What is hardcore?

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Tanakeah wrote:

For me, one of the best games that defined 'hardcore' for me was F-Zero GX for the Gamecube.

Yes. Everything you said is true.
I still bust that game out on my Wii from time to time. I got as far as unlocking the Diamond Cup, and those tracks give a new meaning to challenge - I can't reliably come first on them on standard yet.
There is very little that game did wrong, and it's one of the best cases I've ever seen of a game primarily rewarding player skill, and giving you the means to build that skill by taking successively harder challenges.

In the more general sense of the thread topic, I think what defines a "hardcore" game is fairly nebulous and changes from case to case - the best definition is really something like "Hardcore means the thing I'm pointing at when I use the term".
And it gets much more confusing when you start to conflate "hardcore game" and "hardcore gamer". This was brought up earlier in the thread to try to find an answer, but they're answering different questions. There are people who play games that would be considered 'hardcore' by many, but in a casual way, and vis versa.

I suspect at the heart of the issue, we're really looking to define what "hardcore" means not in terms of games or gamers, but in terms of types of play. I think a hardcore game is one that encourages or rewards being played in a hardcore manner, and a hardcore gamer is someone who enjoys or participates in that style of play. There's obviously overlap - hardcore gamers will tend toward hardcore games, but it's not an exclusive relationship.
I wouldn't define Bejeweled as a hardcore game, but it can (and is, by some) be played in a manner that can only fairly be described as hardcore. Equally, while something like PoE could be considered a hardcore game, it's perfectly possible to play it casually.
Pokemon would be another example - I'm a fan of the series, and one thing it does really well is cater to both hardcore and casual play. Many people think of the games as casual, and they can be, but there's an entire horde fo 'below the surface' mechanics to play with and endgame content that requires that. I've played the games causally sometimes, and in a very hardcore manner at others, depending on what I was looking to experience at the time.

More detailed example

On my SoulSilver game I have a set of dittos, one for each stat with that stat maximised and a nature that enhances said stat, for purposes of breeding those stats to various pokemon. This took time and correct use of certain pokemon abilities to achieve. I battled end-game content to grind battle points to collect the various EV training items, and obtained a few pokemon with the Pokerus virus - stored in a box to keep them infectious.
And without doing this, and planning out a cohesive team of pokemon with complementing strategies and who fill different rolls, playing to their species strengths, and actually grinding the breeding and battling the right enemies to raise EVs for the correct stats, I would, for example, be pretty much unable to get anywhere in the battle frontier, where everything is balanced around players having learned these systems and done these things (I still haven't got my 100-win streak, which is required to obtain the highest-level trainer card).
The causal players don't ever need to know how the stats work, or try to beat the battle tower, but the systems and content is there for players who are (currently) looking for a more hardcore play experience, while being mostly behind-the-scenes enough to not put off those who aren't looking for that.
And there's an entire competitive battling scene that I've never even gotten into, and who could all wipe the floor with me.

In White, I wasn't interested in playing hardcore at the time, and just went through the main game with a team of whatever I caught that seemed interesting, had fun, and didn't bother with the battle frontier equivalent.

Also, as Carl pointed out to me the other week, Pokemon is a great counterexample to the position that all modern games allow respecs - if your pokemon has a nature that weakens it's best stat, or was hatched with low values in it's stats - then you can't change that, beyond going to the effort of getting another one (which might not always be possible or easy, and it may have taken a while of raising one to even work out how low/high it's base stats are). If you get the wrong EVs from battling you can change that, but non-trivially.

Of course, all I've really done is provide a definition of "hardcore game" (and "hardcore player") in terms of something that is itself not well-defined, but I do feel that the distinction is important in working out what we really mean when we refer to something as a hardcore game.

For me, I'd say that some common indicators of "hardcore play" would be:

• Long periods of play, rather than short sessions
• Being constantly attentive to the game
• The gameplay involves thinking and reasoning
• Gameplay is enhanced by or rewards planning actions in advance, even before the play session begins
• Significant effort is expended to achieve goals
• The player feels that something is at stake - that there is a consequence to loss. This is easiest to achieve if something actually is at stake, but I believe the illusion of such can still create a "hardcore" play experience.

Formatting ate the rest of the post, so I'm just gonna end this here, because it's already gotten longer than I intended (I started posting just to agree with Tanakeah about F-Zero X).
Long story short, I think "hardcore games" are those that lend themselves to being played in a hardcore way, as indicated by the non-exhaustive list above, and "hardcore gamers" are those who prefer such styles of play.