I kept biting my tongue.

I kept explaining to groups of 2-4 people how to "deal with" the inclusion of Avatars in the New Xbox Experience because, quite frankly, I didn't like them either.  (More on this subject in the future, but the short/worst case answer is if they bother you - ignore them.)

I kept getting angry when I saw companies plan strategy, and then apologize for that strategy to the offended parties.

Owen from Kotaku pointed out a NY Times article that got me frustrated enough to write this blog post.

As video games become more popular, passionate game lovers have to deal with the growing popularity of our hobby.  This popularity is large enough that companies are changing their strategies to market to the non-gamer - the mainstream.

I'm a "hardcore gamer" not because I need a cool term to define myself, but because they don't understand the culture, and because they need to give a term to folks who's first choice of leisure activity is to turn on a console or PC.

As Seth's NY Times article stated:

Now gamers have to share their beloved pastime with the great unwashed — housewives, the elderly, even girls. And they don’t all like it. At E3, Nintendo in particular was accused of neglecting its core fans while pursuing the broader market with a new edition of Wii Sports and Wii Music, a lite diversion.

He went on:

Call it nerd rage. Like loyalists of a once-partisan politician who tacks toward the center later in an election cycle, old-school gamers are coming to terms with the ramifications of their favorite’s newfound popularity. Though they have long craved mainstream respectability for video games, players sometimes resent the concessions their champion must make to attract mainstream adherents.

I can only speak for myself when I say, I've never clamored for mainstream video game respect.  I've clamored for more content.

By becoming popular more opportunity exists.  New companies may make products that I'm interested in.  Television shows (or whole stations) may start to develop the type of content that I'm interested in.

If the video game hobby stayed niche, it could go away because it would be unprofitable as a business, but it's never been about mainstream respect.

It's not even about being "hardcore vs. casual".  Kotaku's Owen Good nailed it:

I think we can see how it ties into the survival of the consoles and publishers we patronize, and how it affects their ability to give us what we really want.

One last quote by Seth's NY Times article:

For the game industry, these players represent a profitable expansion. For old-school gamers, they reflect a wrenching shift. The industry depended on its appeal to core players for many years. Those players, and the culture that emerged around them, came to assume that this industry should respond only to their needs and desires.

I'm selfish, but I'm not unreasonable.

If soccer moms, and mainstream gamers are enjoying casual or non-gamer targeting titles, that's fine, but don't do it at my expense.

I like Tetris, Peggle, and Puzzle Quest as much as the next guy - but without Civilization Revolution, Gears of War, Burnout, and other "hardcore" games, I would lose interest in the hobby pretty quickly, and if you lose your passionate gamers, if you lose your core - the tangential fans who only buy one game per year, won't be enough to sustain the industry, and it will die.

The beauty of my job is I don't have to care about reaching moms, or worry about "how to broaden".  Someone else is doing that.

As our team produces more video content, I realize that I may not be the best interviewer in the world.  I know I'm making mistakes.

What I'm not doing, however, is asking insincere questions to people I dislike, about a hobby I don't respect.