I don't really like a lot of the standard classics

Hand me a copy of Mario Bros? I'm down. Hand me a copy of Donkey Kong Country? I'm ok. Hand me a copy of Fire Emblem? I'm good to go.

But hand me a copy or Legend of Zelda or Metroid or something like that? I'm lost.

If you've ever seen me play video games, you know that I'm probably one of the worst. I'm bad at figuring out secrets, I'm not very good at keeping my defenses up, I level up slowly even though I try my hardest. But I'm honestly spending a lot more time getting frustrated at games like those rather than being excited. I find a lot more enjoyment playing a game where the trip is the adventure, and not so much finding the keys to the car. I like games where you're presented with a challenge to beat, not games where you have to look for trouble. Not games where you have to go find some hidden item with no notification at all. Not games where, without a guide or something, you can't beat.

And the term for people like me is a "casual." In the eyes of hardcore gamers, I am a "Filthy casual"

I'll admit, I'm not trying to be a hardcore gamer. I'm not trying to fit in with people who can talk about every game that's ever come out in full detail. I've played my NES classics, I've owned a decent amount of consoles, I've watched the review shows, but I'm no hardcore gamer in the slightest. However, I see plenty of times that casual gamers are just thrown under the bus and called a plague of gaming or something.

Is it wrong that I want to have fun? Is it wrong that I play games to have a low-stressed challenge with a rewarding goal? Let's take Fire Emblem for instance. I get frustrated at the game a lot, hell yeah. Eliwood sucks shit, Guy keeps on dying, Oswin dies at the worst times, etc etc. But I get a reward when I find the right strategy (Or sometimes, get the luck of the RNG) to beat a level. I really enjoy that. I don't enjoy running around a vast map to realize that I need to park my airship on a singular tile of land, canoe around this long river, and enter this tunnel to get a book that can help me read a language to enter this tower to fight a boss. Like, hell yeah I enjoyed Final Fantasy, but I had a guide next to me the entire time. After the first few levels, which I beat off of muscle memory, I was glued to that little 13 chapter guide. But when I express my dislike for games that require a guide like that, you know what I'm told?

"Oh! You like being spoonfed? You're just a filthy casual who needs their hand held through everything! Go back to your bejeweled and let true gamers play this"

I guess I do like being spoonfed. I like being spoonfed the cryptic stuff. I like having little hints. Especially when it's stuff that I need to complete the game. Because you know what? I like playing games because they're fun. One of my favorite games that I've played recently is Nintendoland. You wanna know why? I took it to a friend's house a few weeks ago. We plugged it in, and we played it. I don't think I've ever had that much fun with a video game in a long time. It's really enjoyable when you're running around as your little Mario being chased by your toad friends, laughing and screaming out where they think you are. It was fun trying to find that Boo guy amist the dark and scary mansion, when he came up to you and pounced on you. Because it was simple. Even by myself, I felt so happy when I finally beat the last level of the Donkey Kong Tipsy Ass Tilter Shit, because it was simple. I was presented a challenge, and a means to solve said challenge, and I did it. But apparently that's not valid because it's not hardcore enough.

But what's more important in a game? Having fun, or the level of difficulty? I don't demand everything be easy and achievable on the first try, but I like going from point A to point B, and not having to deviate to the side to find random things. If a console tries to make games more accessible to me, is that so wrong? I'm fine with being laughed at because I'm terrible at Skyward Sword, I'm fine with my brother calling me terrible because I died in the tutorial of Metroid. But when it comes down to losing all of my credibility as a consumer of games because I don't enjoy certain aspects of certain games that are considered "Harcore"? It's on.

Is it so wrong to be a casual?

I think the same could be said on any other medium (book, movie etc etc) and I can't see why such controversy even exists on gaming community. No one judges someone for preferring a comedy movie over some deep drama movies, and vice versa.

I think (well, hopefully) you just met a wrong kind of person/community.

It's an easy way to criticize someone until you think for a moment and think that it's just a game played for recreation, and a lot of these criticisms are for people playing on their own, really affecting nobody. It comes in various brands: Playing popular FPS games, playing easy games, being a woman, using save states, using a particular piece of hardware, being born after a certain year among countless others. It's all a bit silly and it is virtually impossible to avoid the casual remark at some point.

