Define a hardcore gamer.

[Cruickshank]

snip

the easiest, although not most accurate description for fallout 3 and new vegas is oblivion/skyrim with guns; it is a first person open world sandbox game, more of an rpg than a shooter really, especially with the VATS system to negate any real need to run and gun. if you like shooters with more depth or dont mind first person rpg's your best bet would be to wait for a steam sale and see if you can get it cheap, its worth playing.

 

[Scarim Coral]

The way I define it is it's a gamer who had invested a huge amount of time into a game and tend to complete it more than the normal or casual gamer would never achieve.

 

[Phasmal]

I've never really believed in separating gamers.

However, when I do classify, I always use the terms `casual`, `core` and `hardcore`.

Because splitting us into two opposite groups doesn't make sense to me.
So, what, you're either a ditzy casual playing Candy Crush, or you're running through the challenges on Dark Souls 2 to get invisible weapons?

Personally, I believe a hardcore gamer is someone who is simply dedicated to games. You could be a hardcore Sims fan, who has over 20 generations of Sims- or you could just in general be a hardcore fan who is excited by most games, and tries to play as many games as much as possible.
The distinction is fairly meaningless, and only useful to describe the amount of effort YOU personally put into your hobby.

When you start using it to dismiss others, or tell them their own level of enjoyment in their own hobby, you have turned into an asshole. Don't be that guy. Nobody likes that guy.

 

[Redd the Sock]

I really reserve "hardcore" for acts that go against general common sense. Hardcore as a term has generally had connotations of doing something most people would do, so while I'd say making gaming your primary hobby, or having a lot of general knowledge makes you a devotee, but hardcore takes doing something even devotees look at quizzically.

for example:

A casual plays Zelda games.
A devotee plays every Zelda game and tries for every heart container.
A hardcore tries a no sword run in the original Zelda and seeks other ways to go "what else can I do".

A casual buys games they immediately enjoy
A devotee buys as many games as they can reasonable play
A hardcore has a backlog as long as your arm they don't concern themselves about adding to.

A casual knows series
A devotee knows publishes / developers
A hardcore knows directors and art designers.

Stuff like that.

 

[Raikas]

I don't see any use to using "hardcore gamer" as a reference term. As a relative term, sure - a person could be described as being "more hardcore" about some element of gaming, or of some specific game, but I don't think it's a useful term on its own.

No I play Call of Duty because my friend does. no other reason. I don't play Battlefield cuz again, not big into shooters so I'm not going to spend money just to see if it's better than Call of Duty. I don't play Splinter Cell or Farcry or FallOut or any other lesser Call of Duties because they are just lesser Call of Duties.

Fallout as a lesser CoD? That's baffling considering that it's not even the same genre of game. Fair enough if it's not your thing, but it's an RPG series that's most similar to The Elder Scrolls games, not a military shooter of the CoD/Battlefield type.

 

[DoubleU12]

Fallout as a lesser CoD? That's baffling considering that it's not even the same genre of game. Fair enough if it's not your thing, but it's an RPG series that's most similar to The Elder Scrolls games, not a military shooter of the CoD/Battlefield type.

That is what I have been hearing more and more. : ) I'm not against Fall Out, I know very little about it but I have to be careful because video games are expensive and I'm not a big huge fan of shooting games. So yeah I may have given it a poor judgement call on that part but that was the impression I got from its advertising and it's advertising didn't catch me enough to look into it further and I don't rally have any friends who highly recommended the game to me which is how I learn how games like Bio Shock or Last of Us are more along the lines of something I might be interested in. So yeah, my bad on the Fall Out comment but again $60 is a lot of money to risk on a genre I have a history of disliking, I hope you can understand that a little.

 

[Gankytim]

Casual gamer: Mostly plays iPhone games, Facebook games, and your generic dudebro shooters, only owns one console.

Core gamer: Ventures out a little, has varied tasted. Owns some consoles, in some cases a core gamer will have a decent PC, never an enthusiast rig. Probably used Nexus Mod Manager to mod Skyrim.

Idort gamers: plays everything they can get their hands on

Hardcore gamer: The games these people play require the skill level you'd find in S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Pathologic, Dwarf Fortress, obscure roguelikes are a favorite of these people.

Purist gamers: tournament level players who are never seen out of the top three on the leaderboard, speedrunners who take on hundred hour games. They learn every tiny facet about a game and fucking love doing it.

These are the stark hard definitions, you fit into one. Idorts are the biggest group in gaming, something like 70%.

 

[DrOswald]

Being a hardcore gamer is not about genres played or even time spent playing games. It's not about what consoles you own or if you play on hard mode. A gamer can only be categorized by their relationship to games. This is going to sound as pretentious as hell, but the difference between a casual gamer, a normal gamer, and a hardcore gamer is that the casual gamer plays games as a time waster, the normal gamer plays games purely for the sake of entertainment and the hardcore gamer is a connoisseur of the art of video games.

This division is not unique in any way to video games. All forms of art have this sort of division.

 

[Altorin]

to me, a hardcore gamer is someone who's primary form of entertainment is gaming. It's really as simple as that. It's not about what games you play, it's about how much you play them as opposed to say reading books, watching tv, going out partying, movies, etc.

If a solid 60% of your leisure time is spent playing games of any variety, you're a pretty hardcore gamer.

OR if your non-leisure time involves primarily gaming. If it's your job - pro-gamer, games journalist, developer, etc., "hardcore gamer" sort of comes with that territory. There are exceptions of course. Publisher Executives for instance might not be hardcore gamers.

You sort of need to play games.

But apart from that caveat, for me at least, those are my criteria.

