When Are Games Not Games

Who am I to follow the great and talented Julian Horan and his glorious, first ever, review here on Super Dope Gaming?  Just a lowly writer, uselessly hoping to compare to such an amazing mind.  Well, never you mind; I’ll try my best to say something worth being posted so close to someone so famous and wealthy (honestly, he’s rich.)  Anyway, enough lollygagging around, I come here to address the topic of Videogames.  Not just any, however, but games that are so casual, so short, that it makes me wonder if they can still be classified as videogames.  Julian was right when he mentioned how games made by every day people are rarely reviewed, so why is that?  Why doesn’t IGN, UGO, or Kotaku review games that are, quite often, solo projects?

One possibility is that they don’t fall into the same category.  Console and PC games are already split, both of which are separate from handhelds, and then further into casual and hardcore; do we really need another distinction between videogames that are independently created in Flash and free to play and those  which have high costs of production and come with an equally steep price tag?  PC games and PC Flash games?  Are games like Alice is Dead, Don’t Crap Your Pants, or Don’t Shoot the Puppy lower on the gaming scale and therefore not worth the time?

 Congratulations indeed.

Another possibility for the lack of reviews is that these games are free.  People don’t need someone else to review the game before they try it.  Who is ever going to think, “This game is free and I have plenty of time, but I don’t know if I want to take some of that free time and spend it on a game I may not enjoy”?  It’s free.  Play it. Find out.  If anyone reading Julian Horan’s last post didn’t look up that game, I need to know why not.  I NEED to know.  But he isn’t the first person to review a free game on this site. Nor the second.

The idea is that these games are viewed differently for some reason.  I have spent so many hours playing games as time killers, but I haven’t gone to Newgrounds in years.  I balk at the very name.  “Those games are mostly junk time killers” I say to myself.  And then I go play Peggle on my Ipod for several hours.  I understand if some people can’t get past the fact that Flash Games bear a certain stigma, but what about other games that millions of us play every day?  Games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, or any other Facebook game? Hell, almost any free, Ipod-only game can be seen in the same way.  To some, usually the more hardcore amongst us gamers, these titles are not even worthy of being called games.

Personally, I think every game mentioned here, as well as countless others, are worthy in their own right.  If it comes down to solely a distinction of casual vs. hardcore games, then where do we draw the line?  Anything free to play is casual? Anything too easy is casual?  I can tell you that the games Julian Horan raves about below are not easy, but they are free to play.  On the reverse side, Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 have a normal price tag on them and are seen as two of the Wii’s greatest “core games,” but those games are incredibly easy.  They are cute, fluffy, light hearted and fun.  Many of the same adjectives used to describe casual games.

 HARDCORE!!

For every hardcore game, there are a hundred more games that people play just to pass the time, not looking for anything deep or moving, just a mindlessly fun experience.  Games that one can play while at work instead of working.  The common opinion is that these games are worse, in and of themselves, than any game that is not free to play.  Really?  Has anyone ever played Acme Arsenal (No you haven’t. No one has.)?  But I’m still sure it was worth writing a review for.  I’m sure every game is worth at least that much.  Even if you only play for an hour, you probably have enough experience with it to know it’s terrible.

Maybe Super Dope Gaming should stand behind this belief that all games are worthy of being reviewed and begin reviewing every casual, free-to-play game that comes out to determine whether or not it’s worth the time to play.  But that’s not going to happen, those are Flash Games.