Every one of us enjoys gaming, for entertainment, for story, for escapism, etc. The industry has seen this and thus created the portable gaming device, oh how wonderful these devices are! After all, they give us the gaming we need when we are outside.

“Outside? Like in the Sun?”

Yeah outside, something you all have experienced before (I hope). What I am getting at is the fact the game companies make these fantastic devices and yet you guys only play them in the dank dungeon of your room. I am sure most of you have jobs, school, or something that involves you getting out of your house but why leave your lonely portable gaming device behind?
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Many people constantly argue over gaming: “Hey, do you think that you could beat me at Team Fortress 2?”, “I can beat the crap out of you in CoD4″, or my favorite, “COME ON LOSER! I WILL DESTROY YOUR LIFE!!!” The last one wasn’t so much arguing as it was trash talk, but you get my point (or not. You rebel.). One topic I always have fun looking at is one that has been around since I can remember: PC gaming VS. Console gaming. You may be thinking, “Why is this loser wasting his time, my 360 is awesome brah.” Personally, I think that the whole argument is stupid. Either way, you get your games, and both options are viable choices, so who cares? Seriously, time wasted on arguments is time you could spend playing the games. I am not going to post the differences and post my opinion, but, I just want to point out the pros and cons of each choice.
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It’s hard to mix life and video games, they always seem to interfere with each other. Whenever something happens in real life, something in the gaming world happens. Christmas? Whoops, a huge amount of games just got released. A party? Whoops, your weekly World of Warcraft raid is that night. Exams? Whoops, Valve just released an enormous update for Team Fortress 2. Because every gamer faces these problems, here are some tips to keep a healthy balance between gaming and your life.

Tip 1
Limit the amount of games you’ll play. For example, say “This week I’m only going to play Left4Dead, Valkyria Chronicles and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.” This way, you won’t get swarmed by the huge amount of options when trying to decide which game you’ll play. Normally, you might think “I can’t do that, I’ve got no time, too many games to play”. But if you limit the amount of games, these thoughts won’t pop up. This is also very useful during the holiday season, with so many games coming out.

Tip 2
Spend less time on forums. This is especially useful for people like me, who can spend hours reading forums related to gaming. Whenever I pick up a game, I’ll also start reading forums related to it. Started playing Pokémon again? You can find me on Smogon. Taking a break from playing a lot of Team Fortress 2? Good chance I’ll be on the Valve TF2 forums. There is really hardly any gain from reading forums, so you save a lot of time by not doing so, and you can use this valuable time to do more useful things, like getting a job, or just playing more games.

Tip 3
You’re not forced to play everything right after it comes out, it can wait a while. Getting swarmed by games during holiday season? Pick up one or two, and just wait for a while before playing the other. New content just came out for your favorite MMO? Well, if you wait for a week before playing it, you can have just as much fun, and not everybody in the world will be trying to enjoy the same area at the same time. Even if you wait some time, the game or content will stay exactly the same, so there’s no reason not to wait. Team Fortress 2 is not fun with 10 medics on your team, and playing an MMO is not fun if there simply aren’t enough monsters to meet the demand. If it’s a single-player game, if you wait a while, the price will drop, and you’ll have more money to spend on other things; or, if the game is in high demand, you don’t have to stand in the cold waiting for midnight to be able to pick it up.

So there are lots of ways to make sure you have a better mixture of real life and gaming. It’s not necessary to drop it completely, as some would like you to believe. Keep these three tips in mind, the next time you have to make a decision between gaming and your life.

Hardcore and casual games. Hardcore and casual gamers. I’ve spent to much time on the Internet to be surprised when I hear it, but almost once in every argument, it get’s dropped.

“It’s a CASUAL game”

A casual game. A game, that is casual in it’s design? In it’s use? In it’s plot or art? What does that mean? What do you THINK you’re saying?

Video games are NOT casual. Nor are they Hardcore. Video games are video games. There is no such thing as a hardcore game and a casual game. There are obscure games, there are popular games, there are simple games, there are complex games, there are pretty games and there are ugly games. But there is no hardcore game, and not a single casual game. They don’t exist. A game cannot be hardcore or casual. A video game can have a target audience, an art style, a plot, no plot, it can have complex controls, it could use a motion sensor, it might even require you to type words to progress, as opposed to ever controlling anything, but none of these choices will ever make it casual or hardcore.

Katamari Damacy is obscure. It’s also colourful, and it’s simple. It’s kooky and straightforward in design. It’s intention is not to appeal any one demographic. It’s intention is to take a risk in game design. Would Katamari Damacy be a hardcore game or a casual game? Both, and neither. It qualifies for either. So how can we even begin to categorize it with a straight face, knowing full well that it would hypocritical and idiotic to do so?

The same goes for all video games. Another example? Grand Theft Auto. Difficult, traditional, risk taking, and immensely popular. How could this seemingly hardcore game still be hardcore if non-gamers play it casually everyday? GTAIV received endless criticism due to it’s popularity, calling it casual and mainstream when in fact it was ONLY mainstream. I am an avid gamer. I own a slew of consoles, I play them all. I own 2 copies of GTAIV, and will be getting the PC version in December. Now, I do not play it that often. I never play it for more then an hour. I play it, casually, you could say. BUT, it is not a casual game and I am not a casual gamer. It is also not a hardcore game. It is an action adventure open world sandbox game. I am a hardcore gamer, or as I like to say, “gaming enthusiast”. My brother is a casual gamer, he doesn’t spend long on a game, except for GTAIV. He plays the game hardcore, because he payed for it and read into it, and invested himself into it.

Catz and Dogz and Horsez are not casual, they are not hardcore, they are shovelware. Katamari is a puzzle game. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a party game and Halo is a first person shooter. I own and play all these (with the exception of the shovelware). Famously, on the internet at least, Halo is casual, Katamari is hardcore and casual and Smash Bros. is the epitome of casual. But I’ve played SSBB for at least 100 hours now. How could that be casual playing?

It can’t be, and it’s not. I am a hardcore gamer. People who own Wii’s and play for 40 minutes at most in a day are casual gamers. My friend is a casual gamer, he owns an Xbox 360. My other friend is a hardcore gamer, he only owns a Wii. My brother is a casual gamer, he owns a $1200 gaming PC. How a game could be casual boggles me. Games are not designed like that. Games cannot be casual. It is the GAMER that is casual or hardcore. The gamer plays it their way, invests in it their way, spends as much time in it as they like. There has never been a casual or hardcore game. Only a casual and hardcore gamer. It’s really that simple.