Do you consider yourself a "hardcore" gamer?

[LemonDemonGirl]

I can literally stay up all night playing a game, and will research a game to death before buying it (I did this with FF10).
I also enjoy game Lore, regardless of how bad it is.
Also, I get uber obsessed with certain characters, and will enjoy them for years

[Lora]

you're not hardcore unless you live hardcore. depends on your definition of hardcore i'd say. going by yours, i'd say yes, i am hardcore.

[Fencers]

That's just not true and is such an outdated notion to begin with.

Not at all. I interview people that self-identify and/or are categorically classified as casual and hardcore gamers every week.

Casual gamers are largely unaware that places like this forum even exist. Most of them don't even know what is Twitch. Casual gamers get most of their gaming information from targeted ads and Youtube.

Before filling out their screener, testers in the causal quota get a detailed explanation of what sites like Reddit or Twitch are; on a gradient scale they mostly register as -3A. That is to say, "Neutral/I heard of this but do not use it" to "Unaware/Never heard of this" (-3A).

[Fencers]

I can't say I agree with you, but I admit you may be more versed than I am I may be projecting a bit with my answer.

No worries.

It's just a common basis because you are a user here. It is very likely you probably have absorbed more passive knowledge about games than the vast majority of categorical casual gamers.

I recently worked on one of the games for Two Point Studios, Two Point Hospital, Two Point Campus, etc. Can't talk about the game itself because I have an NDA for it. Though there are fairly relaxed games if you are familiar with the series. They get an incredible amount of traction among casual gamers. Sega and Two Point make so much money off these games in licensing alone.

These are gamers who will ask with sincerity, "What does right click mean?" That might seem silly to a lot of us here. But it is way, way common for users to never use right-click function on a mouse for anything, ever. A lot of casual gamers will never press a button unless promoted on a controller. Like ever.

My company did about 4-5 focus and usability group tests for Two Point Studios. I worked on 3. Each proposal, this is the contract and study/test outline, was about $250k a session number (focus, CLTs, and PREs are running numbered batches). That's around $1.3 million (before additional charges) just to find out what type of player they need to tailor the game toward and how.

There is a huge disconnect between what "hardcore gamers" think makes up a "casual gamer" and what actually constitutes a "casual gamer" both by self-identification and categorization within the market. Development and distributions only care about the latter or they can not exist. They spend millions a year to know about these demographics and user types.

Movies, potato chips (Pepsico is one of my largest clients), refrigerators, exercise equipment, shoes, cell phones- just about everything you can buy is exhaustively market-researched. And video games.

[Al Gorefiend]

I'm barely a gamer. WoW is all that qualifies as a game I ever put any time into, and that's mostly because of sunk cost and my need to see the story through after having fallen in love with it and researched so much.

If I am being honest, the last non-WoW video game I played was over 4 months ago. And I'm only able to put about 8-12 hours in a week.

[Djuntas]

For many I would be an absolute fucking no lifing degenerate asswipe. But I feel less and less hardcore every year that passes by. Greets a dude that peaked at top 1000 world achivements in wow in Shadowlands, who also sit on 36 million gold and almost as many mounts as Asmongold (and points, until he started playing wow again recently :&)

For me time spend does not equal hardcore I guess. I find it much more hard-core to try and do parses in wotlkC on my warlock. I did a 92 parse on Patchwerk 2 weeks ago, thats fine for me.

...Havent raided in retail WoW seriously since Cata. So yeah.

[loras]

For many I would be an absolute fucking no lifing degenerate asswipe. But I feel less and less hardcore every year that passes by. Greets a dude that peaked at top 1000 world achivements in wow in Shadowlands, who also sit on 36 million gold and almost as many mounts as Asmongold (and points, until he started playing wow again recently :&)

For me time spend does not equal hardcore I guess. I find it much more hard-core to try and do parses in wotlkC on my warlock. I did a 92 parse on Patchwerk 2 weeks ago, thats fine for me.

...Havent raided in retail WoW seriously since Cata. So yeah.

You should get that as a custom title for your devotion, either here or in-game.

