There are no casual games, or casual gamers. There, that's all you really need to know. You can skip the rest of this post.

Or not.

Hardcore gamers (or "core" gamers as Reggie Fils-Aime likes to call everyone who still obsesses over the 124th game to star Mario) often deride "casual" games. Games like Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Farmville, et. al. are constantly derided as being fit only for casual gamers. Casual gamers being those people who don't actually care what games are being released this month or what Roger Ebert thinks about video game or who provides the voice of Miranda in ME2. (Not that a casual gamer knows what ME2 stands for. He would think it's a typo of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. If he even cares.)

But, games in and of themselves are not hardcore or casual, rather, it is one's approach to the game. I spent a couple months playing Farmville earlier this year and I can personally attest there are hardcore Farmville players. You don't need to try this yourself, just visit one of the many Farmville help sites or wikis and see how they've broken down every resource by the amount of coins you earn per hour per square of land and it becomes obvious there are some very hardcore players harvesting ghost chili and collect eggs. If you do play Farmville, you can tell the hardcore players right away. They are the ones with their avatar penned in and every square inch of their farm occupied by golden chickens and multiple crops planted in various states of ripeness. They probably also have two or more Facebook accounts so they can run multiple farms and share stuff with themselves.