Floppycore Gamers
Gamespot have been sending me invites to join their (exclusive! elite!) “Gamers Instinct” panel. It’s basically a marketing thing designed to tap into the “vibe on the ground”, I imagine. I also imagine that some 40-something marketing exec actually said “vibe on the ground” when pitching the idea.. but anyway.
Here’s a question designed to pin down what kind of gamer I am:
Which type of gamer would you say you are?
| Hard-Core - I live for gaming |
| Core - I game quite a bit but it’s not my main interest |
| Mainstream - I game a few times a month |
| Casual - I only play occasionally and spend very little if any money on gaming |
| I wouldn’t say I’m a gamer |
Well, that leaves me with a difficult decision. I am not a hardcore gamer, though I certainly was in the past. If I was single, or perhaps even merely not a parent, I might still be a hardcore gamer - but right now I can’t dedicate the time or money required to maintain that status.
“Core” is a description I haven’t seen before, and I’m not sure that that’s me either. Outside of family and work, if you ask me what my hobbies and interests are then gaming is right up there at number one. It’s just that I don’t have the time for that to be expressed properly anymore. I mean, I’m just as likely to spend the car ride to or from work arguing about Nintendo’s latest sales figures, or how Sony seems determined to shoot themselves in both feet simultaneously, or that everyone should stop trying to “innovate” for a while and just copy XBox Live until they all reach that as a base standard of competence in online services. (See, you don’t want to get me started!)
But I probably spend about as much time talking about games as I do playing them these days. I think what’s needed is a new category, and I hereby declare it to be:
floppycore: (n) post-hardcore; someone who can no longer keep it up.
(I picked the hardcore option in the end. Who cares if I’m only gaming 6-10 hours per week - I do live for gaming. Part of my marriage proposal to Louise included the caveat that “this is not a phase I’m going to grow out of”, and while my time spent gaming has dropped significantly I like to believe that it’s now concentrated into a few precious nuggets of gaming nirvana.)
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