Please don't feel like "a savage among civilized men". Video games are made to have fun with.

I experienced both sides. First trying to become a professional CS:GO player, and after just having fun playing the Starcraft 2 story.

Some of my friends still deeply enjoy the competitive aspect. Sometimes I just want to see big stonking robots blow up aliens :)

This was how I played AoE and StarCraft as a kid! I think the vast majority of players play them this way, actually. If you're in the competitive multiplayer scene, it's easy to forget there are millions or tens of millions of single player / campaign-only players.

Campaigns seem to have a bad rep among most gamers online, but honestly they are the most satisfying aspect of strategy games. One of my favourite games growing up was Rise of Nations and its Conquer the World maps - remove that and you get a worthless husk.

I absolutely loved rise of nations. I didn't play the campaigns though, I played random map 1v1 matches versus the AI. Had a great time!

The majority of players come for the campaign and the space fantasy narrative.

The competitive scene has been stable and has kept sc going forever.