Human nature?

The quest for truth?

The thing about accurate terms is that they help us express concepts better, and discover more accurate relations between concepts. Why does this player buy this or that game, because he is a ________ gamer. If ____ is not well defined, it  gets fuzzy, we see that all the time on vgchartz.

Nice article.

Here are some classifications that you might find interesting:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6474/personality_and_play_styles_a_.php?print=1
http://kotaku.com/5938464/theyve-narrowed-gamers-down-to-eight-fundamental-types-which-are-you

I'm a hybrid casual. Never consider myself a hardcore gamer because too many take games too seriously.

I am all 3. (not casual)

Social- "Call of Duty, MMOs like World of Warcraft, MOBAs like League of Legends, and cooperative worldbuilders like Minecraft." I play and enjoy all these games.

Specialist- I like and follow many specific games. WoW has taken up most of my game time, LoL is taking some time, FF takes up time, Koei games take up time, Digimon games, etc.

Expert- Basically what you said. I come onto this forum and debate and have some knowledge about gaming and it's sales.I watch Let's play sometimes.

You didnt put core gamer in there. Most social gamers are moderate gamers.

Casual Expert. I like playing challenging games, but there are times where I just want to relax and enjoy the game.

So you game sometimes, but you're an enthusiat who just so happens to be really good at them?

Long before, YEARS before "casual" and "hardcore" gamer became terms people used (misused) on a regular basis, at least among the internet gaming community, I actually used to refer to myself as "casual gamer", simply because I didn't play games every day. Honestly, I still don't. I own a lot of games, own many systems, play on various platforms, and am, in general, very good at gaming and quite knowledgable about it. By modern definition that would make a "hardcore gamer". Quite odd, these labels we place on things.

Also, I wouldn't consider people who play games a lot and come on gaming websites, to all be "expert gamers". Just gamers. An "expert", in my eyes, is the kind of person who can sit and excel at something where few else ever could. People who are just bad ass at certain games.

Maybe the Expert gamer should be called the Informed gamer, since being an Expert is ambiguous with being good at a game (rather than being up to date with the industry), but you guys coined being good as Specialist.