7 ms·

If you count Candy Crush then sure

by jpxw 6y ago

ashtonkem 6y ago
And you should. “Casual” video gaming, a term that carries unfortunate dismissive undertones, represents the most common form of video games played. The proliferation of the smart phone has undoubtedly helped here. Probably more so pre-pandemic. My observation when I lived in Chicago is that many people played these games while commuting via mass transit, I’m sure fewer are doing that now.
- hindsightbias 6y ago
  Decades ago, people did crosswords or read the paper/books while commuting. Do see a bit of sudoku. It would be interesting if there are music vs audiobooks metrics on today’s commuters. I get the commute escapism of candy crush but I’ve seen enough of that in homes/work to wonder.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    Podcasts would also be quite big, I'd expect.
  - schoen 6y ago
    I wonder if crosswords are moving away from a commute activity and toward a home leisure/hobby activity. (That's what I see, but I'm biased by the way I relate to crosswords myself and the way people I met through puzzle activities relate to them.)
superhuzza 6y ago
Why wouldn't you count Candy Crush? It seems like it would fall under any reasonable definition of video game.
- harimau777 6y ago
  I'd argue that ultra-casual games like Candy Crush have so little in common with "core games" that it's not particularly useful to consider them the same thing. A similar situation: If I was discussing "board game culture" I think that most people would recognize that I'm referring the culture associated with games like Catan or Pandemic as opposed to people casually playing Tic Tac Toe.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    > If I was discussing "board game culture" No-one's talking about 'board game culture', though. This is about whether people play video games. If you were talking about the board games people play, Catan would be a barely visible blip; it'd be all about things like Monopoly. Now if you were talking about people who consider playing games part of their identity, I'd be inclined to agree (though there are edge cases; Pokemon Go falls into both 'casual game' and 'game that people get a bit weird about', for instance), but that's not at all what this survey is about. EDIT: Also, well, media evolves. If you look at the sort of TV that's popular now, a lot of it is dramatically different to how it was in, say, the 80s and 90s. Someone who'd been in a coma since before Seinfeld came out would find modern sitcoms (with their lack of laugh tracks), and high production value dramas with multi-season story arcs (barely existed until this century), and reality shows, extremely weird. But they'd recognise that it was TV. And some 80s-style content still exists; it's just largely not what is popular right now.
    - harimau777 6y ago
      My point is that "people who play video games" doesn't mean much if you define it so broadly that it includes both people who play primarily core games and people who play exclusively casual games. From a business perspective, they are unlikely to be the same target market. Gaming related memes and similar cultural artifacts are unlikely to be shared. Etc.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        What makes a video game “core” other than your value judgement?
- tialaramex 6y ago
  Right. I have some activities that are way more dubious than Candy Crush as to whether they are "video games". For example I played Love Letter on Board Game Arena on Tuesday. Clearly if I played the "real" Love Letter that isn't a video game, it's a card game. So maybe playing it on BGA is still a card game, except the cards don't exist and I'm on a web site? Sometimes on Tuesday I play Through The Ages. TTA was created as a board game, but obviously in the pandemic you can't safely go to somebody's house and sit around playing board games for hours. So there's a version that's a Steam game. Is that a video game? Or is that still just a board game I'm playing via Steam? Sometimes we play D&D online instead. Is that a video game? Is it a video game if we're doing a 4th edition combat encounter, so that exact positions and movement matter? How about if it's a roleplayed skill check scenario instead? Is an Infocom text adventure game a video game? How about a point-and-click like Monkey Island? Is designing courses in Mario Maker 2 a video game? Is writing Python code for my Compact Claustrophobia (Minecraft modpack) robot to more efficiently construct things for my play a video game? These are things that require some clear fundamental idea of what video games are to guide principled decisions. Whereas Candy Crush is just obviously a video game. If Candy Crush isn't a video game then I'm pretty sure arcade Space Invaders wasn't a video game either.
