If you’re going to ban FarmVille, then you definitely have to also ban Harvest Moon.
The term “casual gamer” largely depends on the company you’re keeping. On most gaming news sites “casual gamer” almost exclusively applies to people playing Farmville, Angry Birds, etc. When you hear about the “casual game market” or the “share of casual games” that’s what it’s referring to. However, it is absolutely common on gaming forums to refer to “Call of Duty and Madden” gamers as “fake gamers” and often as casuals (occasionally “casual in disguise” and often angrily compared with frat boys), occasionally this is also applied to those who only play Minecraft or dedicate all of their gaming to a single MMO. This is especially common in RPG and Nintendo-heavy (meaning Mario and Zelda, not Wii Fit) circles, but I’ve noticed it on general gaming forums as well.
“Casual gamer” is terribly defined and very much depends on who you’re talking to. Personally I’d say for purposes of this discussion we’re more into the realm of “casual = Farmville and Popcap”, but I don’t think rogerbox is wrong, just out-of-context.
No, I get that. I just think you’re incorrect. The phrase “caual gamer” doesn’t have any particular meaning except as a term of art. If you use it around people who aren’t into video games, they look at you funny. To them, all games are a casual enterprise. It’s only within the hobby that the term has any currency, and in that context, you’re using the term incorrectly.
No, but I don’t think “casual” and “hardcore” are the only options.
Exactly. The term has been around a looong time.
It has always had a very broad usage. If there are subgroups of society that recently started using the term in a more focused way, that certainly doesn’t supersede the more general usage.
I just looked on Google Scholar. The first usage is from 2000, describing a gamer who only plays the yearly Madden titles. So I concede the point.
I’ve already said my piece on this issue so pardon the lack of a detailed response to the articles, but my friend just linked 2 recent articles relevant to this thread:
An organization in CT is having a good ol’ fashioned [del]book[/del] game burning. As a bonus they imply that while video games don’t, per se, cause people to become aggressive violent psychopaths they kind of sort of totally do.
As most people here probably already know (did someone link something about this already and I missed it?) a Congressman has called for another study about the effects of violent video games. Which would be good, except I get the distinct feeling that the study is going to start with the desired results in mind. But hey, maybe not.
… Senator
A senator is a congressman.
Common usage is that while both are technically congressmen, Congressman is usually only used for Representatives. (Wikipedia agrees)