My name is Jacob, and I'm a filthy casual.
Well, that's not entirely true. Based on the gamer dedication spectrum, I'm closer to a core game than anything. I could easily play things like Pokemon Go for a few minutes a day every day before binging on Dragon Age: Inquisition for five hours and never touch a controller or app the rest of the week. It really depends on my mood and how I feel at the time. That said, based on what I've seen from the world of gaming over the last few weeks, it seems like I'm drifting more in the direction of casual while still also separating myself from it.
Doesn't make sense? Welcome to the world of video game taxonomy.
As stated in the Urban Dictionary definition above, the term "filthy casual"—or occasionally just "casual"—is a typically pejorative term that hardcore gamers typically use in reference to those who play video games but don't have a certain level of dedication or who play certain kinds of games. It's based on a sort of video game elitism that is a subject for later discussion. Typically, though, the targets of much of this derogation are those who tend to play, you guessed it, casual games.
So, casual games include a lot of social games like Farmville and mobile app-based games like Angry Birds. Falling in line with the elitism topic, since these forms of games are accessible to anybody, they must, therefore, be lesser and, by proxy, have players who are lesser. Simple enough to understand, right?
Enter Pokemon Go.
Previously, prospective trainers who wanted to be the very best had to buy a Nintendo system of some sort to do so. With this new accessibility, everyone can travel across the land, searching far and wide for each Pokemon in hopes of understanding the power that's inside. New gamers can enter the vast world of Pokemon while dedicated veterans can fulfill what they know is their destiny.
In short, hardcore gamers are now, in some sense of the word, casuals.
That's not to say they lose their "hardcore" status by downloading and playing something that we've all wanted since the release of Pokemon Red and Blue versions—and especially since Pikachu followed us around in Yellow. Nor is it to say that casual gamers or casual games are better/worse than their more involved counterparts. Neither are true.
But the fact that millions of users worldwide can show us that even mobile games can have a hardcore following whether you play for a few hours a day or maybe an hour a week (like me) is a change in video game culture. Yes, many hardcore gamers could explain away the fact that it's less a casual game by saying it is more of an addendum marketed toward a more dedicated fan base that happens to attract more players into the fold. While that may be true also, there is one thing that's hard to deny based on these statistics:
The demeaning of the casual gamer is kind of useless at this point.
Separating into us-versus-them camps is a common phenomenon seen in many aspects of life—especially when resources are scarce. Heck, you see it in team selection with Pokemon Go when you're trying to take control of the finite (though seemingly endless) number of gyms in the game. When it comes to the elitism in gaming, though, the scarce resource at hand is a little more abstract —whether it be recognition or the finite number of in-game rewards given through direct competition. Win or lose, there will still be this sort of condescension toward the "lower status" casual gamer.
But Pokemon Go acts as a kind of bridge that makes everyone casual and hardcore at the same time—casual by technicality but hardcore by dedication. It makes the social delineations a lot more complicated. While time and style of game may still categorize gamers in the technical taxonomy, the social taxonomy of gaming starts to lessen, hopefully. Regardless of how often "filthy casual" is thrown around as an insult much these days, maybe Pokemon Go can help ameliorate the social strife within the gaming community - maybe even some of the mild-but-present stigma of gaming as a whole. We could even learn a few things along the way.
After all, in the words of the theme song, "You teach me, and I'll teach you."
