Of terminology

If you're into videogames and often read about them, you might have noticed the recent trends and buzz-words. What I want to talk about here is a bunch of terms being used very frequently: 'hardcore', 'core' and 'casual'.

The first one is a pretty common word, and within the videogames world it has been used for a while: 'hardcore gamers' generally refers to people who have a passion for videogames and have been playing them a lot for a long time. 'Hardcore games' is also widely used to define videogames that might be too hard to get into unless you have a good experience with the genre they belong to.

I think the word 'core' is of much more recent inception (in the videogame industry) than 'hardcore', and may be a derivative of it. By my understanding, a 'core gamer' is a softer 'hardcore gamer', not as passionate and as experienced, but still into games; another interpretation could be that 'core gamers' are those who enjoy 'core games', i.e. games with traditional mechanics and concepts, possibly belonging to a well defined and consolidated genre. If you ask me, these terms don't make much sense, but I can't find a better definition for the term.

Lastly, there's a word which has apparently reached its top popularity today: the word 'casual', when attached to a gamer, means that the person doesn't play games very often, certainly isn't passionate about them, nor is knowledgeable of the videogame industry, but still contributes to the overall market. The jump from 'casual gamers' to 'casual games' is relatively short, as I understand that games may be named so when they're enjoyed mostly by 'casual gamers', and minimally by other types of gamers. Those who have been following the industry in the last few years might draw a parallel with the terms 'non-gamers' and 'non-games'.

What do all these terms have in common, aside from videogames? The Wii console, which has brought them all together in a lot of videogame discussions among the members of the game world (developers, publishers, reviewers and fans alike). Well, 'hardcore' used to be thrown around a lot more a couple of years ago, not as much today since it seems to have been gradually replaced with 'core'. Why did it happen? Surely because of how said console has been marketed since its launch; I'm not saying the term 'casual games' was invented along with the Wii (reports of its use fall back to at least year 2000, if I remember correctly... how's that?), but it's certainly been growing in popularity since then.

The matter of 'casual games' is still a relevant one: as the world faces a financial crisis, game developers and publishers need to understand market trends the best they can. I know I couldn't handle it well.