Perceiving casual gamers

8:30am. Sapporo, Japan.

I am sitting at a steel table outside a brightly lit MOS Burger joint. The air is so cold, each breath I expel forms a small cloud of mist before me. My closest friends sit around me, waiting for breakfast to arrive. As I wait for our meals to be served, I flick through my phone. It seems I have received an update about a game I have been following for quite some time; Soda Drinker Pro.

When I announce my excitement about this, I am met with the reactions I have come to expect.

Hardcore Gamers vs Casual Gamers

I wrote an article a while back on the ‘Hardcore vs. Casual’ debate. Seems like I somehow run into people every day who claim to be hardcore gamers and yet they can’t play for shit (For the original article click here).

 

So I made a little video to help illustrate the difference.

 

 

 

A Gamie Look at Taiwan – Part One

Home sweet home.

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Although I immensely enjoyed Taiwan, nothing beats the feelin’ of coming back home. Anyway, I’m in danger of becoming a travel related blog instead of a game related one so I’m going to start talking about the game related stuff I spotted there, accompanied with photos.

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By the way, I took so many photos that I filled up my 2GB capacity camera. Twice.

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So, in chronological order:

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Nothing is cheaper then something free.

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I was pretty impressed by the sight of this at Sydney Airport, whilst waiting to board my flight. Who knew that Australians were not too stingy to provide free internet?

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Stupid RPG, luring me in.

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It’s been over 10 years since I’ve been on a plane so playing around with an interactive screen was pretty sweet. And the selection of entertainment wasn’t second rate either – there were the latest movies that were yet to reach DVD release, as well as the most recent episodes from TV series and of course, the thing that interested me the most – games.

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Unfortunately I tried a title that was described like an RPG (being the nerd I am – trying to kill a 9 hour flight with an RPG) about half an hour into the flight and my whole thing froze. It remained frozen the rest of my flight. Stupid ‘Niflheim’. I only tried to load it because it reminded me of my Ragnarok Online days.

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Attached to each mini entertainment unit is a remote, which when flipped, doubles as a controller. I was actually quite surprised to find that it also had an inbuilt credit card swipe but hey, that’s just me. For some people,consumerism knows no bounds.

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Casual gamers. Psh.

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So instead I spent the rest of my flight watching my neighbour play Bejeweled. It was pretty laggy but she didn’t seem to mind. Such is the mind of the casual gamer.

Fortunately, there was some spare seats on the flight so the hostess allowed me to switch to a working unit. I found gameplay for most titles offered turned out to be pretty laggy and so resigned to watching episodes of Family Guy.

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Upon arriving at Taiwan I noticed that there are a lot of large print game advertisements everywhere; particularly for the MMO market. And I mean, there are a lot of MMORPG’s. You don’t see posters like these hanging up ’round Sydney.

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So there you have it. Part one of my game-related photo haul from Taiwan. Part two to come soon!

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