Nuances.

RE: Casual Players

1) Casual is a term that should refer to attitude more than frequency.

Why?

When people who are really good at some game start playing it less frequently, they don't become casuals.

What's more... You could play a game daily during years while having a casual mindset/attitude.

It's obvious that there is more to it than frequency/invested hours.

The point is that what's relevant is how you approach a game, not so much how frequently you play (regarding this term). There are mechanics that can be mastered to optimize performance, and one can apply learning strategies to master them or at least progress towards subobjectives.

Some players will have more time, others won't.

You can play a game only 1 time/week and still apply said strategies.

2) Said strategies optimize fun in the long term (and even short term).

I am tired of countering this false dichotomy: 

You play for fun vs You play to be a pro

We all play for fun. At most we could consider that professional players SOMETIMES don't really like a game but have to play it because it's the most recent one (publicity, sponsors, and what not). But the vast majority of people, dedicated or not, regardless of their attitude, play for fun.

Others and I have played DMC for years. At no point we played for anything else other than that. In any case we were more conscious about the fact that there are more steps before reaching a more gratifying experience regarding fun.

Yes, what I am saying is not only that we ALSO play for fun, but the obvious fact that we have even MORE fun.

You overcome greater challenges, learn more complex things -> you feel even better because of how our organism/design work.

There are nuances to this, sometimes tasks are very hard, but in a not really interesting way, etc. Yet in broad terms, it makes perfect sense.

You go around spamming helmbreaker in DMC? Well... Ok. Better than doing nothing or watching a stupid show on TV.

You learn how to stay in the air chaining moves and being able to control your position with different techniques... And you do reach that objective?

That feels much better, doesn't it?

At some point there is a diminishing returns because of habituation. There are limits. But before said limits we DID have more fun.

And one way to compare is knowing how we felt before, since we were all casuals at some point as well, or at least noobs.

3) People are free to play however they want, as long as they want.

You may have no clue about art techniques and symbolism... You may have no energy or time to learn.

And you can still go to an art gallery and try to enjoy it.

That's not the problem.

The problem is when you start complaining about the art gallery because the paintings, sculptures or whatever make no sense for you, because they are too hard to interpret, and what not. Let alone if there were available explanations around and you ignored them.

And the worst would be artists oversimplifying their paintings only because of you. When by default you should try to adapt if you want more fun. Not the other way around.

Yes, casuals are free to play as they want and as long as they want. Open games to mash some buttons for some days and leave them. But this isn't the real issue.

The real problem is when games shift towards oversimplification, hurting the potential optimized fun others could have.