Not because it's an insult, but because you're cool about it and thus subvert the insult into something, eh, impressive at least.

[HatsHatsHats]

People who play games don't always consider themselves gamers, let alone classify themselves as casual or hardcore

Gamer is a dirty word to some, while myself am a hardcore wrath playing parse chaser who games as much as possible.

[Djuntas]

You should get that as a custom title for your devotion, either here or in-game.

Not because it's an insult, but because you're cool about it and thus subvert the insult into something, eh, impressive at least.

lamo ^^ But yes, I think we can all agree somebody who does not do the "hard" content aint hard-core. Honestly the only truely insane things I did in WoW is maybe being doubble lore master, or being maybe top 100-500 worlds on exalted title back in wrath...maybe I was even top 50 in the world, would so love to know.

Through I can tell you horror stories about the grinds I do...I even keep a 6 page google docs with all the shit I need to do in WoW, because Blizzard keeps adding impossible toxic BS to the game not even I can bother do...It started with MOP world boss mounts, and then it gradually just took off from there....

1 example; Yesterday I finally looted a chest that gave me the last achievement I needed for venthyr...This chest only spwans maybe 3-4 times a year im afraid...missed it once because I was not online, so I litterally waited 4-6 months for a chest so I could loot an item that gives my butler pet a thin hair cut...Fuck you Blizzard. Also fuck timeless island venture co business plan...thats my worst nightmare since BFA...recently got all mounts from the place etc etc, but still haven't got that freaking drop...Also I should quit WoW, its toxic.

[Santti]

Ah, the classic gamer debate on who is hardcore and who is casual.

I consider myself being hardcore.

I don't really read gaming news at all, unless they are about the games I'm currently playing or interested in playing. Which is usually not much at all, as I tend to play older games that only see any kind of "news" in the form of modding communities, and I'm too jaded to get excited about games still in development. Video game industry is mostly shit, and not worth getting your hopes up for.

I have absolutely no interest in attending any kind of gaming conventions. I did once as a teen, a big LAN party of some 200 people or so, and that was enough for me. It was also only because my brother asked. Wouldn't have been interested otherwise, or even been aware of it if it weren't for him.

I don't really talk about games or gaming with anyone, except sometimes in these forums, or when I'm asked.

I have no interest in trying to improve myself while I play video games. That's just something that may or may not happen on it's own while I play for ungodly amount of hours, for fun. I don't play competitively, so I see no point in it. Only exception have been WoW, where I did do some research in what to wear and what buttons to push.

So why do I consider myself being hardcore? Because gaming (or being at computer in general) is the only thing I ever do, and have been doing since I was like 5 or 6. I'm hopelessly addicted to it.

[cuafpr]

These days I'm barely a gamer; they all lost my interest. Stray was the last game to hold my attention from start to finish (likely because the cat looks like my Tiger I lost in July)... I've also been heavily focused on work and moving up in my career which is taking extra time/effort. Elden Ring did ok...but eh I like to play games on easy these days so that didn't work out well for me in the long run... a beautiful game though.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Once upon a time I certainly was. Family, work, and general loss of interest in a lot of gaming has turned me into the type that buys probably 3-4 games a year and really ends up only playing 2-3 of to around basic competition. Every couple years I find a home run and I will completionism it pretty hard but that is pretty rare anymore. So the truth is if the right combo of games came along I probably could get back into it. I just have kind of found myself feeling most of them are money grabs or trash and just lost interest. Unfortunately really.. I enjoy the hell out of good games when I find them.

[Zafire]

I used to be. Definitely not anymore. I do like to be a "perfectionist" in single player games though. I like to do all the content in the game and create the strongest character with all the tools I have available to me for example. I have a hard time getting invested in games otherwise.

[Tyris Flare]

Not at all. I interview people that self-identify and/or are categorically classified as casual and hardcore gamers every week.

Casual gamers are largely unaware that places like this forum even exist. Most of them don't even know what is Twitch. Casual gamers get most of their gaming information from targeted ads and Youtube.

