Molyneux wants core/casual convergence

By Robert Purchese Published 20 October, 2008

"Eventually someone is going to suffer."

Peter Molyneux believes core and casual games need to begin to converge, or the market will suffer for it.

Blending the two is a central concept of Fable II, as we know. And Molyneux feels other companies need to adopt a similar mindset before audiences begin turning their noses up at another Wii Sports.

"If you look at the market, there are a vast number of games made for casual gamers. More than ever before. Also, an enormous number of games... tens of millions of dollars... are spent on making games for core gamers. Yet there are very few games where they really come together," Molyneux told T3.

"And if we don't start bringing these two together then eventually someone is going to suffer - either the casual gamers or the core gamers. Most likely the core gamers."

He added: "If you say to those guys, 'Hey, the next exciting thing you are going to play is Wii Sports,' then they are going to say, 'Err, no thank you...'"

Fable II is due out in Europe on Friday, and has finally proved that Molyneux (and team!) can deliver on ambitious promises.

Head over to our Fable II review to find out how.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (30) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • Dizzy #1 3 years ago

    Only when you support waggle can this be achieved ;)

  • locus2k1 #2 3 years ago

    From reading the Review posted here, i believe have certainly made a great attempt to bring casual and core gamers together, will put it to the test when i play co-op with my brother :D

  • rudedudejude #3 3 years ago

    WoW seems to be going more this way with the latest patch, though it looks more casual based than core.

    I think the exp pack. will fix that however, if only for a few months.

  • Pac-man-ate-my-wife #4 3 years ago

    What a lot of so-called 'hardcore' gamers forget is that challenge doesn't mean overly complex.

    Games such as Tetris or the early Marios were easy to pick up for 'casual' gamers but had many layers of depth for the hardcore.

    To dismiss casual gamers is to doom the industry to shrink and die. We were all casual once.
    Edited by 1 at 20/10/08 @ 16:08

  • Fab4 #5 3 years ago

    Well they've already started the dumbing down of the CoD series, so maybe he's right.

  • Les #6 3 years ago

    @ Pac-man ate my wife

    +1

    "The core market MAY well become more marginalised/niche eventually, but it will remain an incredibly profitable niche."

    Actually, it won't/isn't. Sure they generate lots of revenue because they buy relatively more but the costs associated with that revenue are huge. Look at 360 and PS3. Highly unlikely (impossible probably) that any of those machines will create a positive return for their platformholder. Then look at the Wii: aimed at the casual market and infinetely more profitable than the competition.

  • Ryze #7 3 years ago

    He's right - this can be achived for many games.

    Halo, GoW - hardcore games. Add an optional pointing device, make sure that there's a default option for a gradual learning curve and market the game effectively and you've got a casual game.

    Even GTA - if this game engine is reworked and the shooting is replaced with interesting motion controlled interaction, then you've got a Fahrenheit beater that when effectively marketed with intuitive controls, acan be enjoyed by the casuals.

    I think that a game's difficulty levels and control systems just need rethinking.

  • Les #8 3 years ago

    "Actually, it will/is."

    Please elaborate as it's not in line with the facts. I'm curious what kind of special insights you have.

  • sneetch #9 3 years ago

    @Ryze
    "Halo, GoW - hardcore games. Add an optional pointing device, make sure that there's a default option for a gradual learning curve and market the game effectively and you've got a casual game.

    Even GTA - if this game engine is reworked and the shooting is replaced with interesting motion controlled interaction, then you've got a Fahrenheit beater that when effectively marketed with intuitive controls, acan be enjoyed by the casuals.

    I think that a game's difficulty levels and control systems just need rethinking."

    Make that optional pointing device a mouse and I'd be delighted. ;)

    Actually, they can achieve something similar by incorporating varying levels of auto-aim with traditional controllers (right down to the level where if there's an enemy within an ass's roar of the cross-hairs then the game targets them).

    The curve should be adjusted in game as well, finish a level well and the game tells you that you've done well and recommends switching to Auto-aim II instead of Auto-aim III and increasing enemy difficulty to level II or whatever.

  • Frandroid #10 3 years ago

    There seems to be an assumption that casual = simple and core = complex which I don't feel is true. To me, the fundamental difference between casual and core gamers is the amount of time and effort that they are willing to give to games.
    I find myself becoming an increasingly casual gamer, I no longer have the time to dedicate hours to a game several nights a week. To be honest, I probably only play games for 3-5 hours a week total. GOW, Rock Band, Wii Sports, Mario Kart, Mario Galaxy, SSBB and BC:Reloaded are all games I play regularly/completed as they were easy to pick up for a half hour. GTAIV, Bioshock, Zelda all languish, unfinished, on my shelf as I feel reluctant to sit down and play them unless I know I can give them a good couple of hours, which doesn't happen very often.
    Games need to fit into our lifestyles if we are to purchase and play them. I'd love to pick up Fable II and Fallout 3 but can't help feeling that I'll never see half of what they have to offer.

  • sneetch #11 3 years ago

    @lavalant
    "ummmm ryze, I wouldn't exactly call halo and gow hardcore games.

    anymore dumbed down and they would go from meh to god awful."

    There are very few hardcore games left, really, especially on consoles but games can be played by the hardcore in a hardcore fashion (i.e. obsessively until the point that someone knows all possible attack positions and the time it takes to get to those various positions from spawn).

    Unless people still mean "what I play" when they say hardcore?

  • mcmonkeyplc #12 3 years ago

    Silence Peter. You fool, they think your a god now. Dont ruin it by talking again.

