32 replies to this topic

[Auzzie Wingman]

Since Hardcore gamers don't seem to have a precise definition that everyone can agree on, I guess they simply don't exist.

[dagwood dang]

A hardcore gamer is someone who games as a primary hobby; no other explanation is needed. I don't mean just playing the latest COD game either.

^This, and that's it.
Everything else you guys are saying (P.C. vs 360, CoD and all that other stuff) is just extra mumbo jumbo.

A casual gamer doesn't game as intensely, and tends to play more laid back games.
Nintendo appealed to many casual gamers with the Wii by way of fun, simple games that are easy to control and aren't as 'overbearing' I guess.

The problem is that it's not all that black and white. There are exceptions all throughout the industry,
so even these definitions are a bit gray, which is why Iwata san doesn't like the two terms.

Edited by dagwood dang, 01 May 2012 - 04:11 PM.

[Soul]

Currently (In America) a hardcore gamer is one who plays games that have hardcore violence.

[Blake]

I disagree i used to play alot of cod back around black ops and world at war ,and i still manged to play alot of other games cod was just one of my favorites.

At the end of the day, everybody who plays video game frequently is a "hardcore" gamer. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing.


This debate could go on forever though.

[Nollog]

A hardcore gamer is a person who only plays games which are deemed appropriate by his peers.

[Joshua]

Someone who plays video games as a primary hobby. They tend to spend large amounts of time playing games, often in excess of two or three hours a day.

Hardcore gamers tend to care less about graphics then casual gamers. While some specialize in a single genre, they typically have fairly diverse taste in games, frequently playing a wide variety of games from different genres. They'll often seek out obscure and older games, based on word of mouth or positive critical reception. Hardcore gamers put good gameplay above all else, and don't mind if a good game has poor (or even nonexistent) graphics, sound, characters and plot.

I don't mean to brag but this description suits me perfectly.

A hardcore gamer is a person who only plays games which are deemed appropriate by his peers.

Actually that kind of gamer is called a 'bro gamer'.
It's easy to weed them out since they only play Madden and Call of Duty.

[DigitalGreenTea]

For me, there is no hardcore gamer, or casual gamer or whatever.

Here, this describes it perfectly:

[Stewox]

Someone who plays video games as a primary hobby. They tend to spend large amounts of time playing games, often in excess of two or three hours a day.

Hardcore gamers tend to care less about graphics then casual gamers. While some specialize in a single genre, they typically have fairly diverse taste in games, frequently playing a wide variety of games from different genres. They'll often seek out obscure and older games, based on word of mouth or positive critical reception. Hardcore gamers put good gameplay above all else, and don't mind if a good game has poor (or even nonexistent) graphics, sound, characters and plot.

Here I am

There are several upper levels too where the person is experienced with the industry on a wider subject than just pure software games, this experience comes from stuff like modding and custom PC assembling as well as other similar areas.

Some considered hardcore gamers sometimes know more or less about a particular area in which they focus on or gained experience,

I would take one example of my self.

Pros:
- I have great experience with custom PC assembling, fixing, optimizing, part purchasing, comparing, (sometimes a little more expensive thing offers significantly more performance/quality/resources)
- I have great experience with modding (programming, coding, map making ...)
- I have great experience with OS(win) tweaking,setup,customizing, optimizing for performance (OEM (branded) PCs are a joke)
- Ability to quickly identify bugs and inconcistency in games, bad design, bad programming, multiple symptoms of developer attitude and their abilities.
- I do not comment, speculate, debate subjects which are in cons because I know I do not fully understand the whole picture.
- Ability to identify developer effort that was put into implementing a particular feature or material. (eg.: Starcraft 2 replay feature; hand-made textures)
- Hardware and Industry background

Cons:
- I do not have much experience with modelling, sculpting, painting, ... anything with art, but i do identify quality and can distinguish it.
- mediocre experience with linux
- crap games make me very frustrated and upset, it's a form of psychological torture, that's why i don't play them(nor have time to, but i can try new)


Overall benefits:
- passion, striving for high-quality results
- ability to identify deeper meanings of rumors, fakes and consitency as well as estimated % of accuracy.
- easy to learn new programs (many cons could be improved if i would focus on them)
- able to find solutions unheard to me before (vision,suspicion,problem solving skills) - if not I make the solution my self if possible (community contributor)
- not making conclusions too fast on insufficient data/information ("constructive speculation" = detective work backed by facts, belivable rumors, historical knowlege, analysis of data, results are never 100% true but the REP goes to the best analysis of the data at hand, if the data at hand is wrong then the detective wrok cannot be blamed)



However bad sound can affect the mood - certainly if it's annoying or distracting in a sort of biological way or non-fitting it can make a negative subjective effect.

