It's the achievement system. Now your accomplishment feels worthless as it told you exactly what to do. Then were the changeable difficulties. There are games that will now say "If you're having a tough time, you can change the difficulty in-game" REALLY?! Sure I'm not old enough to have known all the classics, but I do remember the feeling of accomplishment of beating a dungeon in Ocarina of Time as an eight year-old. That was the hardest thing back then, and I had literally set the game down for months out of frustration because I couldn't figure it out (I'm talking to you, water temple). Every game needs to be set to a single difficulty which would be like Heroic in Halo. It's going to be a challenge to beat it, you will want to break your monitor, but you will finish it. But onto the real problem (here comes the rant). To so-called "casuals", you are ALL casuals. Unless your means of surviving is to play video games, you are not hardcore. People who call themselves hardcore or "competitive" really have driven this further because the only genre that really applies to the self-named category are shooters. It used to be that someone would sit down and enjoy every game they got. There was nothing hardcore about the classics other than the intensity at which people would play it. Yet, because people have artificially divided the entire video game culture, games had to start splitting directions too with ultra-violent games that require "skill" on one side and children's games on the other. Then if a game doesn't make you feel like it took skill to do something, it wasn't competitive and catered to the casuals. Everyone just had to become the mlg player with perfect stats and just had to give up the fun time of trash talking and joking around with random people. And so that's why Nintendo is failing, that's why everyone and their mom plays call of duty, that's why any game considered to be decently made is rated M, that's why no one uses a mic anymore, that's why there is the PC master race, that's why xboxone looked like a flop to so many. People don't want the games anymore for their fun, they don't want the entertainment. All they want is this lie that they are pros, that if they pretend to be playing something less casual than super mario bros, and that if they use the better hardware and study the specific rof, dps, and the calculations behind every facet of gameplay, they are the superior gamer. Just take a step back from it all guys. They are Video [b]GAMES[/b]. No matter the difficulty, play the game for the game, not the k/d, w/l ratios. If you think you are better than someone, there's this thing called a private match to prove it. If every one of your games is one you would consider a "cinematic experience" rather than a good game, maybe you should reevaluate your purchases. Look to the path less traveled, buy the games that no one else will. If you love them, spread the word, and stop buying every major title just because it is one. Yeah, games have gotten easier, but that's because everyone today wants the instant satisfaction and the feeling of "skill". If games don't do that, they're pushed aside as casual games. Game devs didn't make the games easier out of choice. The self-named "core" gamers forced them to so that their games could survive. Sorry for the long rant, but it felt necessary to me. If you disagree, that's fine. If you call me a casual, that's fine, so are you. TL;DR? that's fine.