game or don’t get a super secret ending or don’t play the right games, should you be considered a ‘casual’ gamer by default? A bigger question is, does it matter? Should it matter? No. I don’t care for people trying to claim they’re hardcore for beating Killzone 2 in 6 hours on a speed run. I’ve played over 100 FPS games and have made maps for Quake and created batch files to play mods. I don’t need to prove anything. And really, why should you?
Posted by JH 