Video: Casual / Core Fallacy (Extra Credits)

[0:00] Only a few weeks ago, while working on a consulting gig, did it dawn on James that he’s heard the same fallacy the same false dichotomy a thousand times while working on games and even today he still hears it said:

[0:11] The idea that we can split our audience into casual and core. [“Penguin Cap” by CarboHydroM] And I know that any decent designer doesn’t honestly believe that that’s all their audience boils down to. Usually we all just use those terms as a
convenient shorthand, and I mean it’s not

[0:29] a great shorthand to begin with. It’s
holding our design thinking back and ultimately causing more harm than good. But when he thought about it, the thing that shocked James most was the
realization that we are even using the shorthand wrong. As many of you probably
know, we game industry folks often think

[0:44] of the gaming market as being split into
what we call casual and core audiences but perhaps more importantly we also
refer to the players of any individual game as casual and core when
we’re thinking about design decisions. Casual and core have slightly different
meanings in this context than when

[0:59] referring to the market as a whole. When looking at an individual game, your
casual players are the ones who only take a passing interest in your game, who
don’t play it for very long and who don’t play it very deeply. They don’t
plumb the depths of the mechanics in the

[1:11] systems. They’re the ones who are just
there for a brief good time and then they’re gonna move on. Whereas your core player is going to
invest a ton of hours into your game and try to play it to its fullest. They want
mastery and they respect expert play.

[1:23] They want to play the game well, and so
we make decisions with those definitions in mind. Like we’ll make sure that there’s
an awesome cutscene early on to capture the casual player’s attention or add some
fun silly abilities for them to goof around with. After all, you want them to
feel like they have enjoyed the game,

[1:38] that it’s something worth buying the
sequel to, even if they only played for a few minutes. Whereas for the core players
we’ll create complex interlocking systems, we’ll bury easter eggs and add a
punishingly hard New Game Plus mode. And while I think this simple reductionist
way of looking at our player base is

[1:53] limiting, that it doesn’t account for the
whole spectrum of play styles in-between, I won’t deny that there is utility in
looking at things this way. After all, it’s impossible to account for every
type of player when making design decisions. At some point, you just gotta
lump your player base into simplistic

[2:07] buckets just to give yourself somewhere
to go. But even with the vast generalizations these buckets create, I
think we might be making a mistake, because let’s look at those
definitions again. Casual players don’t play for long, don’t care for depth and are just
looking for an easy good time.

[2:21] Core players spend forever on the game,
they want all the depth and they want to play it well. Right there is the problem.
In the modern world, where players have millions of games to play, where the
average player age is increasing and many people have jobs or families, we’re still
assuming that if you aren’t pouring hours

[2:37] and hours into a game, you must not be
looking for depth or be all that interested in playing the game well. And
without a doubt, players who invest the most time in the game will often be the
ones who can dig the furthest into the systems, but our old approach of keeping
the beginning of our games as flashy and

[2:51] simplistic as possible may no longer
hold water. Now I’m not saying that means you don’t need an excellent tutorial. In
fact it probably means we need great tutorials now more than ever. Because if
we’re no longer equating time played to the player’s desire for depth, it means we
need to enable players to play our game

[3:07] deeply with a sense of expertise earlier on. And this idea of wanting depth
early is true not only for the players who want a satisfying play experience
but don’t have as much gaming time as they used to, but also for a traditional core
players too. I know plenty of hardcore

[3:21] players who you will lose completely if
you don’t show them some gameplay depth in the first half hour of play. There are
more games coming out right now than we know what to do with. Players have no
reason to slog through hours of your game just to get to the depth of their
craving. How many games have you played

[3:35] where the interesting depth doesn’t
surface until you’re halfway through the thing or maybe the game just doesn’t
give you a reason to make use of the depth underneath until you’re hours in? In
part, that comes from this false dichotomy of casual and core. RPGs are
the obvious example. We have all played

[3:50] an RPG where you just spam the fight
button to win every battle for the first five hours of play. You don’t make any choices, you don’t
feel like you’re making use of the mechanics, or that the game is rewarding
you for good play, or for demonstrating

[4:02] a solid understanding of the systems. So
how can we take that example and fix it? Introduce some of that depth earlier.
While we will still want to have that easy flashy opening that doesn’t require
too much of the player– after all, there are players out there who do fit that
traditional description of casual and

[4:17] you still wanna grab their interest– but
imagine this: what if this RPG, from the very beginning, rewarded you a little bit based on how
many rounds it took you to complete a fight? Suddenly, this poses an interesting
problem to those looking for depth because you’ve told them that there’s a
way to play better by understanding and

[4:33] utilizing the systems and you’ve given
them an incentive to do so. Now even if the early fights are still easy, finding
the best way to win them becomes an interesting puzzle and allows players to
enjoy your games depth early on. And this not only benefits your core audience but
also the players who simply won’t ever

[4:49] actually have time to finish the game.
Even if they only see the game’s opening hours, they will find that portion even
richer because they got to enjoy the games depth from the very beginning. And
this isn’t just true for the mechanics, it’s true of whatever the core of your
game experience might be. If your game is

[5:04] about exploration, don’t hide all of that
wonderful exploring behind an hour of linear levels. I mean, sure, present a
linear path that’s easy to follow but expose players to some of those
exploratory options early on. Or even if your game is about making complex
choices on how you interrelate with

[5:19] characters, don’t bury all of those
moments just because the player hasn’t had time to get comfortable with the
cast yet. Provide some opportunities for that interaction, even if those early
opportunities don’t have a dramatic effect on how the game plays out. My
point is, even if we don’t immediately do

[5:33] away with that false dichotomy of our
players being either casual or core, let’s at least uncouple that idea from
equating playtime with desire for depth. It’s a really easy trap to fall into, and
it’s even easier to say that we can’t design a –quote– “casual play path” and
provide opportunities to engage in the

[5:49] depth of our game at the same time. That
is rarely the case. Besides, in a world where core players have many gaming
options, and many of your other players want to experience the depth of your
game but don’t have the time to commit hours and hours to it,

[6:02] thinking in terms of that outdated
casual-core dichotomy may lose you sales and fans and prevent many people from
ever coming to understand just why they might actually love your game. See next
week! [“Antifreeze” by Flexstyle]