Wow, this thread got ugly fast...

I won't really quote anyone but I do have to agree more with Yearg on this. Giving a designation of "Hardcore" and "causal" is pretty silly to me, and ultimately is just people trying to create some imaginary pseudo-social group that makes them feel superior to a larger group we know as gamers.

Yet, often people who utter this phrase to create distinction from themselves and others fail to realize that they are making up the rules that apply. What makes a game hardcore? What actually makes it casual? Difficulty? The majority of games are easy compared to the old days. No more use of "lives", infinite continues, regenerative health, and not to mention overpowered moves that often make you feel more awesome than the amount of effort you actually placed in it. Even in terms of difficulty, the old games were only hard cause they followed the arcade format and games had to be hard to force a player to put in more money.

It has to be real and gritty? Most games are certainly not realistic, and as for gritty, that's just an art direction and does not actually equate any more merit than saying water colors are less "art" than traditional oil based paints. I can bore you to tears by deconstructing the common tropes and cliches that people often use as descriptors for differentiating the two groups. Its pretty much subjective, and there are no actual "rules"or in stone defintions for either word. Who is more "hardcore", the guy who occasionally plays Halo with friends on Saturday nights, but has never even touched hard mode let alone Legendary, or the guy who spends every night playing Mine Sweeper til he gets so good he has a 98% success rate and can tell where every mine is after the first two moves because he recognizes which of the hundred pre-set scripts the game is using. I can tell you which one is probably getting more out of life.

Hell, by some people's definition of "Hardcore" I would say you can't count RPGs, simply because they hand you victory by playing. If you get stuck in an action game, you can't advance until you the player personally gets better. In an RPG, you can just keep fighting enemies repetitively until the game awards you with higher stats so you can beat the boss. That's not challenge, that's just work. You get a treat for playing, not because you better yourself.

Like NeoCracker I would say a hardcore gamer is simply someone who loves games and sets apart some time to play them. A casual gamer only whips out Rockband or Guitar Hero when friends are over, or to kill time before a movie comes on. A hardcore gamer is someone who goes home to play games to relax and has them as an active part of their lives.