Editor's Note: Full Spectrum Gamer

[The Root Beer Guy]

You don't need to play 40+ hours a week to be a gamer; you just need to have a love and admiration for games. As for me, I'm a PC gamer. It's mostly out of practicality, since it is difficult to play a console with a bunch of kids zooming in front of the television.

 

[wonkify]

Great message, Russ, thank you for doing it.

I think the variety of life changes and gaming changes make the point. That point is perfectly reflected by the similar variety in all these comments.

What is the common thread through all of it?

We are gamers.

With the number and type of devices one can play a game on exploding, the self selecting into 'tribes' within the gaming community is unnecessary but as common as humankind. We don't seem to be willing to be part of one large contiguous group in anything. We always subdivide into smaller subsets.

I'm am certain sociology will have a term for this group dynamic and a lot of MEGO writing about it.

But bottom line, whether we use PC, console, phone, touchpad or toaster, we are simply gamers. If we could all hang together instead of finding ridiculous things to divide and attack each other about we would actually see the massive group we are worldwide and all the anti-gaming bias would evaporate overnight.

Something to consider.

And, Russ, I would love to join you for an afternoon at the range.
Semper Fi!

 

[craddoke]

When I left home for college, the only game I took with me was TIE Fighter. I kept those floppy disks for years - long after I stopped installing the necessary drives on my computers. That game was awesome and would make the the pope a hardcore gamer.

Back on topic: I'm casually hardcore.

 

[Incredible Bullshitting Man]

First and foremost, I´m a gamer...I think. I mean, I´m also a writer, a student, an older brother and what have you, but those aren´t relevant here. Right now, I´m a gamer (and a forum member...okay, that´s enough), although I´m not sure what kind. Perhaps I´m an old school type, since I haven´t been very much in touch with the current generation of games, mostly because I can´t afford it, but I do know my way around older generations (from PS2 to C64). However, I still like to read about upcoming games and what´s happening in gaming today (both market and culture).

You could say I´m a ludist at heart. I like games simply for what they are, and not just console or PC games. Gaming = fun, and that´s all there is to it, I think.

 

[The Random One]

I came up with my definition of who a 'hardcore gamer' is after reading that article one the Escapist by that one doctor that played fifteen minutes of Dwarf Fortress a week (too lazy too look it up). A hardcore gamer is anyone who makes time for gaming. So you spend every afternoon playing MW2 and weekends back to back? If you're a twelve-year-old who has no responsabilities and, in a world without video games, would spend that time surfing the web or listening to music or masturbating or whatever, you're not hardcore. Are you a doctor who plans you schedule around a fifteen-minute Dwarf Fortress break? You're hardcore.

I realized this now that I'm working, and have money to buy stuff but little (well, less) time to play. Before, I'd always plan which games I rented/bought so that I never got bored during longest holidays. Now, I always have a lot of stuff on the backburner to do, so whatever time I take off to play a game is more important.

 

[kementari]

Our hobby is finally gaining legitimacy after decades of being pushed into the corners of derision and mockery.

I think the time for categorizing what kind of gamer one is has passed. Identifiers for the sake of identification are fine (and will always be necessary), but let's unite, rather than divide.

 

[LordWalter]

I've been a gamer for most of my life, but I've given them up twice. Once when, as a teenager, I simply didn't have time. I'd discovered theater and girls and was spending late nights and weekends with one or the other - always.

Ah yes. "Girls". I read about them once in an online forum. I'd go outside to see if I could find one, but I'm too busy having a max-skill/special character in Fallout 3, Journeying through Ferelden in Dragon Age for the 3rd time, beating every Final Fantasy ever made, going through my 20th round on Resident Evil 4 Professional Mode (as in, New Game, not New Game+ with Typewriter-use or high-level guns at start etc.), Being a nigh-on Korean Starcraft 2 Player (Diamond League, Rank #4, baby.), slaying countless n00bs in Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, Halo, Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, Age of Mythology, CODMW2, and any other online game ever conceived by Mankind. And that's just modern games. If I have a daughter I'm going to name her Schala or Marle, because that's how damn much I adore Chrono Trigger. And Cross. And Lunar 1, Lunar 2, Legend of Dragoon, Golden Sun, Deus Ex and a hundred other brilliant RPGs who are destined to be forever mired in undeserved obscurity. Though I too adore some "Casual" games. Plants vs Zombies is goddamn incredible. Hell, the only genres I don't play would be Sports Sims and Racing games. I could wallpaper my room (possibly with two coats) with the amount of games I have (and love). When asked for a poem describing my life in English class, I submitted the following:

-
See the world through my eyes
For I am the master of a thousand weapons
I have slain countless foes upon an endless array of battlefields.
What lies before me is an eternity of carnage and slaughter
For I shall never die
Only Respawn.
-
(Doubtless this put me on some kind of psychological watchlist with the University, but sod it, I adore it almost as much as the poem I wrote when my Xbox red-ringed, which I posted here on the Escapist.)

