I'm so much better than you at being a gamer!

[Bolivar]

Before this hideous, horrible generation of video games started, and the terms hardcore and casual along with it, a hardcore gamer to me was someone heavily involved with the modding community on counter-strike, or playing Japanese imports on a modded PlayStation. A casual gamer, to me, is someone who plays popular games every now and then, a couple games online here and there, and maybe sometimes dabbles in deeper games like Bioshock or Fallout 3, but then again, they probably wouldn't touch either of those or Mass Effect if those games weren't so much like the shooters they venerate.

So, what do you call someone who doesn't mod, but who spends 95% of their free time (ie: when not asleep or working, but including meals) playing video games? Because I don't seem to fall into either of those two groups. Maybe I'm just a gamer. Something to be proud of.

If you read the post you would know hardcore and casual are arbitrary titles with little meaning used to define things in categories so economic phenomenon can be explained.

Furthermore, why do you want to be defined? If you really needed to, Mirage's "game enthusiast" works or just regular gamer, there's no need to add an adjective to that. Furthermore, I usually say how gaming is something I do, it's not really who I am (can you catch that reference?) i don't understand why people want it to define them. But I considered myself a pretty big gaming when hardcore and casual meant what I used to take it as.

The Wii.

/thread

Monster Hunter Tri

Thread re-opened!

Exactly. I was just at my friend's apartment with no PS3, no 360, doesn't really use his PC for games. All he has is a Wii and all he has is stuff like Smash Brothers, Okami, Resident Evil, Pokemon Rumble (ehhh), and all the new stuff he really buys are virtual console titles like Chrono Trigger stuff. Hardcore gamer.

Re-opening widened!

[Hollycat]

hey guys, about a third of you think only the 3ds will be great, a third think both will be great, and a third think that only the ngp will be good.
2 thirds of you are stupid, discuss

[Skyblade]

Furthermore, why do you want to be defined? If you really needed to, Mirage's "game enthusiast" works or just regular gamer, there's no need to add an adjective to that. Furthermore, I usually say how gaming is something I do, it's not really who I am (can you catch that reference?) i don't understand why people want it to define them. But I considered myself a pretty big gaming when hardcore and casual meant what I used to take it as.

Was doing a bad job of making a point, there, really. Any classification system must be designed to handle all valid data. If you acknowledge only two gamer classifications, casual and hardcore, then every gamer out there must be a part of two groups. My description does not fall in either of the definitions given for either hardcore or casual. I have aspects of both, and some aspects that neither have. Either you have to expand your classification system to include more types (such as Mirage did with the "enthusiast" title), or you have to accept that trying to classify millions of people worldwide into two happy little demographics is just stupid.

[kotora]

I'm with Bolivar. This whole "hardcore" thing is bull. It's just the new divide thing in the gaming community as a whole, kinda like how it was all about pc vs. consoles before this current generation of mediocrity.

[Jessweeee♪]

I just think it's weird that someone could be classified as a casual gamer and spend 90% of their time (not including sleeping) playing games. That is not casual. That is potentially life-interfering

Short Answer: there are no casual consoles, only casual gamers

The Wii.

/thread

It's certainly the most shovel-ware friendly, but you can own only a Wii console without being grandma.

[NorthernChaosGod]

You people take me much too seriously.