NEW: Erick Vallejos: A Mid-Core Life

In 2008 there were two types of gamers: hardcore and casual. 

The hardcore gamers were your typical teenage boy (or forty-something) that played Gears of War 2 or Grand Theft Auto IV in a dark room with the only light coming from the screen in front of them.  Games were a major part of their lives.

On the other side of the spectrum were the casual gamers, those whom can take out their cell phone to play a quick game of Bejeweled 2 or spend an hour on Diner Dash just to pass the time.  Games were time wasters.

And then there was me, one of the many stuck in this weird gamer purgatory.  We played more games than the casuals, yet didn’t play enough games to truly be hardcore.  We had no name.  We were the casteless gamers with no banner.

Jeff & Steve Fulton of 8bitrocket shared the same feelings and came up with the term “Mid-Core Gamer”.  Which was later used in a manifesto of things mid-core gamers wanted from their games (a list which interestingly has been somewhat implemented in games today).  The mid-core name never really took off; it ran out of steam before it could truly get started.

Three years later, the lines between casual and hardcore are blurring.  I can walk into a café and overhear dozens of game related things: the boy in the corner playing with his 3DS, the businessman swearing under his breath when he can’t hit that last pig in Angry Birds, a middle-aged woman sitting on her laptop plowing fields in Farmville, a pair of college students planning a raid in World of Warcraft, and a small group of late twenty-somethings sighing after the third 7 in a row has been rolled in a game Settlers of Catan.

To me they’re all gamers.  There is no need to divide casual and hardcore, there is no need to classify different types of gamers into different species.  We’re all gamers.  Even though the moniker of gamer might hold a negative connotation (especially in the media), I’ve always found it to be an inclusive term, never exclusive.

Which brings me to the point of this blog.  I’m a reporter who is proud to say, “I am a gamer”.  I love video games as a medium.  I’m not here to say they are perfect, they still have many flaws, but these are flaws that given time both the industry and the consumer can help fix.  Even though today I lean more towards the hardcore side of gaming, I know what it’s like to be stuck in the middle.  That is what essentially this blog is about:

It’s a place where we can all talk about video games and board games.  This is a place where all gamers and non-gamers can go to learn about the other side.  Hopefully this is the place where a gamer can go to speak their mind about games.  I just happen to be the one with the soapbox that can select the topic of conversation.

I’m not a video game reviewer nor am I entrenched in the inner workings of video game/board game journalism and development.  I'm a passionate person and advocate of the medium.  If you want a review on something, I may not be the right person to do it.  I’ll do my best not to talk about things I’m not adequately informed on nor talk about games I haven’t touched.

What I want to do is talk about gaming culture and mechanics.  Look deeper beyond the review or the game itself and into the people or the hows and whys of games.  To stimulate some form of conversation

Is this some online utopian fantasy?  Yes. 

Is it even possible to do this on the internet? Maybe.

Does it sound very pompous? Most likely.

But I’m willing to give it a try.  To modify a quote by Florence Foster Jenkins, a woman who could not sing but performed a sold-out show at Carnegie Hall in 1944:

"They can say I can’t talk about games intelligently, but they can’t say I didn’t."

Welcome to A Mid-Core life.

(If you want in on the conversation, just comment or send me an e-mail with "A Mid-Core Life" in the subject line.)