It’s almost a month old now, but I came across
this article a week or so ago and…it struck a chord. Several, in fact. Like a full bloody symphony.
Leigh Alexander’s thoughts on diversity and assumptions made
about its impact – that it equals dumbing down, that the newcomers will destroy
the experience for everyone else – is very close to home for me. I am a female
gamer who is viewed as an anomaly by those who do not see themselves as gamers,
even though they are wedded to gaming apps. I have played games for 15 years and
across several generations, but did not own consoles as a child and has never
felt welcome in ‘hardcore’ gaming communities. In their eyes, I do not play the
right kind of games. On the right (read: insanely hard) setting. I do not play MMORGs or scarily successful
FPS franchises online. I spent ages not owning
next-gen consoles. Fuck, I like my Nintendo content as much as my 360 and PS
games, possibly more so.
Folks, we have a ‘casual’ girl gamer in the house. Please
stow your pitchfolks away for the time being, as I have built up a soapbox especially to talk about this.
What this article and some of the comments (since
disappeared) touched upon is that diversity in gaming is not only what we
should be heading towards, but how gaming used
to be for many people. Console and PC gamers can and do sneer at ‘social’
gaming all they like and I will happily admit that they are not my preferred
cuppa – too much sweetness, not enough depth. However, Candy Crush and their
like are not a million miles away from the grandaddy of old-school classic gaming
goodness, Tetris. And the people playing them are the sorts of people
who used to hit arcades after school, but could not afford, or *gasp* just did
not want a console, because it was one of several hobbies that they had.
Block-based puzzlers are incredibly simple in concept, but
the skill level required to play them is often through the roof; likewise for
the patience needed to put in the time for a those easy peasy-looking farming
game. A company like Nintendo is always accused by the ‘hardcore’ brigade of
being sell-outs who only care about mass-market appeal, but a main part of why
their franchises have that appeal is
because their apparent simplicity conceals solid and sometimes revolutionary
gameplay. I once handed control of Super Mario Sunshine over to my cousin. Reared on the Playstation and racing sims, they
gave up after a couple of minutes because a) they had come in on the middle of
the control learning curve, which is perfectly built up over time on Mario and
Zelda titles and b) because that game required a huge amount of precision and
in-depth understanding of the mechanics. I had always adjusted to the controls,
learning curve and mechanics of those franchises as if it was second-nature,
and finding out that these mass-market, don’t-count-as-serious-because-they’re-totes-for-kiddies
games could be hard for another
experienced gamer was a wake-up call. It taught me that good games, classic
games, are that because sometimes it is the simplest design and mechanics that have
the most impact. It also taught me that ‘casual’ and ‘hardcore’ as terms are…really
problematic.
I am a casual gamer due to playing so-called kiddie
franchises; because I do not always complete absolutely everything if it wastes
resources for no real reward; and worse of all, because I took a break of
several years from proper next-gen gaming to focus on my studies and career and
guess, what, it was easy. I am not a
hardcore gamer because I have never been able to play on the hardest difficulty
of a game, ever. I am not hardcore because I rarely get a headshot in; I am not
hardcore because I look at the amount of hours clocked up on super-complex
MMORGs and think, ‘oh, to fuckery with that’.
But the thing is, I am
a
hardcore gamer. Hell, I play JRPGs with a (sensible) completionist attitude
that has most people backing away from me slowly with a glazed look of terror
in their eyes. Full-on card quest in
Final Fantasy VIII, including maths
calculations and a gazillion resets to get the regional rules to take? Pfft,
done that – several times. Doing three nearly-almost-complete
Mass Effect 1-3 within
the space of four months? No biggie for this woman. Accidentally delete a 100
hour-plus
Final Fantasy X save file? Shrugged my shoulders and started up a new
playthrough that was more complete and interesting than the last one. Starting
new playthroughs just to nab one achievement? Well,
yeah.
 |
| Go ahead Samara, I knew you didn't have my staying power! |
When you have numerous interests, you have to divvy your
time, space and cash accordingly. Something has to give. Gaming might even be
your favourite pastime, but you just do not have the resources, full-stop – and
as someone who had to take a break from gaming because I simply did not have
the time or the cash, I sympathise with that entirely. You might not have the
greatest rig of all time, but you might be on your handheld console at lunch,
or playing games on your mobile on the bus. Said handheld or mobile might not
be able to offer you epic next-gen presentation or the so-called ‘hardcore’
gaming experience; but games aimed at a diverse audience can be beautiful and intricate
underneath their outward simplicity.
There are plenty of mass-market, social network or ‘casual’ titles that
are sloppily-made and out for a quick buck – although you should never put
behaviour like that past a next-gen console or PC games developer. Sometimes
they are experiments that did not set the market alight. But that is no reason
to dismiss them all out of hand, or assume that their inventiveness is a
gimmick. Not only is it self-centred to assume that what does not appeal to you
is not significant or not worth having, but you would be tossing the baby away
with the bathwater. Bringing new ideas and different people into gaming does
not automatically mean dilution – it can and does result in a different way of
looking at games and what they can do. That’s the way that any industry works. That
attitude flies in the face of what gaming is and what it always has done. And
that’s exactly what we need from this industry: so that it keeps producing games that are
interesting and inventive, and to make
sure that everyone can find something to enjoy.
In other words, I may never be able to play Dark Souls ‘properly’,
but there is no good reason to suggest that doing so will destroy someone else’s
personal experience of the game. Let us in, folks. Some of us have shiny new
ideas. And cookies. Just don’t take it personally if they are Triforce-shaped.
