Clique here if you’re hardcore

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By Kate Inabinet
10:28 Apr 30, 2008

Within us all is the need to belong. You first become aware of it in high school, as you gaze about the home-room on that dreaded first day, trying to work out which group you fit into.

Are you sad and pale enough to write poetry and debate suicide tactics with the emos? Is it humanly possible to maintain a proper commitment to truancy and pyromania to make an impression on the cool kids? If the circumference of your neck is actually smaller than that of your head, will you be rejected by the jocks?

Game culture is not so different to high school as you struggle to identify with the right clique, but trying to work out if you are a casual or a hardcore gamer is harder than all the puzzles in Big Brain Academy combined because two broad definitions don’t accurately cover all aspects of gaming habits.

A casual gamer is someone who either plays games sporadically, or plays ‘casual’ games like Solitaire on the PC or Wii Sports. Games that have simple rules and can be played in short bursts.

Hardcore gamers, on the other hand, have traditionally been the people who are very passionate about not only the amount of time spent playing games, but the games themselves. Someone who plays The Sims for example, even if they play it every night after work, is never going to be considered hardcore like someone who plays Gears of War all weekend, even if the hours add up to be the same.

But is a casual gamer someone who plays casual games? Or someone who plays games casually? If you casually walk up to the computer, and indifferently flick the on button, then nonchalantly throw yourself into the chair and settle in for the next 12 hours of dungeon raiding in WoW, does that make you a casual hardcore gamer?

If you come screaming into the room, commando roll up to the console, fire it up and then perch on the edge of the couch hitting yourself in the head with the controller until the game starts only to play Katamari Damacy for half an hour before your friends arrive to pick you up for a night out, does that make you a hardcore casual gamer?

Does being a hardcore gamer mean you play games all of the time, or do you have to play specific types of games? Can you be hardcore if you hold half a dozen accounts of the same game or does the title only apply if you reach the highest possible level that a game can offer in the shortest possible time frame?

Is being hardcore having a tag, commenting on forums and being up to date on all the latest releases, or are you only truly hardcore if you spend a week playing games without eating, sleeping, or going to the bathroom until you die to the tune of your organs failing in a series of meaty pops?

I never thought of myself as a hardcore gamer, but neither do I seem casual. The minute I come home my cats greet me briefly at the door before charging straight into the study – conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs as they are – with the knowledge that the computer means endless hours of uninterrupted lap-time.

I play my favourite MMO in my lunch breaks at the office and even though I work with game developers, it is most often my name that is bandied about when discussing ‘game pushers’ among colleagues. No tram trip is spent without my trusty PSP, Game Boy or DS, and hooked up to my TV is a GameCube, PS2, Xbox and 360, all with a fancy little switch-doohickey so I can easily flick between them without having to unplug one or the other.

Yet, the very second that LittleBigPlanet hits the shelves I will make room among the tangled cords for the PS3. Shelling out $1000 on a console so I can play a single game on it? Now that I could consider hardcore. Or is it just casually crazy?

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