Do you consider yourself a "hardcore" gamer?

I didn't imply all gamers who refer to themselves as 'Hardcore' are doing it as some ego boosting effort, just a large number. You may do it for all other types of reasons, though I can't think of any I wouldn't interpret as ridiculous.

Would someone who had the same passion and knowledge for films (like me) label themselves a Hardcore Cinema goer? Probably not, and even if they did I wouldn't take them serious.

But 'Hardcore Gamer' sounds 'l33t'. Now, I'm not suggesting for a minute that you'd refer to yourself like that just to sound cool... but why refer to yourself like that at all, why refer to yourself as anything because of a hobby?

It's the gaming equivalent of a personalised license plate - it's an immediate signal that the bearer is probably a total douche.

I could probably be labeled as that but before that most people that know me see me as the artist who plays a lot of video games.

I guess i would in the sense that i play a wide range of games and follow information about games on a daily basis. The way i look at it i have more of an involvement with games than say someone who has three to four games that are their jam and that's it and don't follow game news all that often. I don't think it matters if your great or competitive at games. But on a normal talking basis i don't really feel the need to say i'm a hardcore gamer or anything because i don't think it matters that way.

I don't know what that term is supposed to mean. I like to play video games and I like to watch videos on the internet of other people playing video games.

Nah, if I play 3 times during a week, that's a lot. I play when I feel like it and I don't when I don't. I can go for weeks without picking up a controller and I don't feel bad about it at all. I like games and I enjoy playing them still, but I'm not devoted to them. I never have been as I have always had other interests in my life besides games. Most of the time, I'm just too lazy to put forth the effort to play a game. After 11 hours at work, I just want to veg-out and watch something mindless on the idiot box.

I think the much, much, better term has always been "enthusiast" because that's a term already relevant to most cultural hobbies that indicates someone who gives concerted attention toward their taste and/or time spent doing it. This comes up most often with Patrick when he uses that to describe games press/editorial as enthusiast press. If you are interested in what those people have to say, you're an enthusiast more or less, especially if you follow through by playing some games and talking about them online. That and it's a broad and inclusive term that isn't positioned as a counter to those who are arbitrarily excluded because they're not "hardcore."

Otherwise it's a corporate demographic tragically internalized (or marketed as that pink hatted gentlemen) or people who are dedicated in such a specific way they can be considered "hardcore" but not a "gamer" in the intended sense. For instance, people who build their own cockpits to fly flight sims I would say is a hardcore flight sim person but at that point it's inaccurate to assume they play other video games at all.

So yeah, excepting people who passively accept the term as a good enough for lack of a better term, then I don't think it has much value. Personally I don't, I hesitate to call myself a gamer and go out of my way to come up with ways to convey the fact that I really care about video games without calling myself the stilted "gamer" label.

But I do love "I am a hardcore and also a gamer." God what fucking brilliance that shit was.