Opening Note: In this blog, I’m using somewhat outdates terms like “casual”, “mid-core”, “core” and “hardcore”. I am aware that these don’t fully capture the spectrum of gamers that exist. But I believe this the simplest definition that most people understand, so I’m sticking with them for now.
I was wrong.
For the longest time, I had believed that gamers only become more serious about their gaming as they mature (as gamers).
Casual gamers eventually find their games boring and look for something with more depth; so they become mid-core gamers. Mid-core gamers likewise become enthralled in the depth in games (story, gameplay, etc) and look for even more immersive, impactful and lasting games, becoming Core and eventually Hardcore gamers. It’s either that, or they stop playing games altogether, usually driven by real-life responsibilities restricting their gaming time.
My visual representation of this involved the following pyramid:
People can enter the pyramid at any tier (usually in the casual-to-mid tier), but they only move UP or OUT the pyramid.
And for the longest time, this hypothesis matched my observations. I’ve been gaming since the early 80s, and I saw virtually every gamer go through this transition. People would (almost) always crave something “better” than the last game they played, which almost always meant deeper and more complex games.
This is why I wasn’t too upset by the Wii and Casual games phenomenon, nor the explosion of Social games and Mobile games ten years ago, even though as a somewhat-hardcore gamer at the time it was frustrating to see the entire industry shift their focus away from more serious forms of gaming. That's because I believed that the huge influx of Casual gamers would only help the industry in the longer-term; all we needed was to wait for those new gamers to mature and get tired of those casual gaming experiences. We just needed to weather the drought of Core games (and their innovations) until developers and publishers came back to their senses .
Fast-forward a decade to the future of 2018, and I do feel that the day I was waiting for has finally arrived. Core gaming is stronger than ever (even though the audience is fragmented across various console platforms and PC), mobile gaming is now considered too shallow for many gamers, and social gaming has been absorbed and integrated into even Core/Hardcore games. Even mobile games are trying to become more “Core” (by targeting mid-core gamers). Thank god.
But over the last 10 years I’ve also witnessed something I didn’t expect; people who were moving DOWN the gamer pyramid. I saw hardcore gamers starting to play less games to become mid-core gamers (e.g. churns from CoD and WoW). Core gamers are moving to simpler versions of their games (e.g. DOTA2->LOL->HotS migration), and some gamers are even “retiring” to playing only social/casual games in their tiny chunks of free time.
I myself have also been playing less games than before. Now, I am at best a Core gamer, and more than likely “just” a Mid-Core gamer at this point. This retreat started about three years ago when SFV’s development crunch started getting really bad, and I simply couldn’t find 2-3 hour stretches of free time anymore; not even on the weekends. Thankfully, I’m back to gaming regularly nowadays, but for a while it was surprisingly hard to get back into it. I had completely forgotten how to enjoy vegging out on the couch for hours and just immersing myself in a game, so getting back into that mentality took some time.
And that made me realize something. My hypothesis of how a gamer matures was too simplistic, and ignored a glaringly obvious factor (in hindsight); real-life (time) constraints. (In retrospect, that oversight also reflected my lack of life experience at the time)
Yes, DUH. Even back in the 2000s when I was raiding in WoW, “I have a life outside of WoW” was a regular chant/complaint by those who couldn’t afford the 30+hr/week commitment that end-game WoW demanded. But I had dismissed them as “the Casual gamers’ excuse.” In my opinion at the time, if you were truly serious about your gaming, you’d prioritize your life around it and MAKE TIME for it. As if we all have a choice in that matter.
I was so wrong. I’ve realized, only after having experienced it myself, that sometimes your life won’t allow you to be as hardcore as your inner child may want to be.
I still miss my WoW raiding days, and every time Blizzard releases an expansion pack, I am tempted to return to it again. But then, I remember how much time that game needs, and how much I free time actually have today (it’s around 10 hours a week). So, I instead look for games that can be played in a reasonable amount of time. Celeste can be beat in under 10 hours? Great, let me check it out! Nier: Automata takes 20-30 hours? Okay, I might give that a try. Monster Hunter: World needs 100+hrs to really get serious? Yikes, I’ll have to pass (I still played it for about 20 hrs). You get the idea.
