The Importance of Casuals

Over the last week we've seen a bit of fallout with the release of Street Fighter V. There are quite a few people who feel that at its core, SFV is a solid game: good mechanics, works great. However, it is severely lacking in features, especially play modes. For the hardcore fighting game fan, this isn't really an issue. As it stands, the game has what they want already: a decent-sized roster of characters and an online versus mode. Be that as it may, a lot of people are upset by this, ie. everyone else who isn't hardcore aficionados of the genre. There are quite a lot of people that get these games with little to no intent of ever playing against another human being. They want a story, cool characters, maybe some other interesting modes tossed in, and if they can successfully pull off most of the moves along the way, so much the better.

Given the bare bones state of Street Fighter V's launch, these casual fans of fighters are a bit miffed. It doesn't matter if there's more content coming down the line. They plunked down $60 and they aren't finding a whole lot that they want to do with the game. The worrying, and not entirely unexpected, thing about all of this is how a vocal quadrant of hardcore community lashed out at the casuals voicing their concerns about the state of the game. It really goes to show that there are some impressively narrow-minded, myopic individuals who are utterly lacking in foresight.

The diehards of any given hobby are always comprised of a very small, vocal minority. They have very specific things that they want and they'll make a bunch of noise until they get it. This isn't just the case with Street Fighter. We can see it in most genres. Look at the last 10-15 years of MMORPGs. There was a time when raiders, another small, noisy group of people, would shout and stomp their feet on a game's message boards until they got what they want. The problem was that there were a lot of other people playing the game, quietly enjoying regular dungeons, leveling alts, dressing up their characters, or being silly with friends in a hub town. As the tiny group of raiders were increasingly catered to, everyone else was feeling left out when it came to new content. Sure they could raid, but if they're generally uninterested in such activities, it seemed silly to force one's self to. So, over time, as the casual set was increasingly left behind, they let out a collective, "Okay, bye, I guess..." and quit these games. This resulted in a sizable loss in customers for these games, and their publishers began to worry, scrambling to find ways to win back these people who unbenounced to them, were actually a larger source of revenue than the smaller, noisier group of "hardcore" players.

This could be translated to one genre after the next. How many people love competitive Starcraft? A decent amount, sure, but how many more view stuff like custom maps and clicking on units repeatedly so that they say silly things as highlights of the game? A lot more. This is one of the things that is nice about the game. Hardcore folks get their ladder and off they go while the casual crowd can just go off and do as they like in these custom modes or just enjoying the story. The game stays accessible to new players and those that have no interest in playing at a high level while also being good to go for the more competitive crowd.

There are some folks that shout on the internet about how they play competitively and think everyone else should as well, and it's turned into a bit of an echo chamber where these people get together and start thinking it's the natural order of things without stopping to think that there are quite a few people out there that don't feel the same. Whether it's hardcore members of the fighting game community, MOBA players arguing about normal matches vs. ranked, or MMO raiders, they just start talking among themselves, earnestly agreeing with one another while shouting down descent.

For a time, it may well seem like what they're doing is working, but often as the months and years pass we see less and less casuals entering into these games because they just don't want to deal with any of that and the games don't offer features or game modes that they're interested in. Moreover, this leaves a limited pool of hardcore folk, and that cohort of people inevitably shrinks as its members get older, their priorities / life circumstances change, and they find themselves leaving the scene. Then what happens to these games? Their publishers are businesses, not charities. If they aren't making enough money to support their product or they think future games in the genre won't sell well, the suits that make all of the big, money-related decisions at the company may not greenlight future projects.

So, hardcore gamers need to think long and hard whether they want to put these walls around the games that they love so much. If they can support them financially on their own, great. However, if that isn't the case, casuals are an absolute necessity for many games to continue to exist, never mind flourish. Shouting at the "filthy casuals" may score brownie points in their little circles, but it may well actually kill off the games these people love if they aren't careful.

November Releases and the Q4 Slugfest

Every year it happens. We start heading into October and the last big push of game releases is set upon us. It usually starts as a trickle, but before too long the flood gates open, the marketing campaigns go into full swing, and the battle for people's hearts and minds begins. With that, there pretty much always winds up being winners and losers.

This year is no different with a small army of high profile games coming out in November. We have Rise of the Tomb Raider, Fallout 4, Need for Speed, Black Ops III, Star Wars: Battlefront, StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, and Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash on that front. Meanwhile, handhelds will be slugging it out with the likes of Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon, Sword Art Online: Lost Song, Stella Glow, and Yo-kai Watch all coming out that month. Then, even with all of these big name titles and in-demand niche releases, there are the also-cames that will be slotted into the category of, "Maybe I'll get that at a sale some day..."

