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silveradept[This is part of a series on video games, their tropes, stories of playing games, and other related topics. If you have suggestions about where to take the series, please do say so in the comments. We have a lot of spaces to fill for this month.]
Games are games are games are games. It doesn't matter what form they take, or who plays them, for them to be games.
We've spent a lot of bits examining how people who have a very narrow view of games see what's inside and outside of their definitions, but we haven't spent a whole lot of time on the wider expanse of possible games that are out there, and what game-playing might mean to people who haven't grown up in the mindset that believes all tactics are acceptable if you win, or who left that mindset behind when it became clear to them that it was unacceptably toxic. Or for those of us who know what our brains will do when confronted with both the idea of not being good enough and with the jerk who has a big ego, and, regrettably, enough skill to back up their boast against most of the people who they play against.
The idea of "casual" games is often put in opposition to the "hardcore" crowd, despite the fact that it's supposed to be a descriptive term, rather than a pejorative one. Casual games are the sort of thing that are supposed to be fairly easy to pick up and put down, where a single game iteration might last only a few minutes, even though there may be a deeper progression or unlock system where all of those small pieces eventually add up to new content and/or more complexity in the game as game mechanics are introduced slowly. Many match-threes are considered casual games because they generally don't have a clock ticking away toward a game over or require the players to make snap tactical decisions or twitch reaction shots. I say many, despite the fact that Bejeweled, one of the older examples of the genre, has more than a few time-based modes that make them much more into arcade-style games rather than the casual tactical game that Bejeweled built the brand on. And that there are more than a few variations on the match-three game that are all about speed and sight, rather than thinking and making decisions a few moves ahead.
Actually, the lack of time pressure is very much a common element of things that call themselves or are called casual games. Most casual games, if they're timed, finish rounds in a few minutes or otherwise run a fairly short clock so that someone can open the game, play a few rounds, and then close it when their break window or the thing that has them waiting is finished and they can continue on. Some of them are completely untimed, at least in the sense that the time spent playing the game doesn't have a material effect on the game's ending, like many puzzle and hidden object games. And almost all of them make it feel and seem like significant progress can be made by playing in short stints, rather than other game types where progress is definitely a factor of finding an afternoon to play the game with and using it to advance the story a chapter (or sometimes, a scene, or in some cases, to deal with the backlog of sidequests that have piled up that require someone to run all over the map in a complicated Chain of Deals or a fetch quest to collect 20 pelts by exterminating several of the local monster populations. Or just grinding through the random dungeons and gathering levels and equipment to take on the next boss or the next optional boss. Or playing match after match, practicing the combinations, defenses, attacks, and otherwise figuring out the intricacies of a given system.
The amount of time invested in a game is sometimes used as a substitute for how good of a game it is. For some games, the designers think that you get your money's worth if you end up spending a significant amount of time trying to get through the game. Of course, that doesn't say anything about the quality of the content that someone has to go through to make that time happen. Grinding one's way through enemies that are there just to get in the way isn't good content (and, for the most part, when someone is talking about grinding or having to grind, they're talking about boring content that has to be doe so that someone can get back to the exciting things), and so it's one of the tricks of game development to balance well enough that progression happens appropriately without someone having to stop and grind.
At the same time, there's an expectation that the more money something costs, the more content there should be for someone to play. Interestingly enough, digital distribution can help in this regard by letting creators set prices related to how much time and content they feel is part of the game. Something that's meant to be a couple hours of a romp of a small period of time, or is a brick-breaker clone with a few levels and not much else can be priced appropriately for a few dollars, rather than the game itself having had to get through a process where it had to convince a publisher that the game would have enough popularity to sell enough copies to make back the cost of pressing all the necessary physical items and provide a healthy profit to the company that took on the risk. As with other media items, companies don't want to take on risk that they don't think will make them their investment back and more, which can cause a lot of games to look and feel the same, have the same sorts of mechanics, and produce a lot of sequels to already popular franchises.
They're all still games, though, regardless of how long they take, and how difficult they're perceived to be, and whether or not they demand big chunks of time for someone to accomplish anything in them or they can have meaningful progress made in much smaller segments. And also whether or not they have any popularity at all about the crowd that thinks they're the only people who have valid opinions on whether a game is good or not.
