After years of gaming, I’ve realized that it’s very difficult to be a filthy casual. Every game is filled with people who “main” that game and are always going to be considerably better than the average casual due to sheer amount of experience. This has gotten to a point that I believe it is detrimental to the gaming landscape. Let me explain.

When people play a new game, it’s exciting to discover the tools of the game. How does it work? How do I get a kill or capture a point or score a goal? It’s fun. It’s good old fashioned fun. But with games that have a competitive element, players will always try to find a way to get an edge. This means grinding, calculating data, and finding the best “meta” to play and match what everyone else is doing.

When a new game comes out, instead of players being excited for new features, they complain about a lack of depth. Every DLC that released for Red Dead Redemption 2, for example, there were YouTubers and content creators who would grind for a day to play everything in the pack. For a filthy casual, an addition 10-20 hours worth of content can keep the game fresh and exciting for a few weeks if not longer.

This antipathy toward the casual gaming culture is detrimental to all of gaming. When gamers hop into a game like Rocket League with a deep ranking system and a separate casual list (with what feels like its own MMR), there’s at least a semblance of being able to enjoy the game without having tryhards absolutely destroy you every match. Other games like Rust, PUBG, and games without the playerbase or mechanic for MMR make it so that only the grinding tryhard players are able to enjoy the game. This further fractures the playerbase, making it an even more evident problem.

I don’t know that there’s a cure for this. I will always enjoy playing different games. I love learning the nuances of a game as much as I enjoy actually playing. Maybe there will be a time when grinding a single game is not the norm, but that seems far off of where we are right now in gaming. Let’s consider how we can create game modes and experiences that allow even the filthy casuals to enjoy games on their own terms, even when others are more proficient with the skill set needed for the specific title.

PS- The only response to this rant is “get gud.”