“As to time. the accusations of hardcore players being the ones who play 24/7 come usually from a certain segment of the casual side of the population (and usually sound full of bitterness and jealousy).”

Oh, the painful ring of truth!

:-)

As to time. the accusations of hardcore players being the ones who play 24/7 come usually from a certain segement of the casual side of the population (and usually sound full of bitterness and jealousy). Anyone who has seen their mother play Farmville for hours into the night knows that casual has nothing to do with the time one devotes to the game.

Speaking of social games, there is certainly a hardcore segment of those populations too. One game on Facebook is a card collecting game named “Packrat”. At the time I played it a couple years ago, it was obvious how hardcore some players were. Not only did they have every set completed, they would compete for the #1 completion. The casuals (like me) were just happy to get the little completion card even if it was #27,001. We didn’t have sets of foils, nor thousands of credits, nor did we hoard cards in the hopes they would someday be rare. Once they monetized the game, the definitions became mostly meaningless or at least very, very blurred.