 

[veloper]

There are only hardcore players (think Starcraft top ladder), no hardcore gamers. Not enough time to master everything.

If you are a regular at the Escapist you are probably a "core gamer". You care too much about games.
Less enthusiastic gamers may be called "casuals".

 

[Rattja]

Hm..
You can basically be "hardcore" anything, so I'd say the same thing goes for everything.

You have those who play a game just to play it, not caring to much about it and not thinking much about it after but just enjoy the act there and then.
This would be a "normal" person, a "casual" (I really do not like those words).

Then there are those who sits down and actually have fun with it, more than just enjoy it while it lasts. They may get attached to characters, worlds or whatever.
This would be a gamer.

Then there are those who really digs into things, who likes to know how the whole thing is put together, how to modify it and how it all works. Those who knows things that are not even relevant for the others, like game mechanic trigger values and backround story of the development process.
That is a hardcore gamer.

Some just listen to music when it's there.
Some put music on to really listen to it, be moved by it.
Some really care about the music and knows everything about it, from the instrumentes used to the lives of the artists.

That's how I see it anyways.

 

[RomanceIsDead]

There is no definition. All you will get here are some subjective walls of text about what should and shouldn't be considered hardcore.

 

[go-10]

the way I define it is, a hardcore gamer actually feels something for video games.

If all you play is CoD but you feel the stories of that game move you and define who you are the yes you are a hardcore gamer.

If you play lots of games for hundreds of hours but at the end of the day they're nothing more than games and time sinks, you're a gamer

If you don't play video games except when on the toilet or waiting somewhere, you're a casual gamer

whether you belong to the hard core or the casual doesn't really matter, I'm just happy more and more people are enjoying a medium which I love

 

[Vicarious Reality]

Does finishing Half Life about 6 times without mods make me a Hardcore gamer?
Does finishing STALKER several times on max difficulty make me a Hardcore gamer?
Does playing the Witcher 2 on max difficulty make me a Hardcore gamer?
Does playing Eve online for at least five years make me a Hardcore gamer?
Does playing the Elder Scrolls for more than 1200 hours make me a Hardcore gamer?
Does playing heroics in TOR alone make me insane?

 

[Grintwist]

When it comes to it I think hardcore gamers are the ones that have turned their experience with videogames into that of a hobby rather than a simple 1-2 hour sit down of playing a game. That's really it, I know some define the idea of being a hardcore gamer as someone that has 'skill' in videogames but really for some games all you have to do to be good is have a good reaction time and you have an advantage over players already.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Ok, a "Hardcore Gamer" is a smug douche who looks down his/her nose at anyone who's not as "hardcore" *sarcastic air quotes* as they are.

 

[kommando367]

Anyone who plays more than 10 hours of video games per week on average.

 

[Dragonbums]

My definition of a hardcore gamer is someone who basically spends more than 48 hours per week playing videogames.


Going off that, I'm a pretty casual gamer. Unless I'm hooked on a game, I'm playing games at maybe 3-6 hours in a single day. And that's not even set in stone. There are weeks where I don't play games at all.

 

[Palmerama]

"Hardcore" & "Casual" are pathetic buzzwords that were put into circulation as the last gen was starting up and since then has taken off into a ridiculous segregation of people who become defined by other people based on the games they play or how long they play them for. It's one of the main things I depsise from the last generation!

It something that should stop as for some people they feel they have to call themselves "hardcore" gamers to somehow justify their enjoyment of video games and how long they play them for! It makes them think they can only play a certain kind of game as any other type of game is too "kiddy" or "stinking casuals"!
It doesn't help that the games media keep perpetuating these terms as do the games companies who try and use these lables to make their games more appealing!

It doesn't help that this generation brought up alot of impressionable teenagers who are now going to keep using these streotyping labes.

Rant over. Sorry but these labels really piss me off & im a grumpy old man!

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

I suppose that the definition of a "hardcore gamer" depends on your definition of "hardcore" itself. Dictionary.com [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hardcore?s=t] defines "hardcore" as "unswervingly committed", and I think that's a good basis for a start. Simply put, a hardcore gamer is someone who is "unswervingly committed" to the hobby of gaming. Note that there's no mention of the player's skill, or even the amount of time that the person spends playing any given game. I think that the number of people wanting to assign ego to the term "hardcore" has diluted it's meaning a bit. People wanting to pridefully declare themselves as "hardcore" because they're better at a game has caused the term to carry a lot of negative implications, but I don't think that it's necessarily fair to blame the term itself for that.

I am a hardcore gamer simply because it's my hobby of choice. When I get home from work I like to read about the latest gaming news. After reading the latest news I like to hop onto the forums to discuss the latest gaming trends. Once I've had my fill of talking about games, I'll fire-up whichever game happens to have my interest at the moment. When I'm done gaming, it's only because I'm either hungry or tired, at which point I'll go back to either gaming, or maybe reading the forums again. This isn't to say that I don't do other things; I check Facebook to see what the fam (and some friends) have been up to, I'll keep-up with the "real" news to some degree, and I have some other nerd hobbies I enjoy such as anime or tabletop games (though some would argue that counts as gaming, too). Over-all though, gaming is what I love.

More than anything, though, it's a bit of a personal term. It doesn't do any good to brag about whether or not you're hardcore because it shouldn't matter to anyone BUT you. Likewise, it doesn't do any good to call-out someone for NOT being hardcore because it shouldn't matter. If someone wants to think that they're hardcore, then go ahead and let them. If they're lying, it's only to themselves, and it shouldn't matter to do you either way. A casual fan of gaming's opinion on a matter is just as valid as a hardcore gamer's opinion.