• Top 10 Ways to Tell if a Game is “Hardcore”

  

  Written by Zeromage 215 Comments
  Last Updated:: April 28, 2009

  If we here at OW know anything, which we don’t, then it’s definitely hardcore games and gamers. These are the people who take what is merely a pass time and make it a serious way of life. Much like the professional athlete, the hardcore gamer takes the gaming experience to a whole new and smelly level. But this list isn’t about them, no we’ve done that before, we’ve done the comprehensive study of what your average hardcore gamer looks like already.  This time we try to get into there heads, through the layers of greasy unwashed hair, past the dandruff ridden scalp, under the extra layers of fat, and beneath the thick skull (its thick from supporting all the grease, fat, and dry skin). To further our efforts in understanding these behemoths we began systematic studies of the games which hardcore gamers identify as “hardcore” and our findings are shocking to say the least. We’ve organized some of our data into a list which ranks the importance of a particular attribute of a particular game in the order in which the hardcore gamer holds the importance of said attribute when purchasing a new game with their parent’s money. That is to say we made a top ten list.

  10. Has to be either a first person shooter, or third person shooter

  This is obviously the most hardcore way to play a game. If you can’t be it in real life why not pretend on your parent’s TV? The shooter allows one to pretend they are walking down the street and killing everything that you see. Which is often the dream of the hardcore gamer. And what’s better than pretending to see through your own eyes while killing, well imagine pretending being a handsome soldier, a handsome car thief, a handsome warrior, or some other type of handsome person that you aren’t in real life. You never see the main character in any of these hardcore games as a fat slob who gets winded when running, has terrible acne problems, needs a wardrobe that doesn’t include t-shirts with stupid sayings, lives in his parents basement, and has never touched a real girl. No the hardcore game is everything the hardcore gamer wishes he was, everything he rails against, and everything that makes him cry at night. The first and third person shooter embodies this idea in the fullest capacity of this theory. Here is a place where they can act out all of their fantasies in a way that not only rewards them but also releases all their pent up virgin aggression.

  9. Has to be rated M

  Hardcore games are almost always rated “M” for mature.  The Hardcore gamer only likes video games that are excessively violent so that casual gamers, like older people or little kids, either don’t play them, or aren’t allowed to play them.  It also makes them feel more “hardcore” because they are playing games with excessive gore.  Games like Killzone 2 are marketed to overweight hardcore gamers who enjoy these overly violent games because they help them take out the frustrations they have with the real world by blowing up people in the virtual video game world. This is because the hardcore gamer’s real life is constantly beset by setback after setback.  So these excessively violent games are a form of stress relief for these downtrodden social outcasts.

  8. Discourage innovation

  If a hardcore game is anything, it’s not original. Why bother? The best way to make a sale is to just update the graphics, change the story slightly, make it WW2, or if it’s already WW2 make it the future where robots have taken over the world (or are at least giving their best effort), and if it’s already the future make it the ancient past, where you have to battle giants of some sort. Then add in some new weapons, change the color of the armor, or make the main character shave his head. Of course, if his head is already shaved then grow his hair out. Now if in the first game he was a part of a team, then in the second one he should be by himself trying to find his team who were captured. Also if you have a tank in the first game then you will obviously have a super tank in the second game. Now if the game was originally in the future the sequel has to be in the past. If the game is the first in the series then you have to take all the good things from the most recently popular games, add them together, subtract the year it was released and add that many guns or swords, then, finally make sure the game isn’t too different so as to not upset the gamers your trying to sell the games to.

  7. Must have spent over $1,000,000 on marketing

  Millions of dollars goes into hyping up each new hardcore game to epic proportions.  The game developers buy up ad space on sites like IGN and Gamespot, who will then review these games and give them either “five stars” or a “ten out of ten” and will eventually call each one the “game of the year” at some point.  The goal is to make the impressionable hardcore gamer feel like he has to own and beat the game before any of his online buddies do.  This way he will already be a master of the game before they even buy it, and when they play against each other online he will be able to easily dominate them, thus making the hardcore gamer feel like he has accomplished something in his otherwise meaningless existence.

  6. Your health must auto-regenerate as soon as you take cover

  We all like being better at things than other people.  We always have.  And the one thing that the hardcore gamer thinks he is better at than other people is video games.  But are they really better at video games than normal people, or do they just spend a lot more time playing them?  Hardcore gamers like their video games to be long and involved, but not necessarily hard.  They like the games they play to take 20+ hours to beat so that casual gamers who actually have lives outside of video games will never be able to beat them.  And yet at the same time the hardcore gamer wants to be able to beat these games himself, so they can’t be too hard, just really long.  Let’s face it, dying isn’t fun.  These games have to be easy enough so that the hardcore can win and thus feel better about himself.   One way to make video games easier is to have your health meter automatically regenerate whenever you take cover.  This makes the game take longer, while at the same time making it easier.  In Contra you didn’t have a health meter.  One shot and you were dead.  That’s why the hardcore gamer usually prefers modern games over the classics.

