Awesome article, and if anything all I do now is play games and if I'm not playing them I'm reading or watching them

I'm partially Social, partially expert and maybe even a bit of a specialist. And a bit casual :D

casual, expert, social.

Seems like I'm the only social gamer, lol.

Social/Expert. Seems most people in forums don't care for social games though. Strange since they are often the most popular games.  Just seems to show me how out of sync forums are with the real world.

One of the best articles written on this site I believe so I thought i should comment on it.

I'm mostly Expert with a bit of Specialist for RPGs.

I used to be more of a social gamer too but most of my friends play on 360 and it turned out my second-hand console was modded... so no Live, lol.

Interesting article and interesting classifications.

However, first, I want to point out that "core" does not mean "hardcore", just as "hat" does not mean "hardhat". They are separate things. "Hardcore" is a term that goes back a long, long ways, and basically means someone who is borderline obsessive. We used it in both Ragnarok Online and WoW to describe people who devoted extraordinary amounts of time and energy to the game. It's been several years since I played, but there was a HUGE rift between "casuals", who did not raid, and "hardcore raiders", who lived for raiding--the "casual raiders" like me were stuck in the middle.

Microsoft's official classifications are Core, Connected, Dabbler, and Family Timer. The Connected basically lines up with your Social gamer, and both Dabbler and Family Timer would be included as Casual. What's interesting is that you split up Core into Specialist and Expert. I admit that I haven't thought of it that way.

I'd be an Expert, though it feels strange to use that term, as I consider myself more of a Jack of All Trades. I like different kinds of games and I play on both PC and consoles. Variety in gaming is very important to me. I pretty much quit console gaming during the SNES period because almost everything was either a platformer or a beat 'em up and it bored me to tears. I think you're absolutely on the money with the description here, and I very much feel that this is why I gravitated to Sony consoles and PC gaming.

I'm a mix of casual, social and expert games apparently. I think I have a pretty solid knowledge of most popular games released in the last 10-13 years, love spending my time here and on TVTropes (damn rabbit hole!) and watch all conferences live, no matter at what time they are streamed. Yet I play many games only to relax on the easiest difficulty, which at the same time doesn't prevent me from playing SOME games at the highest difficulty/for hundreds of hours (mostly with friends) or for over 10 hours a day if I have the time...

I loved the article, and I find that I consider myself first and foremost a retro gamer.

Within the categories in the article, I'm a bit of everything. I'm a social gamer because I play the popular games like COD and Wii Sports, and I love to associate with gamers who revolve around the next big thing, though I do my mingling online instead of in person. (That could be branched into a category of its own)

I'm also a casual gamer, because often I just want a game I can pick up and play for a casual play session. Though I will want my casual experience to be top quality, so I'll be casual on a 3DS for example rather than on a smartphone.

I'd say I'm a specialist gamer because I'll love to play the hell out of SFIV or Megaman, I have these fetish games that I obsess on.

And I'd even say that I'm an expert gamer because I keep informed daily on what's out there and the industry as a whole.

I think this could best be served as tags rather than categories, since a lot of the categories are cross-cutting.

Splitting the tags up into smaller considerations, by bundling some tags we create a profile.

Examples:
- Online socializing
- Real life socializing
- Taste for games enjoyed by a niche
- Taste for games enjoyed by the mainstream
- Taste for games with explicit material
- Taste for games with neutral material
- Tates for games with kiddy material
...