Metal Gear Solid 4 director Hideo Kojima has voices his frustrations over the
ever-increasing casual gaming market before. He's worried that hardcore gamers are being forgotten and that developers only care about creating cheap and easy games to make a quick buck. So Kojima has taken it upon himself to please the hardcore fans, but he is worried that there aren't enough games like
Metal Gear Solid 4 to keep hardcore gamers happy.
It's a concern that has been voiced by many developers and people in the gaming industry. The casual gaming market is increasing at an incredibly rapid rate. So why is this suddenly happening now? Why are casual games selling better than hardcore games? Different developers have different theories ...
Discuss in the forum
MGS4 makes last stand against casual games. Kojima worries about "death" of hardcore gaming - but do we need to take sides?
“We’re in the era of casual games, and it’s time to say ‘this is for the hardcore gamer’,” says Hideo Kojima, creator of Metal Gear Solid 4. “So it’s really, really important [MSG4] succeeds.” Has he got a point? With budgets spiraling (a decent next-gen title costs anywhere from $20-40 million) companies are becoming more risk-averse, keener on pumping out sure things than trying out new ideas. They’re also trying to appeal to a new audience - such as the 23 million people who bought Wiis or the 64 million who own a Nintendo DS. You know, the “casual gamers” these businessmen are so obsessed with.
Unluckily for game designers, formulaic games mean it’s relatively easy to do this: puzzlers Brain Age and its sequel have places in the 20 best-selling games of all time. And it’s these titles (not Uncharted or Okami) that get retailers excited.
Others lay the blame on devs themselves. Ken Levine, lead designer on BioShock, says, “Japanese game development has gone stagnant. They’re trying to reach a hardcore market in Japan that is actually shrinking, and part of the reason is that they’ve been making the same game for so long - Japanese RPGs - the audience is getting tired of it.”
But will there be games for people to play when they start looking further afield? Kojima reckons that’s down to him. “There are a lot of talented people in the industry,” says the man. “I want to return the power to developers. I don’t want them making Brain Age games.”
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But I have always said the best way to appeal to both casual gamers and hardcore gamers, is for devs to put difficulty settings in all the games. Have a very easy one for casual gamers, and put levels of difficulty up to the hardcore level! This way, more of their games will sell. I can't tell you how aggravating it is for certain games to be SO difficult they require you to put in days of mastering in order to beat the first half of the game. Then I feel bad when a game is WAY too easy as well! So why not have difficulty settings, which would add to the userbase, and add replayability (if that's even a word haha)!
As long as I enjoy it, I'll be happy.
Nintendo wouldn't stop making Mario games if they released a poor selling Mario game, now would they?
If MGS4 flopped, THEN I would start to worry about the next Metal Gear game.
The Video Game Market is growing, but I think we are a far cry away from the "last stand and death of hardcore gamers". GTA IV and Ninja Gaiden 2 just came out, and now we got MGS4. There are plenty of "hardcore" games for hardcore gamers out there. Kojima is just over exaggerating and trying to put more hype on MGS4. That's all.
I suppose he's putting the importance of him and MGS4 cause it is the motherload of Hardcore for most people. Since the hardcore games that has come out, too early for NG2, has done nothing for consoles. In comparison to the casual market which upped the worldwide sales of the Wii to like 27 million world wide.
I can understand what he means, while I don't believe its the end of hardcore games and gamers, it certainly not any good signs at the moment.
^read twelve times
Anyways, I just thought that all this stuff Kojima's been saying recently is also just a marketing technique to boost the awareness of MGS4.