There has always been the divide on what’s counted as a real game, or being a real gamer. As someone who has been deep in both worlds of casual and hardcore games I feel as though this divide is slowly being torn away with games appearing in the mainstream spotlight more and more in the present day.
Since we talked about Pokemon Go this week, I’ll use the main Pokemon series games as an example. So there are countless people who know of the basic game of Pokemon where you go get your starter, catch Pokemon and collect badges. That side of the game can be seen as the more casual side of the game, where there really isn’t that much skill needed to play the game, but knowledge of the mechanics can give someone the edge. For example the community has made up self imposed rulesets on playthroughs of the game to make it harder on themselves (nuzlocke- you can only catch one Pokemon per route and if someone faints you can’t use them anymore). That is only one aspect on how the main series can bleed more into the category of hardcore, there is a whole nother world when people enter the competeive wifi battling where people will compose team with the only intent of battling the most efficent way.
Once we consider the competitive side of things Pokemon can be seen as a more hardcore game. The skill curve is much steeper then playing normally, making the wrong moves will have greater consequence then before and also gaining the knowledge of movesets, EV’s, IV’s types, normals sets so you can predict what people have based on experience (for anyone who doesn’t know EV’s are short for effort value and they are used to increase the Pokemon’s stats, and IV’s are short for individual values, which are predetermined stats for the Pokemon, think of it like genes).
This was only one example of how the division of hardcore and casual games are not as black and white as people assume it is. Also this shows even though a game can be labeled as hardcore or casual if people change the way of play the label can be not as defined.
DMS 448 Spring 2020 
I completely agree with you about how there is no fine line between what counts as a casual or hardcore game. For example, Pokemon Go is a game where it kind of falls under both hardcore and casual gaming. Depending on how people play the game it could change their view on whether it is a causal game or not. People can casually play it and just pull it out on their commute to work. On the other hand, we have those players who actively seek out pokemon on the game and form groups to go Pokemon hunting with. What I found really interesting is when you said, “this shows even though a game can be labeled as hardcore or casual if people change the way of play the label can be not as defined.” I never really thought about it that way before but you bring up a good point. The world of gaming is changing so much and everyday there is a new group of gamers making new rules for a game they’ve been playing forever. With the games changing as we know it, hardcore games and casual games are getting harder and harder to differentiate.
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