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vovan
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 I personally don't agree with the definition of a "serious" gamer as one who plays only one genre of games. Of course, it all depends on what you want to use the classification of being serious or not for, but to me, the definitions would look like this:
A "serious" gamer is one who plays the game to win, and whose goal is to beat it at the highest level of difficulty at any cost. He* constantly keeps track of numbers, and bases the strategy on that. He does not avoid using the programmatic weaknesses of the AI to gain advantage, and wants to squeeze every little exploit out of the game, even sometimes taking a look at the model files, to see just how the AI would behave in every particular situation. In games, which have campaigns, the "serious" gamer often times first plays through the missions on easy difficulty level to see what challenges he might face, and then goes back, and plays through again on very hard, and takes pride in winning.
To me, that approach is not fun at all. I like the surprise in every game, and can't stand knowing that something is going to happen in advance. So, I don't like to play the same campaign twice. I also don't like to take advantage of numbers. In civ, for example, I would take a look at the production of cities, and say, well, this city has many shields, so, I'll be better off to build a wonder in it, rather than in the one that only produces one shield per turn and has tons of corruption. (To contrast, the serious gamer's approach would be: "Let's see. This is the 124th turn of the game, I discovered the technology needed for this wonder two turns ago. Since the production of this city is 32 shields per turn, I will be able to finish this wonder in NN turns. Now, the AI must be MM% faster than I, therefore they would have the tech OO turns earlier than I. They have PP cities, and the largest one has size QQ. It has RR mines around it, and according to this here formula, the corruption level would be SS. Therefore, the city must produce TT shields per turn, which means that it will take them UU turns to finish the wonder, and if they started building it OO turns earlier, I would complete the wonder one turn before them. Yes, I guess I should start building it...") Of course, that means that I probably would not be able to beat the game at the highest level of difficulty, but I don't want to either. I play for fun more than anything, and crunching numbers during a game is not my idea of fun (not yet any way) - I do enough of that at school. So, I would be what I consider a non-serious gamer.
EDIT: Of course, with my definition of a serious gamer, the roles are reversed, from what DrSpike says. The non-serious gamers would be playing MP, and serious gamers would be playing SP. The reason is that since serious gamers exploit the numbers to gain advantage over the AI, they have a hard time beating a real opponent, which requires real strategy, rather than the set of actions fit for beating a particular game.
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* PC note: Of course, as you all inderstand, he in reference to a gamer is only used due to the limitations of the language, and is not meant to imply that serious gamers are all male. 
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Adagio
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quote:
Originally posted by vovansim
I personally don't agree with the definition of a "serious" gamer as one who plays only one genre of games. Of course, it all depends on what you want to use the classification of being serious or not for, but to me, the definitions would look like this:
(...) |
Well... that's also how I feel, though last time I tried explaining it that way, nobody understud it, so I didn't want to go through the explanation ten times, just because I'm not good at explaining...
But I still also say, that serious gamers, stays (and get perfect) at one genre. Since, as you mention, serious gamers tries to do everything to win, even doing all that math when playing. They also try to do everything that can be done, with a game, before they leave the game.
And to be able to do all that, you'll have to spend a lot of time, playing the game, leaving little time for other games...
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vovan
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quote:
Originally posted by DrSpike
So serious gamers avoid the challenge of real opponents? That's silly. |
With if you follow the definition that works for me, yes, most of the time.
For example, I used to play another strategy game in multiplayer a lot: Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom. (It is basically a city-building game. Although unlike simcity it actually has goals. Go to the official site, if you want to learn more.) There were a lot of what I call serious gamers playing at first. They had beaten the Single-player campaigns on very hard difficulty, and what not, but they had big troubles playing with reasl people at first. Because they got used to the AI so much, that they lost the flexibility of strategy. So, what they would do is, they would play an MP scenario alone till they can finish it in record time, and then start playing with real people. Now, that's not really playing MP, if you ask me. That's just adapting a fixed set of strategies to a slightly different environment. If one of those serious players encounters a player with an innovative strategy, they will loose, because they have no flexibility.