So here is my updated/adjusted hypothesis. The basic structure is the same, but there’s a time-constraint factor which limits how far up the pyramid a gamer can climb, or pushes them back down the pyramid. A hardcore gamer may be forced to move down to a Core or Midcore tier, or a Midcore gamer may never be able to become a Core/Hardcore gamer simply because he can’t, even if he wants to. Conversely, gamers who had to “downgrade” to lower tiers due to the lack of free time may find themselves with more free time again later, at which point they may climb back up that pyramid.
Why is this important? Because IMO these types of hypotheses serve as models for how our audience (= consumers) may evolve over time. Just as I had “predicted” that the Wii and Mobile games’ explosive growth would eventually translate to a larger customer base for Core gaming, these models serve to give us a better idea of our audience’s future. It helps us understand our audience for what they may play 5-10 years from now, as opposed to what they are playing today.
To demonstrate the importance, let me provide an example of what happens when you DON’T have a similar model, and instead make all decisions based on “what’s big today?” or “what’s the fastest-growing category today?” In the early half of this decade, as the growth of Mobile gaming was peaking, there was widespread speculation that Mobile would eventually take over the entire industry. In some extreme cases, those same people (many of them non-industry people; and a good number of them from Finance) were predicting the death of PC and console gaming as a result.
What that narrative lead to was a drastic shift in resources at major publishers and developers, away from Core games and toward Mobile games. This was a disastrous time for Core gamers, and I’d argue that this also contributed to many Publishers starting to develop Core/AAA games only with major franchises, and spend less on developing new IP. To be fair, the inherent risk of developing new IPs also played a large role in that shift, but I still maintain that those who completely misread the audience’s future mislead the industry to focus on the wrong sector for close to half a decade.
Imagine how different things would be today if instead of betting everything on Mobile games, Publishers maintained a more balanced strategy and cultivated BOTH? There would be more games to play for people like me, and I would even argue that the industry, as a whole, would have generated more revenue in that alternate universe.
“Well, Mr. Genius,” you may ask, “so what do YOU think will happen next?”
Well, first I’ll caveat this by acknowledging that my “pyramid model” is still imperfect and simplistic. But, it’s still infinitely better than having no model at all.
That said, my updated hypothesis tells me that the pyramid will become more middle-heavy than my previous model had predicted. This is because the time required increases exponentially as you try to go from Mid-core to Core/Hardcore, and most people won’t be able to afford that time. This will force many to be STUCK in or downgraded to the Mid-core tier as their real-life commitments begin to claim their free time.
The following pyramids will hopefully demonstrate the difference. Whereas the previous model more or so assumed a normal pyramid, the new model is fatter around the middle.
What does this mean? It means Mid-core is where the future is (or in more explicit terms, the $$ is) for our industry.
Now, please note that I haven’t predicted which platforms the Mid-core gamers will be on. That’s because I don’t think the platform necessarily limits how deep/complex a game can be. Over the last five years, we’ve seen a good number of mid-core titles come to Mobile, and they’ve been received well. Even PUBG and Fortnite are now on mobile, so by no means am I predicting that the future is entirely with Console/PC. What I am saying is that, regardless of platform, we need to make games that hold people’s attention for more than a couple of hours. I will concede, however, that those types of Mid-core games are easier to make for Console or PC, but that has less to do with hardware performance, and more to do with the limitation of the touchscreen interface. I digress.
Given all of this, I am very excited to see what the next 10 years will bring. I just hope I will still have enough time to maintain at least a “Mid-core gamer” status.
Closing Note: Personally, I used to be ALL about bleeding-edge gaming which generally skew toward the core-to-hardcore space because of the need for a powerful PC (or brand new console).
But after entering the workforce and learning about the realities of this business, I realized that hard-core gaming does not represent a large enough portion of the industry’s profits.
Yes, those games are the ones that DRIVE the industry forward, both creatively and technologically (much more than a breakout hit on a mobile phone could), but as businesses they are usually losing propositions. So, I guess we gotta eat our vegetables, too. “Vegetables” being “less-serious games” in this analogy.
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