Before I went on, I did a little research, as any good writer should. The first trend I noticed is that whenever anyone brings up the subject, they always make a disclaimer that the term is broadly used and has no set definition. That pretty much destroys the hardcore's argument, but I went on researching, looking for the aspects most definitions had in common, and I came up with these "four pillars of hardcoreness", as I like to call them:
- Skill – A hardcore gamer is a skilled gamer
- Time devoted – A hardcore gamer plays a lot and is subject to rigorous training
- Competition – A hardcore gamer displays their skills on the arena, participating in online matches or live tournaments
- Production value – A hardcore gamer only plays pretty-looking games on cutting-edge systems
Now, according to these principals, my wife is probably the l337est of all hardcore gamers. She plays a minimum of 2 hours daily, she has memorized all the stats, she is respected in the on-line community… She is a hardcore YoVille player. You n00bs better recognize. Last time I asked she owned 25 houses in the game (some of those cost real money, yo!) Most of them are fully decorated – with varied themes ranging from Victorian and classic Japanese to 50's diner and haunted house – while some are just for storage. Yes, she holds a collection of valuable and rare items so immense, the in-game inventory system is not enough.
If she were to sell these items for their in-game cash value (reversing the cost of coins purchased via microtransactions) in the black market, she would make thousands of dollars, effectively turning her into a pro. Yes kids, unless you can make a living out of it, you're not a professional, look it up!
Besides her skill in dominating the in-game market, hosting parties, matching outfits and kicking ass at auctions, unlike most of you wannabe hardcore gamers, she is skilled in more than one genre. How many of you n00bs can even beat Super Mario Bros 2? Not that Doki Doki Panic bullshit with the turnips, the real one, released in the US as "SMB: The lost levels". That shit is hard, yo!
The truth is out; your standards for hardcoreness are contradictory. So what's the point? I'll tell you the point.
Self-proclaimed hardcore gamers are the bitter nerds that got their asses kicked in school for playing video games instead of sports and now see the opportunity to belong to a privileged class and to oppress others.
Instead of stealing the inferior classes' lunch money, these gamers roam the internet trolling and being all-around assholes. I'm sure at one point in the day the Google terms like "Nintendo", "Pokémon" or "DS" only to go and post their foul comments. Why do you hate Mario? What did he do to you? Why have you forsaken him after he welcomed you to the world of video games with open arms?
The truth is and always will be that shovelware is very profitable simply because of the lower production costs and now it has become far more accessible with the advent of the smartphone and the social network. Now, people who have never played a video game find themselves turned into gamers, but to them the gaming scene is only the shovelware they've been taught to love. Real video games are still in the shelves because this new generation of gamers finds the whole gaming scene hostile and intimidating. Not because the games are hard, but because the players are jerks.
Now, what's going to happen to these jocks of the gaming era? The same thing that happened to the jocks of yesterday; eventually the geeks took over and became the new "cool" while their dumber counterparts became the laughingstock of the internet. Soon casual gamers will become the majority, and they go on with their lives, tending to their jobs, spouses, kids and Farmvilles, hardcore gamers will fade into obscurity, taking with them the most beautiful form of art, only because they wanted to feel superior.
Can we stop this gaming apocalypse? Yes; and we start by supporting the efforts of gaming companies trying to put out quality and innovative games without biased bigotry. A videogame is a video game, and a gamer is a gamer. Stop hating, instead, judge software or hardware by its playability and quality, not by its target audience. Step out of your comfort zone every once in a while. Only this way will the good games become more attractive to the masses, thus more profitable than the cheap shovelware polluting our world. Your children will thank you.
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