Really, it is just a copout from an individual or a community who wants to look down on your or negate your opinion because you don't fit into the criteria of their kool kids klub. The irony of all of this elitism is that I probably wouldn't be able to stop myself from giggling at someone if they described themselves as a hardcore gamer. I play the fuck out of video games, but I'd rather not identify as a master of recreation.

enjoyment is a subjective notion and you should never feel undermined as a gamer (or as anything) for enjoying something deemed by others to be 'casual'. that said, about 90% of the time the word 'casual' is being used with some sense of irony.

It's completely fine.

It only becomes an issue when games are gutted of their difficulty to appeal to the casual crowd, leaving other gamers who crave challenges with no avenue to go to.

The hardcore crowd is a just a vocal minority anyway. A lot of people are really bad at games.

Nothing wrong with it, not everyone is going to be the next Cookiezi of whatever game they're playing, and you shouldn't have to be called out for enjoying casual things.

It isn't my cup of tea, and in every game I play I'm always trying to be the best - I'm just competitive like that. But that's just me - the way I play is different from how you play, and that's just fine.

I mean it's whatever, everyone plays casually at some point, for someone to call you a "filthy casual" is rather retarded. Besides, it is just a 'game', until you make it a sport I love competition personally, but on rare occasions I play casually lol

I realize this is responding to a pointless necro, but this is an interesting thread and I don't really see a balanced opinion in the responses (a lot of it is exactly the same thing the OP was experiencing, in the opposite direction). So here are my two cents.

Enjoying games on a casual level isn't bad at all. Games are designed to be fun. As long as you have fun, there's no issue. If you want to play on the easiest difficulty setting, or use a walkthrough start-to-finish, or hell, even cheat (on single-player games), that's fine. If it makes it more fun for you, more power to you. It's your copy of the game, and no one can tell you how to play it except you.

The negative "filthy casual" label is certainly not applicable to you. That doesn't make it baseless however, because there are people it may apply to. There's various names for this group of people, but the most common I've seen is "bads" or "baddies".

Like you, this group of people aren't necessarily the best at video games. But unlike you, these people resent this - and that there are players that are better than them. They see games they're unable to overcome without a guide or cheats, and instead of simply avoiding them, they actively lash out at them - complain on forums, rate them poorly, and disparage people who disagree with them. They say the controls are clunky, the level design is bad, the classes are unbalanced, the grinding is mindlessly repetitive, the servers are slow, and the mechanics are obscure. The complaints vary, but they all have one thing in common - the player is angry they are unable to do something, and they blame the game.

Imagine someone joins osu!. They play 10-20 times, and realize they seem to have no aptitude for the game, scraping a few C ranks on Easy and Normal maps. Instead of practicing or deciding the game is simply not for them, they come to the forums. They demand the game be more "accessible" to new players - sliders to adjust map difficulty parameters, score handicaps based on rank, and a "fairer" pp system that somehow allows them to gain higher ranks without improving their performance. When their demands are unsurprisingly met with sarcasm and one-word "practice" replies, they angrily denounce the community's "elitist" and "unhelpful" attitude and declare they will never come back to this boring, POS game and its narrow-minded no-lifer playerbase, and instead continue living the infinitely more fulfilling existence they previously had.

While this doesn't happen often on this forum, it unfortunately does happen in many other games. It's often more subtle, like MMO players demanding access to high-level gear without the need to clear high-level content, but it's an ever-present specter. They claim to just be looking for simple, accessible fun, but they are really just looking for power. They want to be famous and respected like the hardcore players, but they can't accept their lack of natural talent, and don't want to put in the time and effort to overcome that.

Understand that the "hardcore" players are human too. They've put time and effort into their games because that is what is fun for them. They love what they do, and they show that love by playing games at a higher level than others. They worked hard for their abilities and progress - not because they wanted to look better than others, but because that is what was fun for them. Just as you might enjoy a game more with a strategy guide helping you through the obnoxious parts, they enjoy the game more when it is challenging and even frustrating. They enjoy the thrill of overcoming something that seemed impossible last week.