Before filling out their screener, testers in the causal quota get a detailed explanation of what sites like Reddit or Twitch are; on a gradient scale they mostly register as -3A. That is to say, "Neutral/I heard of this but do not use it" to "Unaware/Never heard of this" (-3A).

imo this just isn't a useful definition of casual unless you are going to break people into like 10 categories.

Putting "someone who looks at forums" and "someone who plays 12 hours a day" into the same category is utterly useless.

[Lex Icon]

casual vs hardcore? i am both and i am neither depending on who's definition you go by. i feel like they're pretty bad catch all terms and would require a lot of subcategories for me to ever feel like i fit into one of them.

[Xilurm]

I typically play 1 to 2 hours daily. Hardly qualifies me a hardcore gamer despite having played video games for the past 4 decades since the days of the Atari 2600.

"daily"

I'd say that qualifies. Because by this logic anyone who has 8 hour work days can't qualify as a hardcore gamer.

- - - Updated - - -

Honestly I'd say hardcore gamers are the people who are actively invested in the gaming industry.

When you ask someone what GTA or God of War is and they don't know but you've seen them play games on their phone once or twice then I'd say that's a casual gamer. If they don't even do that then they ain't a gamer at all.

[sam86]

sadly no, since i got white hair my rl responsibility made me unable to be hardcore
I MISS being hardcore gamer, make my life focus on gaming, but i got so fat i had to change my priority to gym, then with extreme poverty and being in (2nd) LOWEST average income on earth forcing me to work even more... yeah goodbye really happy gaming nights....

[Daedius]

"daily"

I'd say that qualifies. Because by this logic anyone who has 8 hour work days can't qualify as a hardcore gamer.

As to an alternative to doing literally any other hobby or sport I fail to see how that'd qualify it as hardcore. That's just ridiculous.

[Tikishock]

Nope. Not at all.

If I see a game has too many buttons (WoW, FFXIV, TOR), I won't play it. If I see a game is considered "hard" (Souls-like), I won't play it. If I see a game that requires tons of skill to be above average at it (PVP RTS games, fighting games, etc), I won't play it.

I'm a very chill person, and I'm not into hard games.

I've been contemplating this lately and I think the older I get with kids and a stressful job the less appealing a "complex and deep" video game becomes to me. I used to love strategy games or rpgs with many systems and right now about the only games I can stomach to play anymore are simple platformers or fps games I've played in the past with no weapon/gear grind (just Halo Infinite at this point).

I think I read that it has to do with decision fatigue as you get older and your life gets more complex. Honestly at the end of the day the last thing I want to do is think during a video game because I'm just too mentally tired.

[Witchblade77]

Yes. I play a lot of games, often and am especially keen on thinking and analyzing the games I play. I have worked in game and software development & publishing and now do marketing research for games (among other products too). Video games are around me practically every day.

Not a single person posting on this forum would ever qualify as a casual gamer by the way. Not one.

depends on your definition of "casual"

I don't consider myself a hardcore player even though I'm fairly invested into video games. why? because I'm very. VERY bad at video games and what's even more important, I am not interested enough to "git good" I like playing video games, I like talking about video games the same way I like watching and talking about TV shows and reading books and then talking about those. but.. its as far as it goes.

I have hobbies that I'm far more hardcore about because I actively work on getting better at them and invest significant amount of time and effort into getting better. video games? if I cannot kill a boss in couple of tries, I just close, uninstall the game and move on to something else. if a collectible or an achievement takes too much effort (read anything more then couple of casual tries that requires me to practice or more then 20 minutes of farming/grinding) I'm just not going to do it. I USED to at least try for a few select games but even then, it was not normal for me. now. I don't even try anymore. so IMO, definition that makes you hardcore solely cause you post on gaming forums sometimes? needs work.

edited. I also for the longest time didn't know that you can press down on joysticks of the ps4 controller because the games I played up to that point never prompted me to in a visual form of an animation. I'd get a prompt of "use r3 /l3 " occasionally, but I had no idea what that meant and since in vast majority of the time I was just able to keep playing without pushing those buttons? I just kept playing /shrug.

so yeah, IMO - while there might be shades of casual, I don't think just chatting on the forums qualifies as hardcore.