On a regular run through my video game sites, I came across a link to an article that talks about gamer classification. Frankly, as I was reading it almost felt like I had written it. Not only was it totally something I’d write about (as I am now), it sounded familiar in voice too. It discusses how our classification as video game players is all relative and that there are not enough buckets for all of us to fall into.

There “hardcore” gamers and “casual” gamers. Somehow everyone fits into one of those buckets, but which one depends who you’re standing next to. Next to my wife, I’m a hardcore gamer. Next to some of my friends, I’m a causal gamer. The article creates (I believe) a new bucket called the Mid-core Gamer, and this is where I believe most adult gamers fall into.

I shall now consider myself a mid-core gamer because I don’t play games all the time. I did, back in the day…but as life catches up with you, the time for games becomes brief and in some cases, less desirable. My hardcore gamer days were the NES-Doom-Starcraft days. I was easily playing video games eight hours a day after school and work. That’s hardcore. Today, I game maybe an hour every other day after work and before bedtime. That’s far from hardcore. Yet I don’t consider it casual because I care about the games I’m playing. Casuals gamers don’t really care what game they’re playing and have no ego, whereas hardcore gamers care just a bit too much and are all ego.

I don’t want to rewrite this guy’s well written argument, so please read his account.

But just think about it next time you think someone plays games too much. Make sure they are. And, like anything else, there is a huge difference between the people that actually play video games and those that just know about video games. Knowledge does not equate to experience. Make sure you get what you think you’re getting.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 9:35 pm and is filed under All. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.