Blowing off a party for a Mass Effect 2 session is nothing for a gamer. Your Average Joe of a friend, however, will look at you with bemusement and think you’re absolutely insane. There’s this border between the Average Joe gamers and the hardcore that is becoming more apparent as gaming gets older. Don’t get me wrong, the Average Joes play games and enjoy them, but they don’t see what we see. We see gateways to different worlds, we see unlimited freedom to do as we please, and most of all we see a world in which we are the most important thing.
The Average Joe might have other stuff going on in their life for games. Or maybe they were hardcore gamers back when they were young and jumped ship in their old age. My Average Joe housemate regularly visits my room to watch me play games or join in on the festivities. He recognised Fallout 3 from his old childhood Fallout days, and could immediately relate to the game. If I had popped in Left 4 Dead 2 instead he would have blown his mind thanks to the sheer velocity that would have pulsated throughout my TV. To take this study to the next level I played some Borderlands co-op with him.
The results were fascinating. As a hardcore gamer, I was trying to get through the game quickly to see what it would offer me in terms of narrative content, characters, and weapons that could make Russia feared again under the oppression of Western might. My housemate just wanted to shoot things and dick around. I would regularly be waiting at an area’s exit point for him to finish mucking about with the levels. He also had no concept of the game’s mission structure. He would travel person to person accepting every mission, but was only interested in completing the one currently on his HUD. When I changed the mission, he would get perplexed as if I had just shut down the game without warning. His previous experiences with games were so linear that when given this sandbox world he expected the mission structure to be point to point.
What he did enjoy though, was finding new equipment and weapons. As my housemate progressed through the game, he would start to meticulously analyse the stats on everything he came across. He would hold on to sentimental weapons and focus on using the most powerful equipment he found. He didn’t play around with the game’s class system’s suggested weapons, and instead was normally just jumping about with a combat rifle. Not for a lack of knowledge, but because he wasn’t told any different by the game.
Developers and publishers could learn from such case studies. The user interface in games is still in its infancy. There are attempts out there trying to push UI elements into the new gaming age, such as Splinter Cell: Conviction. This game is putting the contextual elements within the game (jumping, sneak kills, etc.) on the piece of environment they relate to. If that’s not enough, objectives are written in giant text across the gameworld. It’s treating the gameworld as a canvas and bonding the player with the protagonist in control.
“Modern games seem to have the same narrative for the genre they portray. For me, gaming has lost flare since the mid-90s. It shot up again after online gaming started but has quickly died down,” said “Average Joe” Sam Jamasebi, from London. “The stories are all basically the same (especially war games) however there have been a few games which have blown my mind with how they create images and gameplay – going back to the basics – like LittleBigPlanet, which had simple controls but still made you think about how to complete the level.”
This also showed me how different we all are in what we want from games. Hardcore gamers enjoy sprawling locales, but we rarely cover every square inch. We know that the missions/objectives in a game will take us to the most interesting places and we visit a few other intriguing destinations, but our minds are focused on completing the game. In Borderlands’ case, we are also gripped by the levelling up system and pursue that more than anything. The Average Joe sees cool stuff but is always aware that what they’re playing is just a game. Hardcore gamers are willing to become more immersed in a game.
Average Joes also seem to care less about a game’s quality or lack thereof. It might be stating the obvious, but during my travels across game shops and supermarkets I would witness people purchasing bargain bin games, primarily for the Wii. The Average Joe consumer wants affordable products. They don’t see the money value in full-priced games because they don’t normally see them all the way through to completion. They want to grab a game, give it a play for a while and then leave it. They aren’t obsessed with gaining unlockables and achievements; they just want a minor distraction from life while hardcore gamers want full-on escapism.
“I live for games; I shut off all real life and warp myself into the game. I want to live in that environment. I use them for escape and to feel like I have a better life,” says ‘Daz’ (Xbox Live gamertag: Kivlov). “I wouldn’t class myself as a hardcore gamer, but the time I do have to finish games and small OCD’s I have force me to finish a lot of my games 100%, which is mostly achievements’ fault. It’s also one of the reasons I don’t like weird zombie and mutant games. I wouldn’t want to be there in real life so I wouldn’t want to play it. Same goes for movies and TV.”
I accidentally researched how the Average Joe reacted to mainstream game ads during one for the new Aliens vs. Predator game. As a hardcore gamer, I was wary of the title as we know that licensed games are usually atrocious. However, the others in group were excited by the advert. They claimed that it looked like a “quality game”, and then immediately linked the game to the films. This was interesting as I tried to tell them not to expect much after playing the multiplayer demo on Xbox Live, but they were adamant that the game would be strong because of the strength of the franchise.
All this isn’t a bad thing. Average Joe’s can be stereotyped as contributing to the industry’s mixed press reaction, but in the end they are playing games to have fun. They don’t care about being told what they’re doing is right or wrong by someone with a controller glued to their arm as long as they’re enjoying their own experience. In many ways, they are the better “gamers”. They attempt anything and thrive on multiplayer experiences. However if the gaming industry wishes to progress on an artistic level, there needs to be some changes. Games and systems need to be cheaper to attract more people to play them.
The Xbox 360 is making strides in this area with the £100 Arcade version of the console, but games are still too much at launch. Not many people can spare £40 a time for a brand new title, so most Average Joes are stuck playing older and/or cheaper titles. There needs to be more balance to the industry, and securing that with a new pricing structure is key. In the meantime, we hardcore gamers must not be afraid of Average Joe and instead must do our best to introduce him to our world.
