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| Look at these shitheads. Do they even know...like...anything about Miyamoto? |
The phrase “Casual Gamer” refers to one who do not play games as a hobby or necessarily with any regularity. They don’t make a habit of consuming “Gamer Culture” content like, well, this article. They tend to favor the most eponymous, popular games designed to have broad appeal – games like the Call of Duty franchise, sports games like the Madden series, or straightforward puzzle games like Tetris or Zuma. Statistically, most gamers are “Casual Gamers.”
Like most subjects regarding human behavior, the extent to which one qualifies as a “Casual Gamer” is less a black-and-white issue and more of a spectrum of beliefs and behaviors. On one end, you have gamers whose only experience with video games is from Solitaire or Minesweeper. On the other, you have those who play more niche games like Halo, games with their share of “Hardcore” fans, but don’t necessarily invest much time or thought in exploring the game, nor the culture or community that may surround it.
“Casual Gamers” rarely seek out games with more niche appeal. They don’t particularly care one way or another when the next Assassin’s Creed or Tomb Raider title comes out, and they certainly don’t give a s**t about what happened to Half-Life 3. Perhaps most important of all, they don’t identify as “Gamers.”
There’s nothing wrong with this, of course. Still, being branded a “Casual Gamer” has come to bear a stigma. “Hardcore Gamers” seek to undermine their rivals or opponents during online arguments or heated multiplayer matches by calling each other “Filthy Casuals”, an unfair accusation with the implication that one’s skills are underwhelming, as though they only play video games every once in awhile. Perhaps even more insulting, it is sometimes used to insinuate that one has no taste in quality games.
In the late 2000’s, when the Nintendo Wii and its library of “Casual”-minded games were dominating sales worldwide, there was a lot of grumbling in forums across the Web about how “Casual Gamers” were killing the video game industry. By tipping the scales of demand in favor of more vapid gaming products, they argued, they were incentivizing development studios to focus on developing fewer games with the “Hardcore” appeal, which tend to be costly and labor-intensive, in favor of simpler, perhaps more shallow games with broad appeal. Why work hard on an expensive, labor-intensive AAA title when cheap, simple games with broad appeal are just as, if not more, lucrative?
Not all “Hardcore Gamers”, that is, gamers with vested interest in the hobby as a prominent aspect of their lives, are necessarily hostile to those who choose to explore games at a more leisurely pace.
“Casual Gamers” shouldn’t be hated. They should be embraced, with warmth.
“Casual Gamers” bridge the gap between those who are not interested in video games, and those for whom video games are a lifelong passion. Without games that draw wide appeal, those outside gaming culture would find it to have a much steeper barrier of entry. This would further reinforce the ancient stereotype that gamers are socially inept pariahs with pretentious, fanatical, yet unpractical obsessions…that they are a slim minority, and that only such people find joy in video games. This stereotype is finally dying, in part because of “Casual Gamers.”
Bridging the gap between the uninitiated and the aficionados causes barriers between the uninitiated and the aficionados causes barriers between the two to crumble, allowing “Hardcore Gamers” to be joined by the rest – their friends, their family, and everyone else who might otherwise never have been able to enjoy the marvelous innovation of video games, and the rich culture that they have inspired.
Everyone has to start somewhere…in convincing a friend who has never played a video game to get into the hobby, which would you show them first: Dark Souls, or Mario Kart?
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