I will admit that, after hours of playing World of Warcraft one night so many years ago, that my mouse pointer hovered ever so dangerously near a shiny blue “buy it now!” button that would have given me all the gold a gnome mage just starting his adventures in the world could have ever hoped for.

I then remembered the old adage: “money does not buy happiness” and wondered if that applied to fake money as well. I mean, when I win Monopoly I’m happy, right?

A single tear fell from my cheek and hit the mouse as I clicked the button. This was now my dirty little secret and my dirty money. But, what do you expect? I suck at video games.

World of Warcraft, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, and so many more games that seem to come out every month fall into the genre of “MMORPG” (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game for you acronym-o-phobes out there).

These games are in a league of their own when it comes to their audience and the social stigmas that seem to come with playing them: Orc themed weddings, people dying because they can’t stop playing, divorces occurring because people can’t stop playing, and soft-drinks marketing them are only a few of the stories that litter the internet.

While still able to slightly cater to the casual player MMOs (as they’ll be called for the rest of this article) are the epitome of requiring ridiculous amounts of time in order to become even adequate at the game. The reasoning for this is that it doesn’t take you mastering complex moves like fighting games or mastering exactly what weapon is good on each map in each area like shooters but it takes you mastering a character and farming for equipment instead.

It essentially takes both you and your character mastering the game to become good at it. Let me explain:

For those who have never played these games (and whatever deity you believe in or don’t bless you for that) gathering higher-level equipment requires a lot of luck and time to invest in order to get some of the best pieces.

Many items have less than a ten percent chance of dropping (even after you’ve spent upwards of five hours running the instance) which means you’ll be running these long raids (areas that require up to twenty people to have the time to spend doing this) or instances (much more forgiving, only requiring five people) again and again in hopes of scoring these coveted items.

Did I mention that usually most of these areas only have at best two of the items you might want or need for your character?

While you can get by on your own for the most part or without ever joining parties the game becomes slightly more difficult as you progress in level. Many areas have more group quests than they do single-player quests which could put a damper on your game experience and leave you out in the cold on some content.

These games are, in fact, called “Massively Multiplayer” for a reason.

I began this three-part series specifically with MMO’s in mind and grew it into other games. As I began to think more about genres of games and the problems they quickly seem to be growing into as they begin to lose focus on what makes a game enjoyable for those who just enjoy playing games I began to realize that the ability to be a “casual” gamer is dying away and partly because of the focus on competition that these games bring.

In the 80’s and 90’s when gaming started becoming an actual hobby gamers were looked down upon as nerds and as losers yet now people see it as a competitive and popular (as well as lucrative) “sport”. As companies begin to focus solely on multiplayer the rest of the great games who can stand toe-to-toe with these massive monsters will begin to drift away. If no one is buying them, companies will never make them. Why would they? The reason for a business is to make money isn’t it?

It isn’t the fault of gamers for this evolution but the companies themselves who offer incentives within competition. Achievements and trophies, which do absolutely nothing for the games, bring about increased reasons to be competitive even when not playing multiplayer.

This can for most people put a focus on these useless points and baubles for no reason other than to save face because let’s face it if you have none you suck, right? So you better get a million of them. Casual gaming, at least good casual gaming (the Wii doesn’t count), is dying and we are its four horsemen. Enjoy the single player epics while you can boys and girls because they will eventually be phased out in favor of more lucrative ventures unless something changes.

The problem isn't that I suck at video games. The problem is that the industry makes casual gamers believe that they suck at video games.

It isn't - I'm going to e-mail it to you, I promise...