Because it doesn’t seem to matter currently if you play ranked games or casual games, the general experience tends to be the same. But one has numbers and things to go with it. You still get people playing to win in casual games and you get people dicking around having fun in ranked games, and the ranks don’t necessarily indicate how they play as a team and a whole bunch of other things that make it less than ideal.
Can you think of a game that exists in a gray area? Most games I would consider competitive multiplayer games are pretty obviously so. Maybe something like a BR game where you’re expected to not win. Or Elden Ring where the competitive multiplayer aspect is de-emphasized. Do those games even have casual and ranked modes?
Smash Bros? Plenty of people play it as a competitive fighting game while others just like to goof around with their friends.
Funny enough, the two modes for Smash 4 were “for glory” and “for fun”
MTG Arena - there’s a regular play queue and a ranked queue, and people definitely play to mess around and try new decks for fun. This of course doesn’t cease to induce salt from sweaty gamers in the play queue.
Even ignoring games that you consider “in the gray area,” who are you to say someone can’t find a way to have fun in a game that doesn’t align with your way of having fun? Not everyone is playing the game hoping to land on an esports team.
Edit: I’m mostly referring to casual queues - ranked queues being hyper competitive does make sense. I’ve just seen the same argument made that casual queues should be the same level of competitive.
Co-op games that let you troll your buddy?
Things like L4D’s primary mode and Portal 2’s co-op mode.
Those are multiplayer co-op. Can you even compete in those games?
You can compete against each other for points in L4D while not actually playing the adversarial/competitive mode.
You can kill each other in Portal 2’s co-op by being a dick with your side of the portal.
They’re the only things I can think of that are a gray area and not pretty well defined.
I said something similar in another reply, but I can’t think of any games where winning/losing is possible but doesn’t change my enjoyment. Even elden ring invasions feel better if you win the encounter.
The only thing that could come close is an encounter like that or in something like DMZ where you can talk it out and join forces, but maybe that’s just another form of winning.