I've been kind of an ashamed-of-myself-as-a-gamer kind of gamer just because of this.
I think it is because I used to game more, but I refuse to give up even though I don't meet my gamer friends anymore or have anymore time to play neither upgrade my pc.

The problem with the hardcore/casual labels stems back to the fact that (to me) it seems it is used to differentiate games that the speaker plays from games that the speakers mom, sister, girlfriend, etc plays. This falls apart when you present the speaker with games that both want to play, or ones that neither are all that interested in.

*shrugs* Loosely, I always thought "hardcore" gamers meant one or both of the following: a) someone who'd routinely spend the majority of his/her waking hours playing games (not just "I'm single, it was a bad work week, I'm gonna binge out on Game X this Saturday"); or b) somebody who'd spend cash they really could've used for stuff like a working car or a real mattress on a brand-new computer with a $500 video card just so they could play the latest FPS on maximum settings.

In other words, somebody who doesn't get sucked into real life as much as I do, darn it! ;)

I'm not any type of gamer because it varies. Some weeks I can play for 30 minutes an others I can play for 40 hours. Most of my time is spent reading about games or watching people play them though.

I'll agree, I don't know what the term means, do I go by how many hours I play a week? By what kinds of games I play? What about the difficulty settings I choose? What about how much I would play if I had more leisure time? By my Live gamerscore? By how much I spend on games per year? By how often I upgrade my graphics card? By whether I build my own dedicated, gaming rig? By whether I learned how to build a computer in order to build a gaming rig versus some other reason? By my packrat boxes of old games in my basement? By how many lines of code I typed into my C64 as a kid just to play a game printed in some magazine?

The term lacks definition. While publishers and devs may pick some criteria and aim at that market, saying mid-core gamer means nothing to me. Literally all that stuff ran through my head when I was thinking about the term and how to classify. Others could probably add to the above list.

Hell, this is pretty fun so I'll add to the list:

If someone spends 30 hours a week on a single game with the intent of getting really good at it, are they more or less hardcore than someone who buys five games a week but spends significantly less time on each one?

Which is more hardcore, an extremely unforgiving action game (say, DoDonPachi Daioujou) or a highly complex hex-based strategy game by Gary Grigsby?

If someone LOVES games but doesn't spend much time with them because their work schedule doesn't allow it, are they hardcore or casual? What if their work schedule DID allow it but their social life didn't?

Who's more hardcore, someone who buys an absolute top-of-the-line computer from Alienware or someone who spends $600 to make a pretty nice computer from scratch?

If someone builds a custom cockpit for a simulator for a few thousand dollars but aren't actually any good at the game, are they hardcore or casual? Does this qualify as midcore?

Does playing The Dark Spire count as hardcore or casual? It's a brutal Wizardry clone (complete with an option for wireframe graphics), but it's on the Nintendo DS. Do these two things cancel each other out and become midcore? Does the DS no longer count as a relatively casual system because of games like The Dark Spire, or does being on the DS inherently make The Dark Spire more casual than it otherwise would be?

Is a 75 year old man who plays a game 20 hours a week more or less hardcore than a 25 year old man who does the same?

And so on.

This is why demographics are based on age, sex, income bracket, purchasing habits, average hours played (stuff like Xbox Live and Steam don't just track your stats to give you fun numbers to look at), etc... and the relative performance of a genre (and games within a genre, and platform the game is aimed at, and and and) is measured against those demographics in order to at least partially determine things like budget and marketing

Nobody outside of PR cares about what level of core you are, they just want to make sure you care because it's an extremely effective marketing tactic. A term like "hardcore" alienates very few people, so even if a game and a person don't line up (the game is a multiplayer shooter, the person obsesses over stats in RPGs), the marketing is still inclusive thanks to his self-appointed "hardcore" label, despite his own personal definition not lining up with the game in question.

I'm whatever kind of gamer you call someone with a widely varied taste who doesn't stay limited to one or two genres. I'll play almost any kind of game... except sports. I can't stand sports, whether in game form or the real thing, though noting that I don't label racing as a sport for this purpose.

I guess currently I'd just call myself an enthusiast.