rsynnott 6y ago
This is such a weird attitude. If someone was to say (figures made up) "over two billion people worldwide now drink beer" then "if you count Budweiser then sure", would be a bizarre response. Candy Crush is clearly a game; this isn't really ambiguous. It's a mass market game that game connoisseurs sneer at, sure, but it's a game.
- jpxw 6y ago
  I’m just saying that if you count anyone who has ever played Candy Crush, your stats aren’t going to be particularly meaningful, and you’ll end up with a number like “three billion”. If the same number was cited for beer drinking, I’d be saying “sure, if you count anyone who’s ever had a Budweiser”, and it would be a valid criticism.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    This would appear to be people who currently play games.
  - prophesi 6y ago
    I get what you're saying. It would be interesting to see the statistics on how many people play non-casual videogames. And how many people drink craft beer. Though with videogames, it's still a meaningful statistic to include "casuals" considering it used to be taboo to play videogames at all as an adult.
    - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
      > Though with videogames, it's still a meaningful statistic to include "casuals" considering it used to be taboo to play videogames at all as an adult There's a difference between a casual Candy Crush player and a casual Overwatch player though. I wouldn't class the Candy Crush player as even a casual gamer.
      - prophesi 6y ago
        This is just silly. Candy Crush is a videogame, therefore its players are gamers. Hijack a different word to describe casual vs "serious" gamers.
happytoexplain 6y ago
I know the comment I'm about to make isn't very substantive, but oh man is "gamer" gatekeeping prevalent.
- jpxw 6y ago
  I’m not a gamer, so it doesn’t make sense for me to be gatekeeping. Edit; although this study would probably call me one, because I picked up an Xbox controller one time.
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    One absolutely doesn't need to be a foo in order to engage in foo gatekeeping. In fact I would go so far as to say the preponderance of gatekeeping is done by people who are not in the group they are gate keepers of.
Deestan 6y ago
I'd like to defend this sentiment. I get the negative reactions to this, I really do. All communities - fan clubs, beer aficionados, gamers, book enthusiasts - have groups of gatekeepers that try to separate the dirty filthy unworthy casual people from the real X. But don't assume that is always the case. Sentiments like this often comes from a different place: wanting meaningful discussion. There are two parts to this. "X game" vs "Y game" categorization, and "plays games" vs "played a game". The first one is usually contentious so I'll elaborate: I play Candy Crush and games like it regularly, and enjoy them. However, I call them "casual games" rather than "video games" in the same way people like to separate "board game" from "party game", "jogging" from "running", "visual novel" from "comic book", and "web design" from "programming" (or "sanwdich" from "hotdog"). The borders frequently get blurry, and people love discussing pedantic philosophy about what is a sandwich, but the grouping still exists and is meaningful. While people who don't have a lot of interest in the field find the distinction weird and pointless, the people who are close to the field find the difference to be night and day. I play and enjoy Terraforming Mars which I classify a board game, Dying Light which I classify a video game, and Super Hexagon which I classify a casual game. Conflating the category of any two of them feels equally wrong. They are different activities, played for different reasons, at different times, with different levels of investment. Any study and discussion that manages to recognize at least these broad distinctions, will be immensely more interesting and fruitful than one who tries to count hotdogs as sandwiches.
Supermancho 6y ago
https://www.statista.com/statistics/281595/king-digital-entertainment-quarterly-mau/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/281595/king-digital-ente... Candy Crush has 250-275 million active users. Do some digging if you want an accurate picture. Saying this game or that game counts shows a willful choice to not engage in the conversation, and perhaps a fundamental lack of understanding as to what constitutes a video game.

