When people say casuals, it isn't that guy that finished several Mario games and is pretty good at it. A casual is a person that play only on smartphones, plays shovelwares and ocasionally plays some "real" games. But you can't really check someones performance at a game they didn't played. I'm not good at NES Mario. I grew playing Sonic and I can finish the SMS one in 20 minutes or take an hour and do almost 1B points getting 99 rings per stage and special stage plus all chaos emeralds. But I didn't grew up playing Mario, so I'm not good at it.

These shooter dudes can be actually massively skilled at that games. I usually am more varied in gameing genres, so sometimes I will meet guys at Killzone or BF that will simply obliterate me because they are pretty dedicated to that game. It's like a choice: being pretty good at one game or being decently good at several.

About casuals vs dudebros in games, I've being doing some user tests with games for a project and I have to disagree. Casuals are terrible, terrible players. They can't get the simplest concepts of using a controller. Just having experience with a game controller (like a dudebro), already puts you in another level. A dudebro would beat a casual on almost all games and probably obliterate them in shooters.

I think demanding people are good at games they never played it's a bit of a stretch. And Mario NES jump physics is a bit too fast, he falls way faster than on most modern games so it's actually easy to miss the jump and fall right in the front of a goomba.

Games aren't necessarily easier today. First, there is competitive multiplayer. Every FPS out there will put you in matches with insanely good guys that will play their best and humiliate you. The second point is that games are easier because they are bigger. In old consoles, you had limited space for your games:

- NES: 500kb

- SMS: 500kb (1MB for Brazilian SMS)

- Genesis and SNES: I'm not sure, but I think biggest cartridges would be around 4 to 6 MB.

So games had to be short. And nobody would like to pay for a game and finish it in an hour. So games were hard to give you more playtime. Most games could be finished in 1 or 2 hours because most of them didn't had a battery to save the game and that meant you had to be able to finish it in a single session. Games nowadays are criticized if they have 8 hours and a lot of them reach dozens or hundreds of hours. If they were as hard as the 1 hour NES games that took months to finish, what would we do? Finish Skyrim in 30 years? You need to balance what you are doing, it's meant to be fun, not torturing.

I think it's hilarious that people are calling these teens idiots. They were mostly born in the mid to late 90s. Unless you're really into games, you're not going to be familiar with a piece of gaming technology 10-15 years older than you. People on this board are not in the majority because they make it their business to know about video games.

That being said, some of the ignorance I've seen from some of the younger posters here is no better than what I saw on this video.

You do understand we've been using the term "casuals" years before cell phones were even a thing. Perhaps you disagree because you are a dudebro? Not saying you are but it would make sense. Especially since you are so wrong about the terminilogy and think that dudebros have any skill when they don't and that they are better than "casuals" When they absolutly arn't They are often terrible at most games and have a tiny amount of succes in dudebro shooters.(which for the record was used for years to describe gamers that would play a viariety of genres and never really play competitivly, was used to mostly describe nintendo players). That's  why they spend most of the time playing multiplayer and ignore single player most of the time. Becuase they are terrible at it.

Sorry, I'm not a dudebro. I prefer to play varied games. The term casual player refers to someone that plays very few "real" games (console and PC). It's usually someone that isn't very used to a joystick so when he have to play normal games he will struggle with things like moving the camera with the right thumbstick or getting basic ideas in a game. A dudebro, as limited as he can be in varied games, knows how to do it.

About their success on shooters, you are heavily underestimating them. Do you really think someone that plays CoD several hours per day for some years won't get any good at it? I'm sick of getting on online shooters and have guys that simply are close to invencible. And talking with them, you get a pattern: you know the guy from Killzone, but he played BF, CoD and so on. And they are good at single player at least on that fps (come on, if you can get almost always at 1st place on an online match you won't have issues with dumb AI bots). And how being capable to do well at MP isn't skill? It's like that guy from the 90s that would kick your ass at KOF in an arcade.

Nintendo gamers aren't casuals. Most Wii (not Wii U) gamers were indeed casuals because they played Wii Sports or shovelwares based on motion controls. If someone said to you that Ninty players are all casuals, it was not me. Wii players were in a big part casuals, surely in a bigger percentage than PS360 or PS4/X1, but Nintendo gamers are just regular gamers as anyone on PS or XB is.

Difficulty settings sound simple enough, but there are problems with it. Game levels or world design and gameplay often work together with one another. One is designed around one another. It's not always easy to accomodate various levels of difficulty, which is why games don't even bother with it. The other problem is that it still doesn't resolve the issue that people who just want to play the game for the story will most likely have less of a reason to keep the game or won't even buy the game and will just watch the story on Youtube.

I'm not even saying they should be good at it. But if I could play Mario with very little difficulty when I was five, then there's no excuse for these teenagers not being able to do it other than the fact that modern games do very little to challenge players.

And yes, games are DEFINITELY easier today, MUCH easier. And while they are longer today, also keep in mind that most games are actually shorter than they were 10-15 years ago. Yes, there is multiplayer, which is fine but there's also a problem with that. Too many games are becoming too reliant on multiplayer to the point where some franchises like Resident are forcing multiplayer on us.

Look, I'm not saying every game needs to be as difficult as Ninja Gaiden. In fact, I would prefer than not happen. After more than 20 years, I still can't beat Ninja Gaiden. Still, when I was a kid, there was a sense of victory, a great satisfaction when I would overcome something extremely difficult. It wasn't torture to remember the layout of each level and to time an attack just right. It was a discipline. We wanted to get better at the game. We wanted to master the game. The difficulty didn't make back away from the game. It made us want to play it even more. That type of motivation needs to come back.

Well as a guy who enjoys cinematic games I am still going to buy them that's the whole point.  Moving around the character and influencing the outcome of the game in your way is what makes it so immersive.  I would rather watch a movie if I'm not going to play it not a 10 hour game.  I guess I could see how it would hurt sales somewhat but they still seem to sell just fine.

Really? Just fine? Resident Evil 6 sold around 5 million copies and Capcom was disappointed with those numbers. A single AAA game selling below expectations can put a longtime developer out of business. While the AAA market has high sales, or what used to be considered high sales, it's become an increasignly unsable market. Let's face it. Not every games is going to sell like GTA 5. In fact, almost no game will. So if your game sells 5 million copies and it's a bomb, then you as a publisher and developer are doing something wrong and are putting your priorities in the wrong place.

I have no problem with good stories within games. Unfortunately, most games generally don't have stories that match the production values. However, I do have a problem with games that have extremely long cutscenes that aren't at the end of a game and a game that focuses on style over substance. These types of games have made a generation of gamers really bad at videogames. I'm not the only person making this accusation either. Rich from ReviewTechUSA just released a video that stole the words right out of my mouth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q15L_QbGV3w

RE6 not being satisfied with those sales is just Capcom being stupid just like SE with Tomb Raider.  It's mismanagement.  Infamous has been profitable and the second one sold under 2m.  Uncharted is the most cinematic game around and even the first one was fine.  Heavy Rain sold under 3m and was ridiculously cinematic yet did fine.  There's plenty of successful cinematic games that have sold under 5m.