Can't I Be a Hardcore Gamer?

I know I mostly just post reviews of specific games and such, but yesterday we renewed our subscription to Game Informer and I was reading one of the letters to the magazine in the July 2010 issue that really got me thinking. I spend several hours a day playing games of different sorts, but I feel like the supposedly true hardcore gamers would say I am a casual gamer. The letter was complaining that Game Informer wrote about Farmville and the magazine should just be hardcore games like Halo.

Honestly, I do not care about 90% of the games they talk about in Game Informer. However, I still love to read it every month. The fact they have finally realized that they could change the balance to a little less of the supposed hardcore stuff in favor of just a little more supposedly casual game stuff is a plus to me. At the same time I do not like the label of hardcore because it seems to mean playing specific types of games and not quantity of gaming or variety of gaming.

I just do not see why cannot I be a hardcore gamer if I play a variety of genres that are all not the supposed hardcore games and also play those games very frequently. Sure, there has to always be limits to things like making the definition of hardcore, but I do not like limiting you to be a hardcore gaming to you playing specific types of games. Heck, you could play those games and actually be a casual gamer because you do not play regularly or at least in my opinion you could be. In contrast you could play none of those hardcore games and play only an hour a day of games of a variety of styles such as the scavenger hunt style of the Pacifico Webtrek, quick Facebook games like FarmVille, and the daily test on Brain Age; and I would consider that to be hardcore.