When Did "Easy" Become "Casual" Difficulty?

[dessertmonkeyjk]

The only difference I can see is that the word Casual can be applied directly at you as a label while Easy is more of a plain "how difficult you like it to be" thing.

So mostly, it really depends on the person.

 

[krazykidd]

Probably for the same reason some people think beating the game on hard is an achievement that matters. Because they're pathetic.

Yeah, I never understood the difficulty change either. I usually play games on Normal and switch to easy if some annoying section is kicking my ass.

So liking a challenge is pathetic? Or is it thinking it's an achievement that's pathetic ? But it has to be an achievement if most people can do it right? Isn't that what achievement means? You yourself say you sometimes switch to easy but then say people who play on hard are pethetic because they take pride in it .

Not to say people should look down on you for playing on easy . Play how you want to play.

 

[Martijn Nijkeuter]

Why does it matter to you? Does it harm you at all that it's called "casual?"

Casual is starting to be a more negative word lately, partly due to developers using it as a excuse/reason to limit or remove certain content.

A good example is guild wars 2 where developers intentionally put in diminishing returns and drop/karma caps to "promote casual play styles". (though a case can be made that this system still negatively effects casuals anyway)
Or how Legend of Zelda: The skyward sword did away with a over-world to make it more casual friendly.

 

[gorfias]

I still like the titles doom had for the difficulty levels. I can't remember the names but they sounded cool

Castle Wolfenstein 3d, back in the day, had a "Daddy, Can I Play?" Mode.

I like Uncharted: Easy and Very Easy mode. But, Easy and Casual better mean what they say. If I'm whipping my controller across the room, I am not having fun. I like interaction. I loved how, say, Halo, punished me if I was stupid and charged into a room, guns blazing instead of rolling in several grenades first. I'd die. Very next time, I'd know better. That's fun.

But when I'm doing Battlefield 3 and cannot see my bombing targets come out of their bunkers as it is too cloudy.. in freaking EASY mode, there is a problem.

Go ahead gaming manufacturers! Go ahead and make me take up golf instead!!!

EDIT: Argh, ninjad!

 

[Denamic]

Remember when games had fun difficulty options?

I remember this.
I was scared of playing, but I refused to be insulted by the game, so I played on Nightmare to show it I could do it too! I had to settle for ultra-violence, but I fucking did it. Up yours, game! I think that's roughly when I started pushing myself to play better rather than just dicking around.

 

[Something Amyss]

Casual is starting to be a more negative word lately, partly due to developers using it as a excuse/reason to limit or remove certain content.

So now it's on par with easy? Easy already carried a negative connotation.

 

[elvor0]

Probably for the same reason some people think beating the game on hard is an achievement that matters. Because they're pathetic.

Yeah, I never understood the difficulty change either. I usually play games on Normal and switch to easy if some annoying section is kicking my ass.

So liking a challenge is pathetic? Or is it thinking it's an achievement that's pathetic ? But it has to be an achievement if most people can do it right? Isn't that what achievement means? You yourself say you sometimes switch to easy but then say people who play on hard are pethetic because they take pride in it .

Not to say people should look down on you for playing on easy . Play how you want to play.

No, liking a challenge isn't pathetic. Thinking you're above someone else because you can play the game on hard is pathetic. Unless you talking about a tangible reward, like money or a cookie, the difficulty you play on doesn't matter outside your own head.

Gamers who like to brag about the difficulty they finished a game on (or worse, mock people for not being as good at it as they are) are completely pathetic.

How many gamers do that exactly? Too many.

I'm pretty sure for most people it's done in enjoyment of the fact they did it on the hard difficulties. Going "Aw man, I did it on Legendary, yes!" is completely different to "I did it on Legendary. *Smug smug*" Among a circle of friends who play certain games in challenge mode, it's just done for fun, not because they think they're better than you. For example, my and a friend of mine like to do MGS games on Extreme, without kills, without being spotted etc etc, in order to get the best rank. We both get enjoyment out of who can do it quicker. Besides, getting Big Boss rank on MGS is a reasonably big achievement in the world of MGS, reserved for those who have far too much time on their hands and gaffa tape to stick their hands to the controller.

