Casual gaming, and it’s associated casual gamers have been getting quite a decent amount of press lately, and industry reports have the genre skyrocketing.  And while I’m certainly all for the rise of anything games, there’s one thing that’s been on my mind for a while now; who exactly are casual gamers?

An excerpt from the Wikipedia definition of a casual gamer reads,

“Casual gamer is a loosely defined term used to describe a type of video game player whose time or interest in playing games is limited compared with a hardcore gamer. Casual gamers can conceivably consist of any people who show more than a passing interest in video games, therefore it is difficult to categorize them as a group. For this reason, games which attempt to appeal to the casual player tend to strive for simple rules and ease of game play, the goal being to present a pick-up-and-play experience that people from any age group or skill level could enjoy.”

The key phrase in this entire passage is “difficult to categorize them as a group.”  This got me to thinking about just who casual gamers really are?  Does this mean, if I’m not a hardcore gamer that I’m a casual gamer?  Do I have to be hardcore to not be casual?  Or rather, is ‘casual gamer’ now a generic industry term for those that do not spend an average of 5+ hours per day wading through their favorite title?  And furthermore, what ever happened to just ‘gamer’?

If the term casual gamer has entered the gamescape vernacular as a blanket term covering all non-hardcore gamers, isn’t that just too broad a market to lump into one basket?

For example, let’s take one certain friend, we’ll call him Tim, who’s in his late 50’s and an avid golfer.  By Tim’s admission, he says that he has in fact played video games in the past, testing to make sure that the Atari 2600 he bought his son back in the 1980’s was working correctly on Christmas morning.  Other than that, nadda. After introducing him to wii sports one Saturday afternoon, I couldn’t get Tim off the golf, and naturally, started fearing for all glass objects in the room.  Tim spent about an hour and a half working his way through wii golf, and said that he had a great time.  That was about a year ago.  Having spoken to him just yesterday, he confirms that he hasn’t touched a console, or any other type of game for that matter, since.  Does Tim qualify as a casual gamer?  And yes…he’s on facebook, and no, he’s not playing ‘Pet Society’.

Stepping things up a bit, another friend, let’s call him Steve, does not own a console, but does some gaming on his PC.  I’ve never seen him play one single ‘casual game’, but rather he downloads demos, shareware, or freebies, with the intent of never actually converting to a paying customer.  When asked about free-to-play, browser based games, Steve simply says, “I just want to play a game, and not be bothered playing with other people, it’s just me versus the machine.”

I truly believe the examples of Tim and Steve to be the much larger majority of folks out there.  They may technically be qualified as ‘casual’ gamers, but they’ve never spent a dime on the industry.  And all the while, both the press and industry figures both agree, ‘casual gaming’ is exploding.  If we’re judging the genre as a whole as successful by the revenue numbers alone, isn’t there something to be said for those that may fall into this unclassifiable category ‘casual gamer’, and better yet, how can the industry as a whole address these folks?  If the adulation is coming from a body count alone, then aren’t these numbers, by default, overinflated?  Do ‘one timers’ and ‘never gonna pay’ people count in this category?

I believe if the ‘casual’ gaming industry is to maintain, justify, and further it’s efforts, it’s time that a few of them sit down and take a good look at just who the ‘typical’ casual gaming demographic is, before we’ve added so much broth to the soup that the chicken gets lost somewhere between the carrots and celery.