The Foibles of the Hard Core Gamer (or, The Rise and Fall of the Elite Gamer)
Edited by C. Marie In the beginning, there were only video games and the people who played them. There were no cliques or clubs. There were no “hard core”, “core”, or “casual” gamers, no “hard-core” or “casual” games. In those days there was Defender and Stargate (Defender's sequel)--these games were done with a stick and a bunch of buttons. They were also the closest thing to "hard core" games available at the time. Most everything else had fewer and simpler controls. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Galaga... all hugely popular games. But there were no attitudes. There weren’t elite squads of gamers trying to establish themselves as “real” gamers while everyone else was somehow lower on the food chain. Back in those early days, arcades were King. Home consoles in the early 1980s were extremely popular; fun, yes, but also technically limited. Atari dragged the industry into a kind of dormant state with their mediocre game catalog....