There are a few different ways to categorize different types of gamers. Several different aspects go into what we classify as a casual gamer. These factors are typically based on the individual’s duration of gameplay and the genre of the game. Also, I strongly believe that games are constantly evolving and developers dictate their audience completely.  According to Lina Eklund “The first commercial digital games were adult activities, as arcade games appeared in pubs (Williams 2006). As consoles became available for private use they were then marketed as family entertainment – available to play in the family home. However, after the video game market collapsed in 1983 the industry needed a new approach. When Japanese Nintendo released their Famicom console – the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the West – they aimed their product at children, foremost boys, in order to find a more secure audience. As Krotoski (2005) has shown, before this, the gaming industry aimed games at everyone – men and women, old and young alike. This shift towards young men changed ideas about who the consumers of digital games were, and this strategy in production and marketing still prevails. During the 1980s and early 1990s, digital games were seen as boys’ toys and game developers were/are almost solely men (Haddon 1988) leading to a marginalization of female users. Since then three major waves of social and technological changes can be identified that have impacted on the game audience”. With that being said, Eklund’s excerpt clearly identifies the turning points in gaming history. Production would constantly swap their emphasis from women gamers to men gamers, and occasionally both sometimes. I find that quite flabbergasting, because prior to reading this article I always assumed that it was always about men due to stereotypes.

Furthermore, with the shift to gamers being perceived as males the defining of a gamer changed as well. As games elevated, so did the level of hardcore content as well. With more explicit games gaining popularity, so did the amount of production. As the gaming industry progressed, games such Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto flourished. Personally, I grew from a casual gamer to a hardcore gamer because of the attraction that came with violent games. Eklund states that “The term ‘casual gaming’ came about as digital games as well as users became more diverse and different designations came into use to contrast early digital gaming (hardcore) to what were perceived as new (casual) game types, genres and gamers. Dividing gamers into hardcore and casual is now one of the bases for understanding different types of games/ers both in academia and industry classification (Juul 2010). Casual games tend to have more positive fictions featuring no or cartoonish violence, require little previous knowledge of games, allow players to play in short bursts and practice excessive positive reinforcement of success (ibid.). Casual games are lighter, easier to play and flexible (Kultima 2009). In contrast, hardcore games are seen as heavier, featuring violence and dark themes and taking time to learn”. With that being said, Eklund conveys a certain stigma about hardcore gamers who tend to play these form of games. I’m slightly concerned with the perspective that playing dark themed games correlate with being a hardcore gamer. Casual gamers also indulge in these same genre of games as hardcore gamers which can depend on the popularity during the time of release. I’ve witnessed many casual gamers indulge in the most violent games, due to its availability. So is it really fair to categorize dark gameplay with a certain type of gamer?

Work Cited

Eklund, Lina. “Who are the casual gamers? Gender tropes and tokenism in game culture.” Social, Casual and Mobile Games: The changing gaming landscape. Ed. Tama Leaver and Michele Willson. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. 15–30. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 24 Feb. 2020. .