A hardcore gamer is someone who games as a primary hobby; no other explanation is needed. I don't mean just playing the latest COD game either.

That's what i wanted to point out that you fail to recognize. I violently disagree with your assessment. There is no superior term above "hardcore" that is normally used in the industry.

It's it's a big topic, complex and varying levels of experience make up people's mind.

Many hardcore PC gamers came from hardcore nintendo background (like me) - i played hardcore games to begin with, exclusively, early times most games were hardcore, the crap games were very unsuccessful thus did not enter mainstream to be even noticed by parents

It was my passion for electronics in early times and nintendo's "no blood, no violence" policy that made my parents to buy N64, i do not even recall the moment in the shop since i was so young (maybe hypnosis would help) - but i think they woudn't buy it if it was some military shooting and killing and american crap like that.

It really has nothing to do with console vs PC kiddy info wars .... that's totally on philosophic and psychological level which is fanboyism, it's another debate of having to have separate views and totally different way of thinking when dealing with consoles and PCs on daily basis, personally I take them completely separate, I do not play multiplatform titles either, except if the PC version is worthwhile, which happens rarely.

I did not waste time, effort, to try some el cheapo games - it's the industry that made and shaped the customers, today's social/mobile industry is breeding a generation of pretty dull gamers without any sort of hard experience and background.

It's these sort of people that would normally make the most noise on the internet, that "noise" is double-meaning, also meant as actual dilution, a false assumption, noise in their perception influencing the public view further spreading; the subjective speculation based on poor personal analysis, resulting in a heavily biased or plain wrong debate, comments, predictions and expectations.

It's not something you choose to be and it happens ... you have to get experience from the beginning to be able to have a

Hardcore is a powerful word - indicates the best of best and I do not like using this word to indicate people who play "3 hrs per day, multiple platforms, for years, no further info needed" ... that's ridicolozs, anyone could be a "hardcore" gamer then, even those who have no idea about the industry at all, don't post on forums, don't know pretty much anything else what's going on.

You could then say a hardcore gamer would be some random 40yr old guy who played 2000 hrs of angry birds for the last few years. Come on.

These casual people don't even know the upper classes exist, they aren't even aware of the scope of gaming, industry, communities and events happening. That's like me talking about poetry ... hell do i know what's good or bad and what's pimped and what's truly hardcore. I do not comment, discuss, debate, predict, or have any subjective opinion on things I do not specialize in.

Hardcore:
- custom PC bassembling, self-maintenance, manual OS installation
- played at least some nintendo first-party games
- understands basics or more how games work, how software works, how hardware works,
- ability to distinguish and identify causes: eg: features - between limitations of hardware, business-level decisions or actual programming error in software (games).
- understands at least one scripting language (modding, tweaking)
- has 5-10 or more years of experience with above points. (some things need longer to master, other's much quicker, depending on dedication and effort)
- recalls historical facts, company-specific legacy such as decisions, comments, hints, indications, business practices ...
- uses forums for feedback and contributes to the community, helps/informs other users
- will not cater into bad
- gives smaller studios a chance, which prove

Mainstream:
- plays games on steam and let's software automatization manage his stuff
- gives his PC to a friend to fix, setup, assemble or takes it to a costly
- hooks up on mediocre fads, tries them but takes time for him to realize it's boring.


Casual:
- ignorant about the scope of gaming and what happens in the industry
- plays social / web / mobile games
- is not visible on the internet a lot, hangs on very general and non-specific sites.
- uses "automatic install" when running setup
- buys a new PC / device if if internet/system speed is poor for excessive time period ***
- cannot identify the cause of the problem
- does not understand details how software works and has very different perception.
- does not know what is easy and can be done quickly compared to what takes time to make it work.
- quality of gameplay is irrelevant, cannot identify quality, cannot identify genuine effort, cannot identify copycats/fakes
- easily distracted by next big trend, easily distracted by marketing; false friend clames, does not check nor research
- their first impression is hard to reverse


*** That was a funny one cause I exploded out of laughter, a friend told me that his college friend had a very OMFG moment when trying to fix his girlfriend's windows laptop, worth ~2000€, after some time she was experiening progressive loss of "internet speed" (*system) she bought a new 2000€ laptop with little consent trying to get the old one fixed, since she's a casual she couldn't identify the real cause thus the "problem" was "slow internet" until after her guy could intervene and try to fix the old laptop. After he had a more thorough check he noticed that the Internet Explorer process was actually not exiting at all, instead only the taskbar item disappeared, she was running the laptop with over 2000 separate processes of iexplore.exe which were extremely slowing down the machine system performance and obviously batterly life which she apparently didn't notice, the internet was fine all the time.