For you personally doing stuff on the hardest difficulty doesn't matter, and that's fine, some people like to be brutally challenged, and to them doing a rock hard game on the hardest difficulty is an achievement, because it was really hard, it's about the satisfaction and endorphins from FINALLY doing whatever you set out to do. Not only that, I've been playing games for a LONG time now, and Normal generally doesn't cut it for me, a thing a lot of gamers get after a long time, normal is what the average gamer might find normal. For me, I have to turn it up to hard, because then that's my equivalent of normal, very hard equating to hard. So not only is easy there to allow people who may be new to gaming or the genre to enjoy themselves, hard is there for people who are veterans.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter does it? So getting up on your high horse about it, when you obviously do care to a degree just seems odd, if you really didn't care, you shouldn't need to act like you're better than them. I also barely see anyone BRAG about how they've done, sure people talking about it in an excited way, but I think you may be seeing a problem where there is very little on display.

 

[Rangerboy87]

I suppose it's because "easy" is kind of demeaning.
Saying "I just finished gears of war on casual mode" gives you a bit more confidence than "I just finished gears of war on easy mode"

Also, since it's "easy" mode, if you were to have a hard time and die a lot, it's not exactly "easy"

I think "casual", "normal", and "hardcore/insane" just became the politically correct versions of "easy", "medium", and "hard" with variances between games.

 

[Vegosiux]

Probably for the same reason some people think beating the game on hard is an achievement that matters. Because they're pathetic.

Yeah, I never understood the difficulty change either. I usually play games on Normal and switch to easy if some annoying section is kicking my ass.

So liking a challenge is pathetic? Or is it thinking it's an achievement that's pathetic ? But it has to be an achievement if most people can do it right? Isn't that what achievement means? You yourself say you sometimes switch to easy but then say people who play on hard are pethetic because they take pride in it .

Not to say people should look down on you for playing on easy . Play how you want to play.

No, liking a challenge isn't pathetic. Thinking you're above someone else because you can play the game on hard is pathetic. Unless you talking about a tangible reward, like money or a cookie, the difficulty you play on doesn't matter outside your own head.

Gamers who like to brag about the difficulty they finished a game on (or worse, mock people for not being as good at it as they are) are completely pathetic.

How many gamers do that exactly? Too many.

What this guy said. Right to the final full stop.

Once you've got precious little time to spend on entertainment, you're less likely to see it as a "contest" of some kind and just want to have a good time.

Now, if all the "hardcore gamers" went out there and focused their efforts to "becoming better" on something like finding out ways to fix this messed up world of ours, that would be just dandy wouldn't it.

And before anyone says anything, I'm an achievement OCD type of gamer too and am going to bang my head against the wall untill I black out, then some more cause that wall is goin' down. But I do have, say, at least some real achievements to show for myself, finally.

Took me a while to realize that getting all the legendary titles in some game isn't going to make my resume look any better...but better late than never right?

 

[Aurora Firestorm]

.......is this really a big deal? I mean seriously, why is this a problem? It's hardly any different from using the word easy.

You're not looking at the bigger picture here. Sure it may not look like a big deal, but think about why they're making these changes. Take a good fuckin' look at the western society. It's full of pathetic, easily offended incompetent people who can't handle the truth that they're just not good enough. And instead of facing the reality and working harder so they wouldn't have to feel incompetent, we make their incompetence disappear by declaring that everyone is now competent. If you look at the big picture you'll realize that it's not about gaming. Gaming is just one aspect of this that's also infected now. Schools too. Nowadays EVERY kid gets a trophy. Everyone's a fuckin' winner. We're actively lowering the standards of competence. And we mostly do it for profit. People don't want to pay unless they are guaranteed to feel like winners. And we do it everywhere! Do you know how dangerous that is for the society? We are only as good as our weakest link. We shouldn't cater to the weak. We risk weakening everyone. We should encourage the weak to grow stronger.

Calling people lame and pathetic sure isn't encouraging.

I'm guessing it's, frankly, to offset the stigma leveled on people by HardKore Players -- the people who play on Super Hard just to prove they can. Statistically, the more gamers there are, the more HardKore people there will be, and the more the people who just want a story and don't want difficulty will get crapped on because there are more people to crap on them.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I disagree. Casual ≠ Easy.
Besides, like others have said, I miss when devs got creative with the names of the difficulty settings.

Remember when games had fun difficulty options?

How fitting that was.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

I'm going to side against the nitpicking on this one.

It really doesn't matter in the slightest.

Yeah yeah, offspring of failed Western society concepts that are going to turn everyone on Earth into pussies.

That may be true in education, but for gaming, it's really quite fine. If designers want to make everyone a winner, there's really no shame in that.