  • darleysam #13 3 years ago

    I think in light of the way Fable II seems to stray from both RPG and gaming traditions in general, and yet it's getting good reviews across the board, it shows that he's probably got a good point. Where Molyneux has a reputation for wanting to think differently, it's good to see it applied in this way.

  • Spydy #14 3 years ago

    So seriously EG, how much cash have you been given for Fable II to be plastered everywhere, including your news updates??

  • MDL199 #15 3 years ago

    All these shallow all fluff and no depth games on the market can be firmly blamed on Nintendo and their twin systems of gaming evil the Wii and the DS.

    Death to the Wii and Nintendo!

  • SunoffaBeach #16 3 years ago

    I remember Monkey 2 had two difficulty settings.
    Almost all FPS have difficulty settings from easy to very hard.

    Why not include 2 difficulty settings in RPGs?
    1) Casual
    2) Hardcore

  • Xerx3s #17 3 years ago

    Errr, no thanks, I like my games 'hardcore' tyvm. Dumbed down games ftl.

  • Xerx3s #18 3 years ago

    "To dismiss casual gamers is to doom the industry to shrink and die. We were all casual once. "

    Hmmm, no. The first games I played where pretty hardcore. We had some 'casual' things but they where just as bad and uninteresting back then as they are now.

  • Xerx3s #19 3 years ago

    "I'm curious what kind of special insights you have. "

    Probably the same you usually have.

  • GamesConnoisseur #20 3 years ago

    ...and so the arguments continue to rages on regarding casual vs hardcore gaming!!

    As with anything, nothing is every as simple as we think it is or want its to be. The market today against that of 2 years ago, people can see clearly that Nintendo is onto the winning formula and they wants in.

    But what are people really buying into? I say for accessible gaming, family entertainment: something for everybody. Is classic games of yesteryear such as Pac Man, Mario games can be considered only casual, hardcore or both?

    With increases power of technology, we tends to expect more complexity in our gaming, with increase in quality in visual and having more physics/real world simulations. Fable 2 have I think done a very good balancing act so that my kids would like to play the game but also something for me to play more seriously.

    Wait and see how Fable 2 would succeed and whether enough recognition is given , so that others would consider how to get balance well adjusted if possible.

    Serious gamer is who I consider as spending a lot of their money/time and consider gaming as one of their main hobby/stuff to do in their free time!

  • BadDevotions #21 3 years ago

    if games are giong to end up like wii fucking golf then it's a bunch of arse imho.

  • the_mtfr #22 3 years ago

    The nerve on Peter, he wants to eliminate diversity. He wants everybody to turn their games into Sims. I like what he calls hard-core but recently I've started playing Harvest - Massive Encounter (which is kick-ass btw) or World of Goo, so this proves his f**ing graphs wrong. We're not f**ing dots on his paper, we gamers can jump all over the f**ing place without obliging to call Peter and tell him to update his data. So his comments are f**ing redundant.

    Peter should hang out more with that Jack Thompson guy and Kim Jong Il, they're a bunch of persistent mf-s I'd like not to hear about for a few years.

  • Vandrius #23 3 years ago

    Can this guy PLEASE stop spouting codswallop?

    Honestly, good game producer or not, he's a twat.

  • Concrete #24 3 years ago

    Scary, but I'm going to have to agree with him. Games need to be more accessible than ever to reach their target audiences and a large part of that is learning from the casual sector. There are methods that you can use to mimimize difficulty spikes and through carefull structure of the initial sections of games, introduce controls/gameplay mechanics gradually without scaring players off.

  • Canyarion #25 3 years ago

    He means like Zelda: Phantom Hourglass?

    Yes, we need more of that stuff.

  • Yeevle #26 3 years ago

    Molyneux wants a lot of things, I wanted a lot of things from Black & White.

  • kangarootoo #27 3 years ago

    @lavalant

    Oh come on.

    "if you start making games around a specific audience then that audience is most likely going to be the "casual gamer" as it's the most profitable, thus your games going to end up being shit."

    Having a clear target audience is extremely important when developing any game, be it super hardcore or hugely mainstream. Do you think Gears of War and Halo were made without any market research and focus testing? Of course bloody not, they were arse deep in it. Suggesting that market awareness = bland and mainstream is just naive.

    "casual gamers are basically mainstream consumers who are mainly idiots, meaning they buy bland crap."

    Frankly, that is just l33t insecure hardcore gamer crap. Its bizarre how so many hardcore gamers seem to think they are some kind of different species to everyone else out there, with sharper senses and higher intelligence. As if "mainstream" is actually a breed, and gaming habits can't change throughout a lifetime. That attitude is utter rubbish and actually shows a woeful misunderstanding of gaming as a whole.

    Sorry to be kind of harsh on you, but there it is.
    Edited by 1 at 21/10/08 @ 09:52

  • VastikRoot #28 3 years ago

    It's all well and good making games that are accessible and enjoyable by all, but actually convincing casual gamers to pick up your traditional looking game will probably be the greater challenge. If the marketing doesn't reach this new audience, then it's been a wasted exercise...

  • kangarootoo #29 3 years ago

    I agree. Although Fable 2 might build some bridges, it is still a long way away from appealing to the mainstream. I mean, its got swords and magic and monsters in it. The mainstream don't really care for that sort of thing, regardless of how reward centric its gameplay might be.

    SingStar and Wii Sports appeal to the mainstream, goblins do not. I'm sure PM sees it as a stepping stone though, and that is no bad thing.

  • hiruu #30 3 years ago

    My wife is spending MORE time playing Fable 2 than I am, and she use to get on me about my gaming. She is staying up until 2-3 am palying the darn game...lol. Don't get me wrong...I'm not complianing, since hopefully she'll not gripe in the future about my gaming habits.