I’m a pretty avid gamer, I would say. I have been playing video games for the vast majority of my life. I own over a dozen systems and hundreds of games. I enjoy titles from just about every genre, excluding sports (unless you count Hot Shots Golf, I’ll play that all day long). I’ve been to E3, PAX, and a handful of other conventions. Oh yeah, and I work for a video game website. Despite all of these things some might use on a checklist to determine gamer cred, I never refer to myself as “hardcore”. Why? Because I really hate that term.

This generation, Nintendo started what has been described as a “casual gaming revolution” with the Wii and DS, pulling an entirely new audience into our industry. At first, this seemed like a good thing. Finally, people who didn’t care about gaming were showing an interest, thanks to games like Wii Sports and Brain Age. While this should have created a new unity among all gamers, instead it has created a giant rift between the casual and the other side of the fence, the “hardcore”. Just like casual gamers were once easily defined, hardcore gamers used to be simple to spot as well. Hardcore gamers were the ones with more than just a passing interest in gaming. As this generation has gone on, though, gaming has evolved, and the meanings of “casual” and “hardcore” have become pretty unclear. Even worse, they have been turned into little more than message board insults and marketing strategies, which means that continuing to try and fit every gamer into these categories is only going to be detrimental.



First of all, the meaning of “hardcore” changes from person to person. Some say that the hardcore like shooters and only play games on the 360 and PS3, as if playing a quality game on the Wii makes you less of a gamer. Others claim that Call of Duty 4 and BioShock, two of the most popular games this generation, are for babies, and only those who can beat the hardest, most frustrating games are “hardcore”. The popularity of music games has further muddled these terms, because while just about anyone can jump in and play Guitar Hero or Rock Band, few can master them on the highest difficulty settings. Are they casual? Are they hardcore? Pretty much every owner of a Wii or DS has been accused of being a “casual” gamer, but what, exactly, makes a game casual? Is it widespread mainstream appeal? If that’s the case, that means games like Super Mario Galaxy and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess—again, some of the best games this generation—are casual, despite both of them taking dozens of hours to complete. Or is it mass-produced, low-quality games that are considered casual? This is also a problem, because it shouldn’t be nearly as acceptably as it is for publishers to pump out shovelware in hopes of attacting new gamers—that’s partially what caused the video game crash of the early 80s, certainly not something we want repeated.

By continuing to use these meaningless terms, we’re letting the general public categorize and stereotype us. To the outside world, hardcore gamers are men who only play games filled with blood and gore, while casual gamers are children, tween girls, parents, and the elderly. This allows for stupid marketing campaigns to insult our intelligence and countless shovelware titles to clutter our store shelves. Most gamers know by now that people of all ages, male and female, enjoy a wide variety of titles. We don’t say things like “casual TV watcher” or “casual filmgoer”, so we need to just deal with the fact that as the industry grows, it’s going to attract a wider audience, including some who have never been interested in this form of entertainment before. It’s not a bad thing; it means gaming is becoming less of a niche and more of a widespread, accepted way to spend time.



As gamers, it’s already hard enough having to deal with the uninformed media painting us as heartless killers, or socially inept nerds living in our parents’ basements. We don’t need to label each other meaningless things just to feel better about ourselves. It’s pointless, and the terms “hardcore” and “casual” are becoming more obsolete every day. They mean different things to everyone, and the fact that you enjoy different games than someone else doesn’t make you a better gamer. So please, once and for all, can we just cut out the hardcore vs. casual gamer nonsense?