Near the beginning of the millennium, I wrote an opinion column titled "My Twenty-Five Cents" in a short lived zine titled "Classic Gamer Magazine" iirc. I used the pen name "Damien Quicksilver" at the time. I get thoughts about gaming that I feel the urge to write about from time to time, so this is something of a reprisal I suppose. If there is somehow anyone out there who remembers that zine, that would be amazing. It was made with a group of folks I met in rec.games.video.classic on Usenet. If there is somehow anyone out there who remembers what Usenet is, you're old. If you don't know what Usenet was, it was basically the cretaceous period equivalent of Reddit.
I'm not sure when I first heard of the term "casual gamer". But I understood two things about it immediately: Firstly, that it was derisive. Secondly, that it couldn't possibly apply to me. After all, gaming was not some fly-by-night ...