  5. Should have some sort of multiplayer mode where 12 year olds can talk in l33t speak

  All hardcore games have an online multiplayer mode.  This is where hardcore gamers get most of their social interaction.  To deal with that fact that they are social outcasts, hardcore gamers have invented their own language. In one of the most childish reactions a group of people could have, they further force their own isolation by creating a useless and annoying language. Leet speak allows groups of “hardcore gamers” to bash on their most hated enemy, the casual gamer, without the casual gamer even knowing its happening. This is important, as the average casual gamer is far more physically fit and could easily beat the living hell out of a hardcore gamer, should they be found out. Leet speak further makes the hardcore gamer feel special. Every waking second reminds the hardcore gamer that they are in fact gigantic wastes of life, but at least there is one thing that the average person can’t figure out. I mean who could possibly crack the complex code that is leet speak? I mean replacing vowels with numbers, I don’t get it, but then again I’m not a “hardcore gamer.”

  4. Must appeal to 12 year olds. (lots of guns and boobies)

  The average age of your typical hardcore gamer is 35, we have done vast amounts of research and this is the number that our monkey comes up with time and time again. The average living quarters of your hardcore gamer is 33% parent’s basement, 33% parents attic, and 33% above parents garage. Again our fact checking kittens have run these numbers repeatedly and no variation has been seen. What’s more interesting is that our psychological research team has found out that the average maturity level of your hardcore gamer is roughly 12. Therefore a game which would appeal to the hardcore gamer must appeal to a 12 year old. What do 12 year olds think about, well mainly boobies. Therefore the easy marketing tactic is to place lots of scantily clad women into hardcore games to attract as many hardcore gamers as possible. We here at OW find it interesting that despite all the hardcore gamer’s ranting about how un-intelligent your average person is the average hardcore gamer is generally attracted to the same things. The same basic human principles motivate them, however, they are so socially retarded they are unable to act on them. Hence video games based on violence and mayhem. Your average 12 year old loves running around building forts, smashing stuff, and generally getting into mischief. The average hardcore gamer is a 12 year old trapped in a giant sweaty body with little social interaction and lots of video games. Therefore a game deemed hardcore must have lots of things that a 12 year old would love.

  3. Can not have any colors other than brown, green, gray, red, and black

  “Hardcore” games almost always evoke brooding aesthetics not only in theme but in appearance. You don’t even know where you’re going in some levels in these games, but at least you’re comforted in knowing that you have a big gun to randomly shoot in the dark at enemies that you can barely see. It helps to have a mode on your TV that brightens up your screen. It also helps to have glasses on when playing these games. If you don’t have either, expect to walk around these games like you were a blind person. Cashing in on the conditioned spookiness of the dark never came so easy for video game makers as it does in the modern hardcore game.

  2. 80% of the budget should go toward the graphics, give the rest to marketing.

  The more realistic and dark the graphics in a game are, the more likely it is that it will appeal to the hardcore gamer.  To the hardcore gamer, games with graphics that are too cartoonish (like most of the games on the Nintendo Wii, for example) will appeal to the casual gamer crowd, and so no matter how much fun these might be games to play, a true hardcore gamer would never admit to enjoying them.  So when designing a game for hardcore gamers, companies like Valve and Guerilla Games spend as much money as they can on making the graphics look as realistic as possible, with minimal effort put into the actual gameplay itself.  As we saw earlier, the rest of the budget for these games goes to the excessive marketing in order to hype them up to epic proportions so that the hardcore gamer feels like if he doesn’t buy the game and beat it before all of his friends do, he’ll lose all of the respect of the hardcore gaming community.

  1. Everyone on N4G likes it

  If you need to know the status quo in the gaming world where do you go? N4G. Here you can talk about Kill Zone 2, Kill Zone 2, or how much better Kill Zone 2 is than Kill Zone 1. This is the website where everyone goes to be different by completely agreeing with each other on all the major gaming issues. Can’t get a girlfriend, live in your parents basement, kind of smell bad, have acne problems? Then go to N4G. Sure there may be some argument as to the degree hardcore, but if a game is recognized as good by the crew over at N4G then you know it’s hardcore. How does a population of people who claim difference should be celebrated, that the popular people are all just clones of each other, that girls only like the same jerk, stand out? Well they go to N4G and agree on everything. And what happens when something different actual does come along? Well they shun it. They won’t let it sit at their lunch table and they call it mean names. In a sense they do what all the bullies at school do to them. You see the hardcore gamer is only skin deep; granted the skin is greasy, red and blotchy, and very pale. The hardcore gamer just wants to fit in, therefore they all like to agree with each other.

215 Comments

1. #1 Delta says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 2:33 am

   Those examples aren’t quite comparable, Alberto.

   It takes a whole lot more time, effort and dedication to play FPS games like I described. Reading comics is quite different.
2. #2 Alberto says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 3:04 am

   Like I said everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

   But the best thing is that you like videogames

   Do you play gears 1 or 2?
3. #3 Delta says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 3:09 am

   I’ve got the first, haven’t tried the second.
4. #4 Justin says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 3:59 am

   Duke Nukem FTW