So, I think there are two groups of players, with some overlap – there’s a group that will want changes to a game that make it more complicated, and thus more interesting for them, at the expense of accessability; the other group will heap scorn on any game that doesn’t follow the formula it’s “supposed” to. I’m thinking about Myst here, but I’m also reminded of Penny Arcade’s criticisms of Final Fantasy XII, which appeared to be entirely about how real-time battles aren’t turn-based battles and they want turn-based battles, dammit.

The thing about Katamari Damacy wasn’t that it was complex – as much complexity as there is in the game, it’s accessable and intuitive (once the game suggests that you think of the left and right thumbsticks as left and right hands). There’s plenty of other games that are just as complex but aren’t nearly as accessable, and when there’s too many of these games in the market, it collapses. (Like adventure games, which became really a waste of time towards the end.)

Really- each of these guys are using the term in a different usage. “Casual” ends up meaning anything from a gamer who doesn’t follow the development of games that interest them, to players with low skill, to folks with little time on their hands for sustained play sessions, to non-evangelist gamers. It’s a old term we made up to seperate ourselves from the folks playing “Barbie Horse Adventures” instead of respectable games back in the day, but now that video games are a nearly mature medium, we’re killing ourselves by falling back on arbitrary distinctions.

There’s no actual split market here (well, there is, but it’s the result of almost uncountably many different groups being lumped into two camps- makes the focus group results easier to code, but it flattens out complexity in favor of a nice story you can tell your boss at the presentation). We shouldn’t pretend that this is some sort of unbridgeable gap- it’s just normal market variation. Some folks are going to seek out more complicated, challenging fare, and others aren’t. Let’s not turn into movies, with an arbitrary Arthouse/Blockbuster split.

I also kind of see your point that the hardcore market has been over-emphasized. Casual gamers play a lot more Bejeweled than hardcore gamers, I suspect. BUT, look at the popularity of some of the Xbox Arcade titles. Ostensibly, Xbox Live started out as a hardcore-only type of service. I believe that it became more popular with the casual gamers because of the buzz created by the hardcore market.

So, I’m not sure that over-emphasizing the hardcore segment is necessarily a bad thing. (It probably IS a bad thing to ignore the casual market, however.) I think this because I’m kind of an elitist, and I believe that if the “hardcore” segment of video gamers believes a certain game is “Good”, then casual gamers will naturally buy it and want to see what all of the buzz is about.

So, that’s pretty much where I’m coming from. Even though the hardcore segment is much smaller than the casual segment, if you ignore the hardcore segment, you end up losing money. But if The Powers That Be can maneuver the market so that hardcore gamers have less influence, then maybe Goldeneye: Rogue Agent would’nt have been the sales disaster that it was.

Unfortunately, tossing that segment of the market aside is a mistake. It’s true that many of them will complain about anything, but there is still value. Which complaints seem universal, which ones cross demographics, are real problems being identified?

Funny, I always had this idea that marketing was supposed to be about looking at data, finding patterns, and making selling decisions based on those patterns. More and more it seems like marketing decisions are made sort of seat-of-the-pants. The problem with ignoring the hardcore gaming market is that you make the assumption they will buy your game no matter what. Pretty bad assumption.