As far as I'm concerned, Pitts, there's Video Gaming, and then there's the things you have to do in real life before you can play more video games.

HardCORE? I've practically got a hard exoskeleton at this point.

/End Giant Nerdy "Video-Games-Are-A-Way-Of-Life"-style rant

 

[Miumaru]

Gun was omn the PS2 too.

I use hardcore to describe the big gamers, like me and as described, Russ Pitts. True hardcore gamers are ones who appreciate all games. My old profile has over 160 games on its list, and thats just 360 games. I do not just play FPS games or just RTS games, and though currently I mostly just play 360, I am not soul-bound to it.
I like variety, long as I enjoy them. I play games I like, regardless of genre, or if they are "casual" or not. And I play them over and over again.

 

[PlasticTree]

I guess I have the same as you: I consider myself hardcore, but I don't game enough (anymore) to classify as one. Simply a lack of time. What still makes me a hardcore gamer though, are two things:
- the fact that I consider mysélf as a hardcore gamer;
- the fact that I come to sites like the Escapist every day, comment on articles like this one every day and post comments on gameforums every day.

My 'hardcoreness' isn't determined by my gaming habits. It's determined by the fact that I know that 'KotOR' isn't something that makes my car go 'vroom'.

 

[Zappa Daddy]

I think every hobby changes as you get older. As adult responsibilities increase, it's much harder to dedicate dozens of hours to something you may have had a diehard passion for in your youth.

Take a look at guys who are really into sports. The former high school quarterback probably plays golf by the time he's in his 30s or 40s. He may even play in an intermural league, but he's not playing in full-contact championship games. Those of us who remember Pac Man in the arcades are the same way. I can hold my own in RTSes like Starcraft but I'm not topping the leaderboards. I have decent gear in WOW but I'm not in a top raiding guild. I'm not worried about it, since that's the natural progression of things.

Now the only question is will I revert to hardcore gaming when I'm retired, in the same way my retired dad plays golf every day.

 

[Dexiro]

I play any amounts of any type of game. Plants vs Zombies one day, then maybe some Fallout 3, or i might feel like playing the original Sonic titles.

I'm in no rush to call myself a hardcore gamer. I'm just a guy that plays a lot of games ;D

 

[Sjakie]

I could go on a rant here about how harcore i am as a gamer. But my brain got stuck after you mentioned Quake...so....

QUAKE IT BABY!!1!

 

[pepitko]

I play various titles, from FPS through RPG to games like Guitar Hero or Skate 3. I mostly play on my 360, as I don't have a PC. But I'm happy to spend some time playing iPhone or facebook games. I work quite a lot, so I can't devote as much time to gaming as I would like to, but hey at least I can afford buying new titles often.

 

[Squeaky]

To keep it short and sweet, I play on anything and any genre if the game is good the platform excist Im doing it .... 0.0 yeh all except the Wii

 

[MegzHartie]

I'm a gamer that looks at games and tries to find all the paths and loop holes as I play, usually through the first run though. I do this because I want to be a game designer but also because I've always loved the idea of exploring game worlds and find things so few people have found on their own or even with hints on their maps.

Games to me are these fun and interesting worlds that are worth exploring to their fullest while being able to keep track of where you are so that you can find your way back to the path that your quest leads to (sort of like having bread crumbs to lead you back home while exploring the woods). I think that's one of the reasons I don't enjoy time challenges in games. They make it so that you don't have time to explore the area you're in and that you need to rush to complete the task you've been handed so you don't have time to explore all your opinions to completing it in a way that would satisfy you as a player.

Anyway, my point is that I'm both a gamer and an aspiring game designer who wants to learn more about the game worlds and experiences you can have in games so that one day I can make my own worlds that might tempt other's to explore them like I have in games I have. Though, I will admit, games like Plants VS Zombies are what I play just for the fun of finding out which plants will kick a zombies butt harder. ;3