The Conversations I Get into with my Brother (Part 2)

As I was working on last night's blog post, my brother and I got into one of our usual conversation topics: how close I am to his definition of a hardcore gamer. Most of the time during these conversations I feel like it's easier to achieve self actualization than for him to consider you a hardcore gamer, so I asked him to explain his hierarchy of gamers. After he finished explaining, I told him I would turn it into a blog post complete with a paint diagram.

You can sort of read it in its smaller form, but if you click on it you can see it a bit larger. If you can't tell, he decided to explain his views in the form of an analogy, comparing the levels of gamer to levels/layers/whatever of the Earth.

Alright, here we go. We start in the inner core of the Earth, because that's how Nathan explained it to me. Here you have hardcore gamers. As the inner core of the Earth is solid, it is "hard"core. Yeah, I'm not making this up. Apparently to achieve this level of awesome you have to have almost all of the following characteristics: be interested in and enjoy playing nearly every type of video game genre out there, be good at most of those genres, have completed at least one 24 hour gaming session, and own an Xbox 360. You might get somewhere if you own a PS3 instead of an Xbox, but knowing Nathan he might not let it slide if you don't own a console that can play Halo. If you own both a PS3 and an Xbox you're golden. He does, however, allow for hardcore Wii gamers, but he didn't say where handheld console lovers fall into this category. Sad face for my DS lite :(

Next is the outer core layer, where I apparently have moved up to recently (I guess before I was in the mantle? He says my Assassin's Creed obsession is to "thank" for this graduation, but I feel like his placement of people is slightly arbitrary). These are the "core" gamers. You are still in the core, but you are in the fluid outer core so you are not hardcore. What exactly denies you entrance into the inner core? I'm not sure. Maybe if you suck at FPS (like I mostly do) or don't like some genre of video game. Nathan's reason for baring me from the inner core is that I don't like those RTS games, like Starcraft 2 and Halo Wars. I mean, I do like Starcraft 2, but that's about it. I find most of them boring due to the waiting for units to be trained or for them to gather resources. I feel like this layer is also the same thing as when teacher's give you an A- on something, and I've always viewed the A- as an unnecessary grade.

The next layer out is the mantle. Here, you have average gamers. Nathan says these are the people who only like one type of genre or one type of franchise. For example if I played a lot of Mass Effect or Assassin's Creed, but not much beyond that. I feel like he's placed me here forever because when we were kids I ALWAYS beat him at Super Smash Bros. Kirby FTW.

The crust is for casual gamers. Here lies the Lego Star Wars/Mario Party/general party game lovers. So, if you only really play the occasional Pokemon game or game at your friend's house this is where you go. He has nothing against casual gamers. I mean, casual gamers get water and plant life and things. They get the whole Earth to explore instead of being inside a cave playing video games all day.

Casual Wii gamers get their very own section; he launched them to the moon. Hey, I still maintain that the moon is cool. The moon gets Kirby's Epic Yarn.

Lastly, he's exiled the most casual of wii gamers to some asteroid that was going to destroy the Earth. I suppose the idea behind this is that casual gaming is leading to the downfall of core gamers, and caused Microsoft to come out with Kinectimals* and Kinect Adventures!. Which, honestly, was not as cool as I was hoping Kinect (formerly called Project Natal) would be. I've added my own classification for this one as well: people who give their money to facebook games. Ridiculous.

So there you have it. Nathan's classification of gamers. Where do you fit?

Currently Reading: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (also just ordered City of Ashes and City of Glass by Cassandra Clare)

Currently Playing: Star Ocean: The Last Hope by Square Enix and Tri-Ace

*Yeah, Kinectimals looks cute with that baby tiger named Skittles, but how stupid are you going to feel petting the air? I felt dumb speaking into the DS mic when I tried to play Nintendogs.