Here is another example though.
Fire Pro Wrestling Returns. It's a wrestling game that people import but has just been released in the US.
Most people play this game a ridiciulious number of hours. To give you an idea of how hardcore this game is... it's "Create a Wrestler" mode has 500 character slots.
Not only that but it actually allows you to customize the AI to make wrestlers act just like that. Lots of people will tweak the AI spending days just to get one character to wrestle perfectly like he would in real life. Others spend countless hours "playing it" by just simming matches and not actually even playing the game itself. Would you call that game "Not hardcore."
Watching a simmed wrestling federation 200+ hours is hardcore in my book. Even though you arn't even controlling the game as it plays, but just paying attention to it. So is spending a couple months to get characters you designed "just right" so they work perfectly when you sim them.
They are hardcore players.
Since the average person who plays this are mostly people who are imported it. You can also saftley call the game hardcore. That's why most hardcore games are niche games.
The rest is just vanity, as some people just don't want to admit other games which they don't like and want to dismiss as "casual."
If everyone who played Carnival games bought it and played it 5 hours a day every day to master the ring toss and shooting the water in the clowns mouth... It would be hardcore game. Yet few would call it such because to do so would bruise their egos because they attach the word "Hardcore" to some games so it doesn't feel like they're just wasting their time on games and instead actually accomplishing something of some importance... when in reality you aren't.
