Hardcore vs. casual and the economic recession

A few months ago the new World of Warcraft expansion was released and I have to say at first I was a true fan. Levelling was more fun than ever, the quests were superb and the new continent looked gorgeous.

But WoW being what it is, you reach end level pretty fast and then it's back to level 80 5-mans and raid dungeons. And that's where the honeymoon ended for me. The normal dungeons are incredibily easy, I did all of them on heroic first before I even touched the normal versions, mostly to help out guildies. The raid dungeons aren't particularly hard either, and the content is a little light to say the least. One recycled multi-boss raid instances and two single boss encounters is not enough for an expansion really. This all leaded to my guild clearing all content after little more than a month and now we're pretty much twiddling our thumbs. There are some achievements yet to do, but they aren't enough and really can't replace fresh new content.

With all the content being so easy and the extra polish for the levelling content over the end game content, it got me thinking that Blizzard is more and more aiming at the casual crowd over the more hardcore players. And I have to admit, it makes economic sense. The hardcore consume content a lot faster, while the casuals take a lot longer. Both pay the same amount per month to play, so the casuals are a lot more profitable.

Of course development for Wrath of the Lich King started way before there was even talk of the current economic crisis, so what's the connection? Well, it sets an example. Let's take a look at Activision Blizzard's biggest competitor, Electronic Arts. Yesterday, they posted their profits for the last quarter of 2008, which included the very profitable Christmas season. Well, a lot of bad news for them, as they posted a loss, worse than expected income and as a result more job cuts than they had previously announced which of course means less games being developed. They are also going to concentrate more on the Nintendo Wii console.

Now this is interesting. The Wii, while being the most popular console on the market, is also widely known as the console of choice for the casual player, as it's technical performance is inferior to the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3. Its game library also includes far more "casual" games such as games specifically aimed at small children, girls and older adults, groups that are traditionally not part of the hardcore crowd.

So it looks like that, with the economic recession in full swing now, the big gaming companies are now turning to this new group of casual players, groups of people that aren't part of the traditional target audience for games, to keep them afloat during these hard times. So personally, I expect to see more Mario Party and less Doom and Quake, more Zul'Aman and less Sunwell Plateau in the future.