Games are games are games are games. It doesn't matter what form they take, or who plays them, for them to be games.
We've spent a lot of bits examining how people who have a very narrow view of games see what's inside and outside of their definitions, but we haven't spent a whole lot of time on the wider expanse of possible games that are out there, and what game-playing might mean to people who haven't grown up in the mindset that believes all tactics are acceptable if you win, or who left that mindset behind when it became clear to them that it was unacceptably toxic. Or for those of us who know what our brains will do when confronted with both the idea of not being good enough and with the jerk who has a big ego, and, regrettably, enough skill to back up their boast against most of the people who they play against.
The idea of "casual" games is often put in opposition to the "hardcore" crowd, despite the fact that it's supposed to be a descriptive term, rather than a pejorative one. Casual games are the sort of thing that are supposed to be fairly easy to pick up and put down, where a single game iteration might last only a few minutes, even though there may be a deeper progression or unlock system where all of those small pieces eventually add up to new content and/or more complexity in the game as game mechanics are introduced slowly. Many match-threes are considered casual games because they generally don't have a clock ticking away toward a game over or require the players to make snap tactical decisions or twitch reaction shots. I say many, despite the fact that Bejeweled, one of the older examples of the genre, has more than a few time-based modes that make them much more into arcade-style games rather than the casual tactical game that Bejeweled built the brand on. And that there are more than a few variations on the match-three game that are all about speed and sight, rather than thinking and making decisions a few moves ahead.
Actually, the lack of time pressure is very much a common element of things that call themselves or are called casual games. Most casual games, if they're timed, finish rounds in a few minutes or otherwise run a fairly short clock so that someone can open the game, play a few rounds, and then close it when their break window or the thing that has them waiting is finished and they can continue on. Some of them are completely untimed, at least in the sense that the time spent playing the game doesn't have a material effect on the game's ending, like many puzzle and hidden object games. And almost all of them make it feel and seem like significant progress can be made by playing in short stints, rather than other game types where progress is definitely a factor of finding an afternoon to play the game with and using it to advance the story a chapter (or sometimes, a scene, or in some cases, to deal with the backlog of sidequests that have piled up that require someone to run all over the map in a complicated Chain of Deals or a fetch quest to collect 20 pelts by exterminating several of the local monster populations. Or just grinding through the random dungeons and gathering levels and equipment to take on the next boss or the next optional boss. Or playing match after match, practicing the combinations, defenses, attacks, and otherwise figuring out the intricacies of a given system.
The amount of time invested in a game is sometimes used as a substitute for how good of a game it is. For some games, the designers think that you get your money's worth if you end up spending a significant amount of time trying to get through the game. Of course, that doesn't say anything about the quality of the content that someone has to go through to make that time happen. Grinding one's way through enemies that are there just to get in the way isn't good content (and, for the most part, when someone is talking about grinding or having to grind, they're talking about boring content that has to be doe so that someone can get back to the exciting things), and so it's one of the tricks of game development to balance well enough that progression happens appropriately without someone having to stop and grind.
At the same time, there's an expectation that the more money something costs, the more content there should be for someone to play. Interestingly enough, digital distribution can help in this regard by letting creators set prices related to how much time and content they feel is part of the game. Something that's meant to be a couple hours of a romp of a small period of time, or is a brick-breaker clone with a few levels and not much else can be priced appropriately for a few dollars, rather than the game itself having had to get through a process where it had to convince a publisher that the game would have enough popularity to sell enough copies to make back the cost of pressing all the necessary physical items and provide a healthy profit to the company that took on the risk. As with other media items, companies don't want to take on risk that they don't think will make them their investment back and more, which can cause a lot of games to look and feel the same, have the same sorts of mechanics, and produce a lot of sequels to already popular franchises.
They're all still games, though, regardless of how long they take, and how difficult they're perceived to be, and whether or not they demand big chunks of time for someone to accomplish anything in them or they can have meaningful progress made in much smaller segments. And also whether or not they have any popularity at all about the crowd that thinks they're the only people who have valid opinions on whether a game is good or not.