That is the best answer for me.
And now I am going to ramble on with boring details that no one cares about but I have nothing better to right now

Playtime:

I don't know how many hours of playing videogames I average a week. If I were to guess I'd say it's about 5. Looking at my steam game play time total, I average 1.5 hours a week on steam alone. I also have the ps3 , the 360 ( which I haven't touched in forever because of rrod) and the other DD sites. Bejwelled Blitz really had me hooked for awhile, there were quite a few nights where I played for hours long stretches.
Gamerscore for xbox 360 in 2 years of playing time = about 5000 .
Trophy level for ps3 in about a year's time= 4. Those numbers don't exactly shout out "hardcore", but still seem bigger than "casual".

type of games I enjoy- Don't like online shooters, never play multiplayer. Still enjoy a single player fps here and there as long as it isn't completely generic.. Enjoy most RPGs, with a prefernce for the pc. Baldurs Gate 2 is my favorite but I enjoy the more "consoley" type rpgs too like Lost Odyssey for the 360.
Platformers= I love them. The franchises of Mario, Ratchet and Clank and Little Big Planet have some of my favorite games ever. I hate sim racing games like Forza and GT, love arcadey Burnout type games. Love puzzle/music rhythm games. I like most strategy games, but unlike a lot pc gamers, I don't actually think "dumbing down" would be a horrible thing for those games. I like adventure games but greatly prefer games that use humor in them, such as Monkey Island and Sam and Max

Nerdiness factor-I don't buy collector's editions, I don't feel the need to keep a game in my collection forever to build up some gaming shrine. I don't listen to OSTs, and don't care about the extras that gog packages with their games. I do listen to gaming podcasts though, so I guess that can be considered nerdy. And I lurk videogame message boards for at least an hour a day

I am elitist asshole and i am proud of it.

20 years old turnbase strategy or brand new FPS? I don't care if it si fun.

Not sure what level 'core I am, but I know I prefer single player rpgs, especially the Piranha Bytes games, I've enjoyed everything Bioware has ever done (i'm a sucker for entertaining characters), and I play Halo and Madden NFL on console. I honestly don't care what the game is, if it's fun I play it, and I don't worry about achievements. On less reputable gaming sites I've been insulted for playing Madden games, saying that it makes me a fake gamer. That's incredibly ignorant, because the twitch reflexes and long term strategy present in All-Madden mode on there is equally as difficult as all but the most insane Pc strategy games. If playing a mix of upper echelon RPGs and "low-brow" sports games puts me in a group, I suppose that midcore works for me.

I'm like this in some ways. I play just for fun and quit when it's not. That often has nothing to do with whether I have reached a game's ending. Heck, I may come back and complete it in two years, but finishing it only drives me when I haven't had my fill of it yet.

On the other hand, I don't feel compelled to teach myself everything from scratch. I quickly make use of walk-throughs when stumped. Sure I'll puzzle it out a little, but when the process becomes irritating, I'm all about the keeping it fun still rather than beating my brains out on it or abandoning a good game in frustration.

Good thoughts on X-COM, there, too.

Re 50 to 60 hours on a game that I like, that's barely a warm-up. So that probably makes me a midcore gamer, at the least, by definition. But I think a hardcore gamer is what I was when played RTS's more -- that would be every night, for hours, past the point of sanity, very competitively. Or when I was into MMORPG's, which can eat ALL your time (all of it). These days I'm more of a simple dumbass, but I don't take it to psychotic levels.

I hate labels. I hate classification. I hate being defined by others.
I do my own thing. I am totally original. I ignore society's rules.

That's why I am a member of a social group for people who don't like social groups. We wear matching clothes to signify our solidarity with each other and to scream to the world that we can't be neatly pigeonholed into the man's tidy little pockets! We listen to bands that share our anti-social values and we eat the food we collectively agree is politically in concert with our social ideology.

You can't label me!

Me too!
Anyone who can even spell that mess is hardcore.

I had to look it up for a reminder before I posted. :P

That said, look it up on Youtube. Spelling it is the easiest part of the game.

Last time I checked, I just play whatever I like. I'm not a 'core', I'm a Rohan dammit!