I laugh every time gamers try to seperate themselves from other gamers by calling themselves hardcore. No gamer is hardcore...there are only two types of gamers. 1) Those who have lives and jobs and friends etc., and play video games in their spare time or as a hobby. 2) The freaks who put games first (yes...that goes to all those douches who are proud of playing WoW, Diablo 2, Counter Strike and other shit like that for 300+ hours....and don't seem to realise there is life outside of that bullshit)...and put having an actual life second. A 25 year old nerd sitting in front of a screen yelling noob while playing online Counter Strike, Starcraft, etc. is not hardcore...

Maybe so...but at the end of the day....the term Hardcore Gamer is laughable. A gamer should have no problem with other gamers, and should see no need to differentiate themselves from other gamers. Imagine if we started calling students who studied more and knew more Hardcore Students...my point being...there is no need for the term hardcore gamer...and any gamer who classifies themselves as such...is a douche.

^Well, yeah, gaming elitism is stupid.

No, you can't define yourself a hardcore golfer unless you use golf clubs for everything, including eating and sex.     

A hobby is something you do casually, duh! Please, explain to me what you mean by "hardcore following" and why exactly that following is so "hardcore". Valve did not come over to console gaming because it was more "hardcore", they simply noticed that the Xbox consoles used the PC architecture, and that PC like games on consoles sells well. It was a no-brainer to throw console gamers a bone by porting some of their PC games.

yea, riiiiiiiiiiiight. I will go crazy, as consoles becomes more "hardcore" LOL that is wrong on so many levels. Unless by "Hardcore", you mean niche.

The only thing I could make out of what you wrote is that the "hardcore/Casual" brainwashing really has gotten to you.

While the article writer kind of has his own spin on the 'these are my opinions and I want to rant a bit', I agree with his views on the hardcore topic. The original use of the term hardcore wasn't a way to diversify yourself as a 'elite' gamer or to describe your game as 'mature' (or to differentiate one type of game from another to make the others 'casual'). All the ways the term has been applied to gaming has made the term so dried out, we might as well just start calling everything hardcore (just like eventually, everyone on the internet describes something as being 'F****** badass', another overdone expression commonly associated with hardcore).

You have hardcore sports fans and casual sports fans.

By no means are the hardcore sports fans "professional" fans. That would be ridiculous. They just follow a lot closer than a casual fan with not much more than a passing interest.

And by no means are hardcore sports fans so dedicated to watching sports that they forsake any and all other obligations in life either.

No different than any other hobby, gaming included.

But it's mainly within gaming that there's this warped, artificial sense of elitism, probably because of the traditional background of the stereotypical gamer.

Enthusiast is a pretty good word for PC gamers who build high end custom systems primarily or exclusively for gaming. I don't hear too many PC gamers in this category referring to themselves as "hardcore." It really is more of a console player word.

Hardcore gamers are the gamers which can earn money with their skills. If its their Job to play they are really the hardest core of gamers.