Did you play any games with your family at Christmas? The chances are you’ll have at least noticed the numerous adverts for titles like Scene It? Box Office Smash, You’re in the Movies and Lips: games which any of your non-gaming relatives can pick up and play from the comfort of their front room. Indeed, these games are being marketed as family-oriented entertainment, an alternative to other Christmas classics such as Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit or Charades. But is this kind of thing really suited to the Xbox 360’s audience, which favours a more traditional sort of action game? It seems that Microsoft are attempting to compete with Nintendo’s established hold on the Casual gamers’ wallet. But unlike that company, it’s attempting to do so without compromising the needs of its long-term Hardcore Gamers.
While there may be some crossovers between the needs of Casual and Hardcore audiences as to the social aspects of gaming, titles like Scene It? are locked down in their genres by design. They are bundled with specific control peripherals: buzzers, cameras and karaoke microphones which are unlikely to be used outside their respective games, and they also require crowds of at least four people in order to get the most fun out of them. Here, Microsoft is promoting this type of gaming as a walk-in, pick up and play group activity which naturally replicates the comings and goings of ‘real-life’ social events like karaoke nights and TV quiz shows, separate from the alternative fantasy or sci-fi worlds that traditional games represent. Also, it's use of Avatars, in competition with Nintendo’s Miis, replace the traditional ‘gamer geek’ stereotype with a more visually attractive, socially networked stand-in.
Nevertheless, unlike Nintendo, Microsoft and its Third Party developers haven’t allowed this mindset to influence these traditional games that would otherwise segregate their Hardcore audiences. The games, which these audiences enjoy, work on perhaps entirely opposite sets of design principles to Scene it? Characterised by a long-term investment of time on behalf of the player, Hardcore games require skill, dedication, and as online functionality in multiplayer becomes increasingly widespread, isolation. The switch from the previous generation to the current one by both Microsoft and Nintendo marks their separate takes on how they’ve chosen Casual and Hardcore games should share their respective platforms. A case in point: Unreal Tournament 3 and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.
Previous efforts in evolving the First Person deathmatch sub-genre, as Unreal Tournament 2003 and its Xbox equivalent, Unreal Championship proved, were misjudged, over-simplifying rather than streamlining the gaming experience. These games unfavourably redefined the formula to suit a more casual audience: health pickups became symbolic icons that were much easier to see, and adrenaline-fuelled special moves which were activated by sequenced button presses removed most of the nuanced tactics the series was previously famous for. A later titles on the Xbox, Unreal Championship 2, somewhat addressed this issue, but its selectable pre-match weapon load out and close combat ‘Finishing Moves’ somewhat broke down the flow of spontaneous play.
