Due to all the talk about developers selling out and dumbing down their games, I decided to look at some of these "true hardcore gamers'" complaints and come up with a plan to make a game directed solely at them. I realized that what needed to be done was to make a game so repugnant to casual gamers with its very 1337ness that every hardcore gamer would flock to it in order to bask in it's aura of elitism. I present three game pitches that should be made according to many of the hardcore gamers that I see whining on internet forums.
The Perfect Hardcore Shooter
1. No regenerating health. This game should be unwinnable if you don't start the level with enough helath, forcing you to reload an old save just to progress.
2. No multiplayer. It makes Halo fans want it.
3. Swarms of enemies all attacking the player at once like shooters used to have in games like Doom.
4. Be more realistic then ARMA II, don't allow for saves, checkpoints or pausing. That's right, make this game like a real war where if you die that's it. You have to play the game all over again. Also, you have a chance of dying form a single bullet and you're unable to see how much health you still have. Real soldiers can't ever retry from their last save or even pause to go use the washroom. If you really want to create a realistic experience, you should remove all arcade-style elements in the name of making the game as accurate is possible in recreating actual combat.
5. Forget auto-aim being for noobs who can't target an enemy, get rid of crosshairs. Now you'll have a game that requires true aiming skills. Prove just how good you are at this game by having absolutely no idea what you may potentially hit.
6. Distance fog should be incorporated into the game as should enemies that can attack you beyond draw distance.
7. No cover system. Hell put no cover in the game at all. Make sure that the player is always exposed. Point 6 ties directly into 7. This is a game where you will consistently die from the first enemy in the first level repeatedly becuase only true gamers will play a game that is this punishingly brutal. There are no commercial tentencies. This is a game that is meant to scare away the general public based on the fact that the average person doesn't have superhuman reflexes.
8. A real hardcore shooter uses the Steel Battalion controller.
The Perfect Hardcore RPG
1. A 200 hour game with its length increased by the need to grind for weeks on end just to defeat a particular boss and multiple fetch quests that have no relaton to the plot whatsoever.
2. Don't label your menus. Leaving them unlabeled was the best part of the Baldur's Gate series.
3. Create the deepest and most numerous NPCs of all time. All are romancable, have five personal quests each and are forty in number.
4. For every hour of play, there should be two hours of dialog and three hours of cutscenes.
5. A world that's as large as Daggerfall made using next gen graphics.
6. It must be multi-disk. Even if a disk that can contain more data than a Blu Ray gets released, multi-disk games are just better and should be utilized since we all love changing disks mid-game.
The Perfect Hardcore Fighter
1. The controls to pull off a special move must have a a very short input time, and involve motions that nobody new to the game can pull off. For instance, hitting 1,2,3 HP while crouching, which means that you have to perform it while you're still in block stun during a low block.
2. A final boss that puts Goenitz to shame and will spam an attack that kills you in one hit if not blocked.
3. AI that reads the motions you input and then counters you as soon as the first frame of your move is performed, otherwise the CPU stands still.
4. When your super meter is full, all characters must perform a motion similar to Ivy's Sumon Suffering in order to perform a super.
5. When the match is over, a fatality must be performed or the losing player will regain 50% health.
6. The game will only have five characters since only the top five from any game will be used in tournaments anyway and it's not like anybody ever plays a fighting game for fun as the entire fandom is made of tournament players.
There you have it. The outline for three games that will appeal to every real gamer in the world. Sadly this won't ever be made because corporations have to make games that only appeal to casual gamers who need to see flashy graphics in order to make a purchase. Real gamers play only to conquer, never to have fun.
