I wrote this in response to a posting on a message board where the user wrote: "Being a 'hardcore gamer' these days involves playing hour upon hour of WoW or FPS on your computer."

That got me thinking. What does it mean to be hardcore player? I certainly consider myself a hardcore player, and over the past few weeks I've played at the most three or four hours of videogames. In fact, I've spent more time scanning magazines and planning new displays for my videogames then actually playing them. Never in a million years would I describe my gaming habits as casual.

I firmly believe that the style of gamer you are completely relies on what games you like to play. Do you play only party games on Wii, or nothing but Rockband? Once you have mastered these games will you stop gaming altogether? These represent the gaming habits of a casual gamer, who will only generally only play games that are simple (I'm using the word 'simple' very loosely, so don't flame please) to pick up and play, and also to put back down again. Once the challenge is gone, or once there is nothing left but an arbitrary thing such as score, a casual player will put the game down and not play it again until it is required in a social situation. However many casual gamers will play these games for hundreds of hours on end. I had an old work friend describe how he played Space Invaders on the Atari VCS for weeks at a time, but he never played anything else, and abandoned the game after the Crash of '83.

Hardcore gamers, however, are different. While game companies and distributors will describe a gamer exclusively by the game they play and how frequently they purchase said games, I believe a hardcore gamer can be defined by not only the type of game they play, but also their habits in playing them. Did you play GTA to see for the story, or for the challenge of getting into impossible places the designers hadn't thought of? Did you play a FF game so much that you could finish the game with only one character? Did you write the FAQ on how to do this? Did you read the same FAQ so you could do the learn how that player did it? These are all habits of a hardcore gamer. However these aren't the limits. A hardcore gamer can be a person who plays anything, anytime, for any reason. The real difference between casual and hardcore is that a hardcore gamer will continue to game, regardless of social constraints placed upon them by those of the gaming industry and the media. A casual gamer will often stop gaming if it is considered uncool (which is what I believe really caused the Videogame Crash, that is, perception of games through the media and societal figures), or if they have "played the game out".

So by utilizing what I have stated above, a casual gamer can be someone who plays WoW or an FPS for hundreds of hours, and a hardcore gamer can be someone who only plays games on their current Nintendo system. Confused? That's alright, if there was no confusion then there would be no discussion.

In summary, please remember that we are all gamers, and even though casual gamers may or may not have caused the Crash of '83 (ahem), there is no reason we cannot have a civil discussion without poo-slinging and name-calling.

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