The argument that “casual gamers aren’t real gamers” has existed ever since the rise of laid back titles targeted towards wider audiences, such as with mobile games, or Facebook games such as “Farmville” or “Candy Crush”. It has even led to harassment from “real” or “hardcore” gamers, who believe that anyone who hasn’t played a 60 hour RPG or clocked hundreds of hours in a first person shooter. To be completely honest, if anyone considers themselves a gamer, then that is okay with me. I don’t care about anyone’s play preferences or what they enjoy playing the most, as long as they enjoy playing video games, they are a gamer in my eyes. To say that some games “Aren’t real games” is baffling to me, as if the game about a guy with a spiky head of hair and an 8 foot long sword is “more hardcore” than the game about doing chores in a town full of cute animals. For example, I will use the subject of my dad. While my dad doesn’t consider himself a gamer, he consumes and enjoys video games from time to time, with some of his favorites being “Mario Kart Wii”, “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2”, and “Clash Royale”. These games are all vastly different from each other, but he still enjoys them either way. He doesn’t consider himself a gamer however, and that’s completely fine. To make the argument that he IS in fact a gamer would seem pointless in his eyes, because he simply doesn’t care that much for games, other than these three games he has connected with in my lifetime. The games were a bonding experience for us, and they will always have a place in my heart, as well as his. This situation can be reversed in many instances, with people considering themselves to be gamers, but are shunned because the games they play aren’t “hardcore” enough. This is usually a sexist argument against women of the community, who are harassed by men who believe “they’re just lying to get attention”. This “gatekeeping” is unfortunately very common in the community, with conversations usually leading to things like “Oh, you’re a gamer? If that’s true, then answer all of my specific trivia questions about gaming.” I still don’t understand this argument, as everyone has different tastes, you can’t expect someone who plays a lot of Nintendo games to know XBox and Microsoft trivia. As a matter of fact, I believe that any game that is considered to be “casual” can be played in a hardcore fashion. Take the speedrunning community for example, taking a game that was never meant to be played in such a way that has been closely studied, broken, and reinvented by a group of dedicated players. From “Super Mario 64” to “Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom”, games are given whole new meaning of “hardcore”. The “casual games” versus “hardcore games” argument has always been a strange subject to me, as being a gamer all comes down to personal opinion. We shouldn’t judge what kind of games people enjoy, we should just be excited that people are engaging in the community in the first place.