In contrast to competitive play, casual gaming is driven more by a fun mentality. It is not too important to win, although winning of course is a more desired experience. The general game play is very often affected by more risky strategies, even to the point of fooling around. The game results are not unimportant, but not necessarily the focus. Trying new strategies is very often done in casual matches. There are games, where competitive and casual play are even separated, such as Starcraft 2 or Counter-Strike Global Offensive. Laddering systems are to be kept »clean«, so a player tries to not mess up the own ranking, so trying on casual mode makes more sense.
An even further approach to casual gaming is the coop. Many casual players try to avoid the confrontation with other players, as that would make it a necessity that a human is loosing (which is not always acceptable for casual players). One way is playing together against the AI, in missions or simply bots versus humans. Another solution for that problem is to not even play with other humans at all, but the single-player of a game.
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