Besides, I think "casual" is a more descriptive term.

 

[Tono Makt]

I don't care either way what the names are for the difficulty levels. I know that the level on one side of the choices is "Easiest" and the other side is "Hardest". Whether they're simple names like "Easy, Normal, Hard" or "Casual, Standard, Intense" or "Blond, Brunette, Redhead"(1) doesn't matter to me.

(1) Mr. Makt is very blond, and very easy. His problem is that his trailer has limited fan appeal. Sigh.

 

[Skratt]

Because potentially the people who are likely to be playing on easy aren't the ones who you want to risk turning away from your game by calling them idiots.

Pretty much this.

Personally, I play some games on easy or casual just because I want to experience the game. Once I beat it, I throw it away. A few games I actually start on the hardest setting because I know I'll have more fun that way (Alice and Alice: Madness Returns) are two examples. I skipped strait to the hardest setting and had a blast.

 

[Jubeigah]

I don't particularly get it. The people against the idea of a casual mode are the ones who play on hardest difficulty... so it affects them... how? Could it be that games are becoming less niche and thus no longer catering exclusively to an elite few who believe they're owed such an indenture?

I'll agree that the softening of language without reason does mad things to a culture, but this is pretty clearly a case with reason, that being actually telling you what to expect when you start up the game. Easy/normal/hard holds no meaning outside of a given game; casual/normal/hardcore is something people who don't regularly play games can understand, or for that matter, people who don't immediately jump to hardest difficulty to torture themselves until they slog through a game. Is beating casual mode more satisfying to say than easy? Yeah, but I don't see many people with too-wide grins smugly proclaiming their achievement. More like they had fun with their purchase instead of feeling like the game's difficulty/mechanics were broken.

 

[Girl With One Eye]

I can't remember which game it was now, but it had "story" instead of "easy". Either way it doesn't really matter as long as you are happy with the difficulty you have chosen.

 

[carpathic]

Because potentially the people who are likely to be playing on easy aren't the ones who you want to risk turning away from your game by calling them idiots.

I'm not bothered by playing the easy mode, or being made fun of for it. I've played games a long, long time but rarely can I beat any game on anything above normal. ME and ME2 I beat on the second highest level. My fast twitch responses are just not good enough any more and Civilization (including Alpha Centauri and all the way to CIV Revolutions) I can beat on deity most of the time (because no fast twitch).

I suspect many people would fall in that category

 

[tstorm823]

Remember when games had fun difficulty options?

My favorite difficulty setting in a game was from an old game called pang that was an arcade game but I played a browser version in the early 2000's where the highest difficulty was "You can call me Steven Seagal."

I just spent 15 minutes looking for this game and could not find the version that had that.

 

[Dansen]

Probably for the same reason some people think beating the game on hard is an achievement that matters. Because they're pathetic.

Yeah, I never understood the difficulty change either. I usually play games on Normal and switch to easy if some annoying section is kicking my ass.

So liking a challenge is pathetic? Or is it thinking it's an achievement that's pathetic ? But it has to be an achievement if most people can do it right? Isn't that what achievement means? You yourself say you sometimes switch to easy but then say people who play on hard are pethetic because they take pride in it .

Not to say people should look down on you for playing on easy . Play how you want to play.

No, liking a challenge isn't pathetic. Thinking you're above someone else because you can play the game on hard is pathetic. Unless you talking about a tangible reward, like money or a cookie, the difficulty you play on doesn't matter outside your own head.

Gamers who like to brag about the difficulty they finished a game on (or worse, mock people for not being as good at it as they are) are completely pathetic.

How many gamers do that exactly? Too many.

You sound a bit bitter, let them have their fun, it isn't really hurting anyone. I honestly don't think many people translate being better than some one at a game as being inherently better as a person. Just because it doesn't matter to you doesn't mean its worthless. Value is subjective, you should open up your mind a little bit instead of being so ridged. Just my thoughts, take it or leave it.

 

[Doom972]

Some games name their difficulty levels based on what sort of player would use them. Casual gamers, who are less skilled and have reflexes, are advised to try that difficulty level. Likewise, many games name their hard difficulty (usually not the hardest) "Veteran", because they are best suited to someone who played a lot of similar games, has better skill and reflexes because if that, and would probably appreciate a more challenging game.

If someone actually gets offended from a game calling its easy difficulty easy, I'd find it very amusing.