Hardcore people also realize running your devices in sleep/hibernation is not good. All sorts of weird bugs happen that i didn't even mention here, windows being a very buggy OS. But a simple restart would have fixed the issue temporairly, it was apparently something else causing the iexplore.exe not to close which would have explained the possible restarts at least once monthly at which point the girl could identify the "ok internet speed" ... again microsoft's fault is the primary suspect, I do not believe she managed to rank up 2000 processes in a few days without noticing the improved speed, since casuals rarely install drivers or do anything else that would prompt a PC restart in the first place.

There are so many people that are in the middle of all this because they're improving as times go by, this is an EXTREMELY complex topic for me to explain in fullness - this would probably need a worldwide study in immense detail ... a report could go for 100 pages or more, it's a lot of stuff, factors and possilities, possible results and how some tiny stuff can affect perception no matter if you're super-duper-hardware-omg specialist ... even the actual employees are sometimes such noobs they don't really get the whole thing except what they daily do for work then you get these isolated people to play smartass and talk BS around.

[Plutonas]

here is what is mentioned in wiki pedia.. but they dont refer to Enthusiasts and extremes.

Types of gamers

Further information: Video game#Demographics
In the United States, the average video game player is 35 and has been playing video games for over 12 years.^[2] In the UK, the average video game player is over 23 years old, has played video games for over 10 years, and spends around 12.6 hours a week playing video games.^[3] The term "gamer" is composed of several subgroups.
Casual gamer

See also: Casual game
A casual gamer is a player whose time or interest in playing games is limited. Casual gamers tend to play games designed for ease of gameplay and don't spend much time playing more involved games. The genres that casual gamers play vary, and they might not own a specific video game console to play their games.^[4][5] Casual gaming demographics vary greatly from those of traditional video games, as the typical casual gamer is older and more predominantly female.^[6] One casual gamer subset is the "fitness gamer", who plays motion-based exercise games.^[7]
The term casual gamer can also be used to distinguish between play styles of level-based character advance in nonlinear games with respect to the amount of dedicated hours of play. MMORPGs may require many hours of grinding to develop a character to maximum level and reach the endgame. Other games like Eve Online and The Lord of the Rings Online try to balance leveling so that casual gamers can play along with those dedicating more hours to the game. ^[8]
Mid-core gamer

A core or mid-core gamer is a player with a wide range of interests and enthusiast toward creative and diverse games,^[9] but without the amount of time spent and sense of competition of a hardcore gamer. The mid-core gamer enjoys complex games but won't buy every novel release, doesn't have time for long games,^[10] and is a target consumer ^[11] that needs features not found in games for the other types. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata stated that they designed the Wii U to cater to a core gamer who is between the casual and hard-core categories.^[12]
Hardcore gamer

Hardcore gamers prefer to take significant time and practice on games, and tend to play more involved games that require larger amounts of time to complete or master. Hardcore gamers may take part in video game culture.^{[further explanation needed]} Competition is another defining characteristic of hardcore gamers, who often compete in organized tournaments, leagues, or ranked play integrated into the game proper, an example of this is Major League Gaming, an Electronic sports organization that often holds events for hardcore First-person shooter games such as Call of Duty. There are many subtypes of hardcore gamers based on the style of game, gameplay preference, hardware platform, and other preferences.
Pro-gamer

Professional gamers play video games for money.^[13] Whether a professional gamer is a subtype of the hardcore gamer largely depends on the degree to which a professional gamer is financially dependent upon the income derived from gaming. So far as a professional gamer is financially dependent upon gaming, the time spent playing is no longer "leisure" time. In countries of Asia, particularly South Korea and Japan, professional gamers are sponsored by large companies and can earn more than $100,000USD a year, in addition to the following that some obtain.^[14] In the United States, Major League Gaming has contracted Electronic Sports Gamers with $250,000USD yearly deals.^[15]
Also, many progamers are earning significant amounts of money testing these games for the various companies who are more then happy to pay for this service.Once the tester is done reviewing the game they usually get to keep the game. Allowing the testers to keep the game is no small thing as most new video games for consoles like Xbox 360 are priced at $59.99.
Newbie

