Types of Gamers, Part Two

Yesterday I went over the all-encompasing, basic types of gamers, the hardcore and the casual. Now its time to be a bit more descriptive of the gamers beyond these broad catagories. This is by no means exact, and its only an opinion from my perspective, so don't kill me please ^^;

Fanboy/Girl
This type of gamer has strong ties to a brand or franchise. Plain and simple, most of thier games tend to center around a primary system/franchise. During most of the 90s this was basically Nintendo or Sega, and currently its split between Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. They usually also have high confidence in the franchise they choose, and for the most part, end up being part hardcore due to the same reasons. Following the same logic, one can usually tell the more fan personish a person is by how much knowledge they know about thier 'expertise'', or by how strongly they promote it.

A good example of this is Nintendo, and the infamously known 'Nintendo Defense Force', a group of people who defend any criticism or remarks against Nintendo and its related franchises. A Nintendo Fanperson tends to have a significant number of games either published by Nintendo as a 1st party title (Mario games), or 3rd-party titles closely affilated with them (Kirby, Smash Bros., F-Zero).

Better known 3rd-party franchises with a decent fanbase include Final Fantasy (SquareEnix), Dragon Quest (SquareEnix, Apparant in Japan only), Mega Man (Capcom), Street Fighter (Capcom), Halo (Bungie).

First Person Shooters (FPS)
This type of gamer I believe is the percieved stereotype of western Gamers in Japan (and possibly a chunk of Southeast Asia). They tend to focus on games where you end up in a First Person perspective, usually with a weapon of some sort to use against various foes thrown at you. They could be in corridors, forests, buildings, weird alien spaceships, a dream, etc. For the most part they are the enemy, and with your weapon, you make them fall down before they do the same to you. Most of the time your weapon is a gun, hence 'shooter'.

Unlike the Fanboy/girl, a FPS gamer doesn't necessarily stick to one franchise, but ends up playing various FPS games, looking for the one that fits his/her niche. Currently most of the good FPS games are with the Xbox 360, with high profile games like Bioshock, Halo, and Call of Duty 4. Nintendo Wii...lets skip that. Sony from my memory has Resistance, a good game, but yea, Xbox pretty much dominates in that aspect.

Beyond the basic premise of kill or be killed, a significant factor in FPS gamers is that many are attracted to the multiplayer capabilities of a game. Sometimes this factor alone could determine the overall financial success and fanbase of a game, and in some instances, the success of a system itself (as was Halo with the Xbox). I can't figure out why, but the concept of going against a friend in a virtual battlefield always has some strange allure, and being able to kill them in painful (or ridiculous) ways drags out the competitive, sometimes-evil side of me, heh. It rings true for a great number of the FPS gamers out there also.


Role Playing Gamer (RPGamer)
Another type, this time centering around the idea of assuming a persona/avatar in a fictional world, and then through a structured battle system, proceed through a (usually) set plot until its completion. Sometimes the persona could be an amnesiac, a soldier, random passerby getting dragged into a drama, a hero...heck, the protagonist could be a person trying to repair the mess they've created.

To the RPgamer, the story, the battle system, and the flow of the game take precedence over everything else. Pretty graphics help a bit, but for the most part, those three are the main pillars a RPgamer looks for. To emphasize the importance of these: A great story with a crappy battle system ailenates a gamer from their persona, a good flow of the game takes the gamer from the begginging to the end at an engaging pace, instead of disrupting them with too many or too few random events, a poor story kills the entire point of assuming a persona in the first place.

As an aside, I've noticed that in most RPGs these days, developers and gamers tend to place a higher emphasis on appearances, rather than storytelling quality. 10-15 years ago, due to technology, developers didn't have much to work with in terms of graphics, thus, they needed to compensate for this in another matter, plot development. I mean, just think about it. There isn't really much point for your 8 pixel character beating on other pixel characters unless there was some motivation...say those monsters are the reason your town (also a good place to heal and get items) was burned down, one of your party members (an important offensive member) was killed, and the boss (if defeated, would join you) was only a few rooms away. As technology evolved, storytelling ended up taking more of a backseat for pretty graphics. This isn't bad by itself, but the graphics can distract you from the plot, and in some games, the plot can suck.

Anyhow...examples of RPGs off the top of my head include - Final Fantasy(and its incarnations), Mass Effect, Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Quest, Pokemon

Blah...this is alot of writing, and I've only done 3 categories...ugh. Next time, I'll focus on Fighting, Strategy, and Sports.