I don't expect everyone to be lining up for each and every game coming out, but there is a certain degree of overlap, not to mention that many of these games demand a fair amount of one's time. As such, it stands to reason that choices will be made and some games will fair far better than others.

It seems a pretty safe bet that Fallout 4 will sell like gangbusters. The series is immensely popular, open world games draw a big audience, and the hype has been through the roof for it since the thing was announced. The game also has the luxury of being released in a window where it doesn't have to compete against any other popular console or PC RPGs. There are a few MMORPGs getting major content updates in November, but I don't see them eating into Fallout 4 in any way. It has a wide-open field to come out and reap massive sales. About the only thing that may get in its way is when it comes to people with limited budgets and find themselves choosing between it and Star Wars: Battlefront.

And this is the other game that I see dominating November. Star Wars: Battlefront is something that people have been keeping an eye on for a long time, and it will obviously benefit from the massive hype as we head into the run-up before Star Wars: Force Awakens. People have been enjoying the demo, watching all of the trailers, and eager for the complete game to finally come out. This will be the online shooter that most folks want this year, and it will make life very difficult for Black Ops III.

Activision's shooter series hasn't quite enjoyed the level of success that it has in the past with recent releases and, while I'm sure the diehards will stick with it, the casual crowd will likely swarm toward Star Wars eager for storm troopers, the Force, and whatever else the game throws at them. It's a franchise that has always been popular and now enjoying a resurgence. If anything, it would have made sense to try and release Black Ops III earlier, say September, and hope for better sales because as I see it now, those sales are going to get heavily cannibalized by Battlefront.

There are other games that already have a dedicated audience and don't really need to worry about competition, though. The next StarCraft II expansion will be one of them. RTS is so much more of a niche genre now with StarCraft holding the fort as everyone else is scrambling to hop on board the MOBA gravy train. I'd be shocked if Legacy of the Void didn't do quite well for itself. I don't see it doing the insane numbers that Fallout 4 likely will, but the long time fans will be on it day one. The same thing seems likely for the new Mario Tennis. Nintendo fans love themselves some Mario, and it's been a while since we've had a tennis game from the franchise. Even if the Wii U was a bit of a misstep for Nintendo, I could see fans picking this up over the Christmas season.

I'm not quite sure how much draw Need for Speed has, though. Racing games are no where near as prevalent as they were in the past, especially not arcade racers. We see a niche community gobbling them up on places like Steam's Early Access, and there are a decent amount of folks who enjoy racing sims, but on the whole the genre has seen better days. Being a long time fan of racing games, I hope it does well, but it's really hard to say for certain.

The one major release I am doubtful will do well in November is Rise of the Tomb Raider. There just doesn't seem to be all that much excitement for the game right now. It doesn't help that the announcement of a time limited console exclusivity for the game wound up being a bit of a buzzkill either. My guess is that the game's best hope is to be a slow burn like the last Tomb Raider. It's success will likely come from steady, sustained purchases over a longer period of time, boosted by sales on Steam, XBL, and PSN when it hits the PS4. I'm expecting initial sales to be subpar, though.

It may well be interesting to see what happens on the more niche handheld side of things as well. We do have a Pokemon game coming out and even though it isn't quite in the same vein as the mainline series, I can see fans of the franchise buying it in droves. The real question is what will happen with the likes of Stella Glow, Sword Art Online, and Yo-kai Watch. Sword Art Online is still quite popular as an anime and while it is a Vita release, people own that system are religious about it. I don't think the game will do amazing, but it will find an audience. Yo-kai watch may do alright for itself. The series is much more popular in Japan, but it may get a steady trickle of sales here perhaps from the more dedicated Japanese gaming crowd. Stella Glow may well turn out to be too niche for its own good. I'm kind of wondering if it'll turn into a collector's item in 5 or 10 years. If it turns out to be decent but gets poor physical sales, the game could find itself selling for quite a bit on eBay in the years to come.

In any case, it should be interesting to see where the chips fall this year. Fallout 4 and Star Wars look likely to be the big winners, but I'm more curious where the surprise successes will come from. Whatever people go with, it's going to be a busy month for a lot of folks that'll likely carry into the new year if they go hog wild with new releases. While I am tempted to get in on the action, day one purchases are a tough sell for me these days. If I'm going to contribute to any of the Q4 statistics this year, that won't happen until the Steam sale hits.

Review: StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm (PC)

 

One thing that StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm does extremely well is present the monstrous Zerg as an undulating blanket of slimy, unspeakable nightmares. During the course of a few of the large scale battles when there were literally a hundred Zerg units crashing into enemy defenses, my skin actually crawled and I felt a flash of fight or flight. Something about the way the units are animated… it’s creepy. And when they’re all lumped together it’s close to terrifying.