And so, just like you, these "hardcore" players get irritated when people call them out on their playing style. "No life". "Pay-to-win". "Cheating". "Anyone could do that if they lived in their mama's basement and player 18 hours a day - at least I have a job and engage in significantly more sexual activity than you". It gets old. It gets annoying. And eventually, they stop associating themselves with anyone that doesn't play like them, because they don't want to deal with the potential conflict. As soon as they see someone ask for help on something relatively simple, or say a game is hard for them, they assume that person is there to complain about the game and the community and take action to nip that potential problem in the bud, even if it means insulting and shaming. All because they had a bad experience in the past, just like you.

From the few bad eggs in the casual group, they end up grouping all of the "casuals" under the stereotype of whiny, entitled, ignorant middle schoolers. Much like the way "hardcore" players tend to get grouped under the stereotype of cocky, small-minded, no-life high-school dropouts, really.

There is nothing wrong with being a casual. But there is nothing wrong with being hardcore, either. If you want to just relax and play something simple and engaging without having to put much time into it, no one has any right to judge you for it. If someone else wants to put lots of time into a game and are willing to go through stressful and "unfun" moments for that sense of achievement at the end, you similarly have no right to judge them for it. And depending on which camp you fall into, some games will be for you, and some games will not. That doesn't make them good, or bad - just different. As long as you understand this, you are free to enjoy games as you see fit.

I completely agree in this thread

You sir got my respect

Why should you judge someone from which games they like?

That's like saying if you don't watch attack on titan you don't deserve to live (even though AoT is shit anyways)

XGeneral2000 wrote:

The negative "filthy casual" label is certainly not applicable to you. That doesn't make it baseless however, because there are people it may apply to. There's various names for this group of people, but the most common I've seen is "bads" or "baddies".

Like you, this group of people aren't necessarily the best at video games. But unlike you, these people resent this - and that there are players that are better than them. They see games they're unable to overcome without a guide or cheats, and instead of simply avoiding them, they actively lash out at them - complain on forums, rate them poorly, and disparage people who disagree with them. They say the controls are clunky, the level design is bad, the classes are unbalanced, the grinding is mindlessly repetitive, the servers are slow, and the mechanics are obscure. The complaints vary, but they all have one thing in common - the player is angry they are unable to do something, and they blame the game.

tl;dr - the problem is the same problem shared by everything in the world ever: the Vocal-Minority Group of Dickheads.

Seriously though, whether the term may or may not rightly be applied isn't the issue. It's the fact that 12.9 year old CoD players people throw it around like it's going out of fashion and, in doing so, scare off a frikkin ton of potential gamers in the process.

The whole thing is just generally ridiculous. The vast majority of gamers can't be called anything other than casual gamers anyway, as much as they might wish otherwise. :')

Yeah but in CoD there's something called the "mute players" function

kirukashi wrote:

Yeah but in CoD there's something called the "mute players" function

Wouldn't know, I've never been desperate enough to venture into the world of CoD.
Besides, GoW is better.

Ever since I've started working full day + still continue univ studies, I noticed that I don't have time for anything. My average game time shrank from 14+ hours to mere 1 or 2 a day. It is so painfully bothersome to pursue 100% completion at this pace, I don't even bother anymore. Sometimes I don't even want to play, I just watch it on youtube. I'm ashamed of myself.

Just keep this thread clean and please do not fight.

On-Topic: I've noticed that I am not that tough Player I always thought about me. My skill cap isn't really high, I especially see that in harder games or in shooter games. And my interest is quite low compared to that what I like to play. Maybe I just can't be that excited anymore as in the past.

git gud u fuckign casul

funy

ikr?

It's okay, i actually miss being casual.. i became professional CS:GO player last year, it was annoying. But nowadays, im a "filthy casual" don't care what people call me, i enjoy gaming, and theres nothing that can stop me. (Except becoming stephen Hawking, but ill manage.)

Filthy casual? God forbid me playing this game just to have fun!
This is why I prefer single player games.

Every game's objective is to entertain, if you're having fun regardless of how you did it, then the game's author succeeded in its goal. You had fun; it's a win-win situation. Whenever I'm dominating/losing in a random MOBA game, I always type "ARE YOU HAVING FUN?" in the [all]/[allies] chat

and also, daily reminder that right and wrong does not exist *tips fedora*