If you count Candy Crush then sure

by jpxw 6y ago

If you count Candy Crush then sure

And you should. “Casual” video gaming, a term that carries unfortunate dismissive undertones, represents the most common form of video games played. The proliferation of the smart phone has undoubtedly helped here. Probably more so pre-pandemic. My observation when I lived in Chicago is that many people played these games while commuting via mass transit, I’m sure fewer are doing that now.

hindsightbias 6y ago
Decades ago, people did crosswords or read the paper/books while commuting. Do see a bit of sudoku. It would be interesting if there are music vs audiobooks metrics on today’s commuters. I get the commute escapism of candy crush but I’ve seen enough of that in homes/work to wonder.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Podcasts would also be quite big, I'd expect.
- schoen 6y ago
  I wonder if crosswords are moving away from a commute activity and toward a home leisure/hobby activity. (That's what I see, but I'm biased by the way I relate to crosswords myself and the way people I met through puzzle activities relate to them.)

superhuzza 6y ago

Why wouldn't you count Candy Crush? It seems like it would fall under any reasonable definition of video game.

harimau777 6y ago
I'd argue that ultra-casual games like Candy Crush have so little in common with "core games" that it's not particularly useful to consider them the same thing. A similar situation: If I was discussing "board game culture" I think that most people would recognize that I'm referring the culture associated with games like Catan or Pandemic as opposed to people casually playing Tic Tac Toe.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  > If I was discussing "board game culture" No-one's talking about 'board game culture', though. This is about whether people play video games. If you were talking about the board games people play, Catan would be a barely visible blip; it'd be all about things like Monopoly. Now if you were talking about people who consider playing games part of their identity, I'd be inclined to agree (though there are edge cases; Pokemon Go falls into both 'casual game' and 'game that people get a bit weird about', for instance), but that's not at all what this survey is about. EDIT: Also, well, media evolves. If you look at the sort of TV that's popular now, a lot of it is dramatically different to how it was in, say, the 80s and 90s. Someone who'd been in a coma since before Seinfeld came out would find modern sitcoms (with their lack of laugh tracks), and high production value dramas with multi-season story arcs (barely existed until this century), and reality shows, extremely weird. But they'd recognise that it was TV. And some 80s-style content still exists; it's just largely not what is popular right now.
  - harimau777 6y ago
    My point is that "people who play video games" doesn't mean much if you define it so broadly that it includes both people who play primarily core games and people who play exclusively casual games. From a business perspective, they are unlikely to be the same target market. Gaming related memes and similar cultural artifacts are unlikely to be shared. Etc.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      What makes a video game “core” other than your value judgement?
tialaramex 6y ago
Right. I have some activities that are way more dubious than Candy Crush as to whether they are "video games". For example I played Love Letter on Board Game Arena on Tuesday. Clearly if I played the "real" Love Letter that isn't a video game, it's a card game. So maybe playing it on BGA is still a card game, except the cards don't exist and I'm on a web site? Sometimes on Tuesday I play Through The Ages. TTA was created as a board game, but obviously in the pandemic you can't safely go to somebody's house and sit around playing board games for hours. So there's a version that's a Steam game. Is that a video game? Or is that still just a board game I'm playing via Steam? Sometimes we play D&D online instead. Is that a video game? Is it a video game if we're doing a 4th edition combat encounter, so that exact positions and movement matter? How about if it's a roleplayed skill check scenario instead? Is an Infocom text adventure game a video game? How about a point-and-click like Monkey Island? Is designing courses in Mario Maker 2 a video game? Is writing Python code for my Compact Claustrophobia (Minecraft modpack) robot to more efficiently construct things for my play a video game? These are things that require some clear fundamental idea of what video games are to guide principled decisions. Whereas Candy Crush is just obviously a video game. If Candy Crush isn't a video game then I'm pretty sure arcade Space Invaders wasn't a video game either.

rsynnott 6y ago

This is such a weird attitude. If someone was to say (figures made up) "over two billion people worldwide now drink beer" then "if you count Budweiser then sure", would be a bizarre response. Candy Crush is clearly a game; this isn't really ambiguous. It's a mass market game that game connoisseurs sneer at, sure, but it's a game.

jpxw 6y ago
I’m just saying that if you count anyone who has ever played Candy Crush, your stats aren’t going to be particularly meaningful, and you’ll end up with a number like “three billion”. If the same number was cited for beer drinking, I’d be saying “sure, if you count anyone who’s ever had a Budweiser”, and it would be a valid criticism.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  This would appear to be people who currently play games.
- prophesi 6y ago
  I get what you're saying. It would be interesting to see the statistics on how many people play non-casual videogames. And how many people drink craft beer. Though with videogames, it's still a meaningful statistic to include "casuals" considering it used to be taboo to play videogames at all as an adult.
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    > Though with videogames, it's still a meaningful statistic to include "casuals" considering it used to be taboo to play videogames at all as an adult There's a difference between a casual Candy Crush player and a casual Overwatch player though. I wouldn't class the Candy Crush player as even a casual gamer.
    - prophesi 6y ago
      This is just silly. Candy Crush is a videogame, therefore its players are gamers. Hijack a different word to describe casual vs "serious" gamers.

happytoexplain 6y ago

I know the comment I'm about to make isn't very substantive, but oh man is "gamer" gatekeeping prevalent.

jpxw 6y ago
I’m not a gamer, so it doesn’t make sense for me to be gatekeeping. Edit; although this study would probably call me one, because I picked up an Xbox controller one time.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  One absolutely doesn't need to be a foo in order to engage in foo gatekeeping. In fact I would go so far as to say the preponderance of gatekeeping is done by people who are not in the group they are gate keepers of.

Deestan 6y ago

I'd like to defend this sentiment. I get the negative reactions to this, I really do. All communities - fan clubs, beer aficionados, gamers, book enthusiasts - have groups of gatekeepers that try to separate the dirty filthy unworthy casual people from the real X. But don't assume that is always the case. Sentiments like this often comes from a different place: wanting meaningful discussion. There are two parts to this. "X game" vs "Y game" categorization, and "plays games" vs "played a game". The first one is usually contentious so I'll elaborate: I play Candy Crush and games like it regularly, and enjoy them. However, I call them "casual games" rather than "video games" in the same way people like to separate "board game" from "party game", "jogging" from "running", "visual novel" from "comic book", and "web design" from "programming" (or "sanwdich" from "hotdog"). The borders frequently get blurry, and people love discussing pedantic philosophy about what is a sandwich, but the grouping still exists and is meaningful. While people who don't have a lot of interest in the field find the distinction weird and pointless, the people who are close to the field find the difference to be night and day. I play and enjoy Terraforming Mars which I classify a board game, Dying Light which I classify a video game, and Super Hexagon which I classify a casual game. Conflating the category of any two of them feels equally wrong. They are different activities, played for different reasons, at different times, with different levels of investment. Any study and discussion that manages to recognize at least these broad distinctions, will be immensely more interesting and fruitful than one who tries to count hotdogs as sandwiches.

Supermancho 6y ago

https://www.statista.com/statistics/281595/king-digital-entertainment-quarterly-mau/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/281595/king-digital-ente... Candy Crush has 250-275 million active users. Do some digging if you want an accurate picture. Saying this game or that game counts shows a willful choice to not engage in the conversation, and perhaps a fundamental lack of understanding as to what constitutes a video game.