Reading through ekurzik’s post, I can’t help but agree that gamers cannot be divided into two simple classes of ‘casual’ and ‘hardcore,’ by what games they play, and I’d like to expand on this a little.

Whether someone is a casual or hardcore gamer has much more to do with their attitude towards gaming and the way they play than which section of Gamestop they shop in.

At first, with arcade games and the Atari, it seemed like most games would probably have been classified as casual.  Maybe you didn’t know how long you would play, but for the most part, they were light, easy to use, uncomplicated as to story, and had pretty simple graphics.  With the introduction of Mario Brothers and especially Zelda, the landscape of gaming changed.  The stories were more important, the levels were different, the boss battles were hard, and the games were longer.  They took skill and time to master, and I think this is probably when the trend began towards today’s gamer stereotype of a post-grad living off beer and cheetos in their mom’s dark basement.  But then with Myst, Tetris, and Bejeweled, casual games came back, and they have flooded the market.  Video gaming is now so pervasive in our culture and gamers have thousands of games available to play, that our classifications may need to change.

It is possible to imagine a gamer who prefers ‘casual’ online games, but spends hours a day playing them, spends money on the upgrades and extras, and becomes engrossed in and even obsessed with a game… like world of warcraft? or even… farmville?

On the other hand, we can also imagine a gamer who doesn’t have much time or money for games, but still enjoys playing the big-name, big-story games.  this person may sit down for ten minutes at a time, once or twice a week, and work on the game as if it’s a long-term project.

We could call the first person hardcore, and the second casual, despite the reversal in the game types.  But our classification is still complicated by attitudes.  What f the online gamer doesn’t take time to develop skill, but simply pours hours into an imaginary world? what if the casual gamer is really proud of getting better at the battle sequences? what if they’ll go all night on a weekend?

Classifications can be helpful, but that’s all they are: a tool.  They can give us clues, but they are not the end-all destination.