Main article: Newbie
"Newbie" is a slang term for a novice or newcomer to a certain game, or to gaming in general.^[16][17] It can have derogatory connotations, but is also often used for descriptive purposes only, without a value judgment. Two derived terms are "newb", a beginner who is willing to learn; and "noob", a derogatory name (an alternate spelling for n00b), though "newb" and "n00b" have become opposites of each other, meaning "newb" is plainly someone who is new to the game (thus having the potential to get better) and "n00b" is a player who both lacks skill and mainly fools around (not wanting to become better).
Retrogamer

Main article: Retrogaming
A retrogamer is a gamer preferring playing and collecting retro games - older video games and arcade games. The term retrogamer is used mostly in the United Kingdom and Europe, while the terms classic gamer, or old-school gamer are more prevalent in the United States. The games are played either on the original hardware, on modern hardware via console emulation, or on modern hardware via ports or compilations.^[18] Some retrogamers are in the business of refurbishing old games, particularly arcade cabinets. Some even make their own arcade cabinets.
Girl gamer

Main article: Girl gamer
A girl gamer is any woman who regularly engages in playing video games. According to a study conducted by the Entertainment Software Association in 2009, 40% of the game playing population is female, and women 18 or older now comprise 34% of all gamers. Also, the percentage of women now playing online has risen to 43%, up 4% from 2004. The same study shows that 48% of game purchasers are female.^[19][20]
Gaymer

Main article: Gaymer
Gaymer, or Gay Gamer, is a term used to refer to the group of people who identify themselves as gay, bisexual, lesbian, or transgendered and have an active interest in the video game community (gamers).^[21]
This demographic has been the subject of two large surveys: by Jason Rockwood in 2006,^[22] who noted the level of prejudice that gaymers endure,^[23] and by Paul Nowak in 2009, focusing in what contents gaymers expect in videogames.^[24][25]


So obviously hardcore gamers are bellow enthusiasts and extremers, Here is the source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamer

Edited by Orion, 02 May 2012 - 10:36 AM.

[Blasty]

Here I am

I disagree as I do not fall into any of the categories you've listed.

[Narcidius]

yeah... all of these "standards" seem really, really arbitrary. For Nintendo's purposes I really do think they just mean "people who will buy lots of games". Why would they care about whether or not a person is psychologically affected by their friends' choices, or knows how to disassemble and reassemble a PC in a minute and fifteen seconds flat?

to be honest, everybody here (including myself, I know, I know) sounds like a blowhard every now and then when pushing their definitions and opinions about what gaming is all about... and I think there's a big lack of self-awareness when people turn up their nose at "kids who only play games for x or y silly reason". What, like you REALLY know what you mean by "gameplay is all I care about"? Like you never find yourself enjoying a game that a hundred million 8th graders also happen to like, just because THEIR reason for liking it is the cool poster with the guy holding a really big gun? Come on...

That's like pretending that you don't enjoy fast food or junk food, simply due to the fact that fine cuisine is "better". Better for what? For complexity? For skill of composition? For profound possibilities of reflection and existential bliss? Sure. For quick energy? For facilitating social interaction? For comfort? For excitement? Maybe not.

Also, what's with the tacitly accepted disparagement of "violence" in games, and the somewhat bigoted insinuation that violence is something only "Americans" like? Um............ last time I checked, "violence" was a staple of the industry. I don't think that Mario crushes his enemies in the spirit of peace and goodwill. If people are somehow arguing that "sanitized" violence - violence that is disguised as non-violence by clever puffs of smoke or the absence of blood - is somehow not violence... well then that's a different discussion.

[Mignaga]

A hardcore gamer loves games, and is willing to do a lot with them. A casual gamer thinks of gaming as a recreational activity, and doesn't go in depth with the whole thing. That is my definition anyways, everyone has a different opinion about the whole thing.

[Nollog]

http://www.youtube.c...FKshLimQ#t=675s
According to machima, FPS = hardcore, Everything Else = Casual.