I don’t always agree with a lot of what comes out of Nintendo, but today is one of those days where I can safely tell it to preach on. Nintendo of Europe’s Laurent Fischer has said that this “casual gaming” movement is more of a myth than anything else, and a term he doesn’t approve of.
“For me, you are a gamer or non-gamer,” states Fischer. “I think most of you know that you can spend ten or twenty hours on an internet flash game and have not realized. The guy who plays these games regularly – he’s a core gamer.”
Laurent proposes that you can play a game like Brain Training just like a “core gamer,” and he’s right. The line between “casual” and “hardcore” is not in the games you play, but the way you play them, something we at Destructoid have tried to communicate many times.
“I don’t like this word casual so much. Because people consider that casual needs to be something easy. If you’re good at any game you can play at a high difficulty level,” he adds. “Take Tetris. There is incredible gameplay, it’s very simple, very easy to understand, but it’s also very different. I think a game can be a light enough to enjoy and for all gamers to become a core gamer on it … There is no casual gaming. There is just a different way to play.”
Thank you! Glad to see someone within the industry has caught onto that.