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vovan
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quote:
Originally posted by DrSpike
Your definition has no redeeming features at all. |
That's probably because I consider myself a non-serious player. Therefore, I wouldn't know anything good about the other type of players. 
quote:
Originally posted by DrSpike
In any game the more serious players play MP.
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Well, that means that we have opposite definitions of being "serious" in a game. Or at least very different. Yours is then "a serious player is one who is good at multiplayer" ? I don't necessarily disagree with that, but once again, it is a matter of what you are using the word serious for. By my definition, "serious" would mean basically good in SP, but essentially horrible at MP. According to your definition, then, the serious player is one who is great at MP, and therefore masters the flexibility of strategies without having to exploit the weaknesses of the AI. By my definition, such a player is certainly a better player than a serious player, and is above him. (An important thing to understand here, I guess would be that serious does not necessarily equal robust. In fact, by my definition it means quite the opposite, he is good at what he does, but cannot be flexible.)
Put in other terms, a good player by my definition would be like a nerd. He is good in his field, but he does not have the broad vision necessary to be really good. By your definition, then the serious player would be more of an enterpreneur. One that has the "vision" to be able to beat a human player, no matter what kind of strategy he chooses to employ.
Heh, I guess there are different flavours of "serious"
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Adagio
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quote:
Originally posted by vovansim
EDIT: Of course, with my definition of a serious gamer, the roles are reversed, from what DrSpike says. The non-serious gamers would be playing MP, and serious gamers would be playing SP. The reason is that since serious gamers exploit the numbers to gain advantage over the AI, they have a hard time beating a real opponent, which requires real strategy, rather than the set of actions fit for beating a particular game.
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Here I don't agree... As I said (or was trying to say), serious gamers will do everything to exploit all possibilities in the game, and they wants to be the best at that game... but in order to exploit all possibilities and to be the best, you also have to play a lot of MP, since there's a lot of possibilities in MP too, and the serious gamer have to beat other humans, to find out if he/she is the best...
While non-serious gamers plays for fun, and not all MP games are 'fun' (Read it as: in many MP games, there's a lot of people who'll do anything possible to win the game, and for someone who prefers to have fun, a such serious gamer is annoying to play against, since you don't have time to have fun, before you get shot...if it's fps e.g.)... And one more thing. Sometimes in MP games there's a lot of people who keeps e.g. shouting up, about nothing, or allies who attack allies (and the list goes on forever... I don't know about you, but I don't think that's 'fun')... And with all these anti-fun players in MP games, then you might prefer to play SP, since in SP there's no sucj anti-fun people...
I hope you understand, what I'm talking about...
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D@VE
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Saint Louis, MO
Dec 2002
time: 23:24
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How does one classify a serious gamer and a non-serious gamer based on the type of game they play or why they play ? Look at Everquest. There is a game that is played by hundreds of thousands of players. Some of them play to complete the goals, which ultimately was attaining better equipment for your character, be it through questing, raiding, farming, or trading. Some people played to make money off of it - people who power leveled the characters up to 50 and then sold the account on eBay. And yet other people played simply for the socializing in the game, which I guess you could place in the same category as roleplaying. This game is both MP (grouping) and SP (solo play) - although the SP is much harder to do.
I forgot where I was taking this. Sorrry, but it's late for me and I should go to bed.
I guees I'm just trying to say that you can't categorize people as serious gamers and non-serious gamers because there are too many variables and differences out there.
-edit- I hated The Sims. I didn't like controlling every little detail about the sim, eating, cooking, going to the bathroom. It just seemed monotonous, which I know some of you will argue that it is the same for Sim City, but I love the Sim CIty games.
Last edited by D@VE on 07-12-2002 at 17:05
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06-12-2002 00:05
Maybe just say serious gamers are on average active at 'poly and other online forums while non-serious gamers on average don't care to socialize with their ilk because they'd honestly have nothing in common? 
good we've got that settled 
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