For the longest time, gamers were seen as nothing more than geeks that sat alone in their parent’s dark and depressing basement playing video games day and night. As true as that may have been to some extent, gaming soon became more and more popular world wide and the view on gamers changed along with it. As the gaming industry has grown, the types of games developed have expanded the types of gaming audiences. With time, game companies began to acknowledge and make note of the types of gamer markets along with ways of tapping the potential of each market. The following is an in-depth look at those types of markets.

There are two main categories of gamers, Hardcore and Casual.

Hardcore - These gamers are the driving force behind the gaming industry. Spending most, if not all, of their leisure time playing, competing, and mastering video games or video games of a specific genre. Hardcore gamers also often delve a great portion of that practice into figuring out each and every intricacy of the game to give them every advantage over their opponent and ultimately defeat them in LANs, online competitions, etc...

Casual - Casual gamers spend much less time playing games in comparison to hardcore gamers and also play many games across many genres rather than just one game or a single genre. Also, they generally play games as a hobby and play in a relaxed, careless state unlike many hardcore gamers that play at the professional level.

Within the two main categories there are many subcategories.

Hardcore Categories
Cyberathlete - These gamers leave nothing to chance. They learn anything and everything about a game so that they can partake in the highest level of professional play while competing for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Competitive - These gamers are quite similar to Cyberathletes. They learn mostly everything about a game so that they can compete against opponents usually just for bragging rights and not so much for money, prizes, etc.

Perfect - A "perfect" gamer isn't unbeatable by any means. It simply means that a gamer that is considered to be a pPerfect" gamer plays games until they are 100 percent completed or perfected.

Hacker - Hackers aren't cheaters or people figuring out ways to get viruses onto your computer or anything. Hackers are gamers that spend hundreds of hours looking for little ticks, glitch, and exploits in games. They usually don’t play the game for the story, competitive feel, or anything along those lines, hackers simply play games to find little ways of getting past the "limits" of the game.

Power - This kind of gamer becomes personally involved with a game. This sort of person becomes obsessed with playing and achieving within the game to the point where it affects their social life.

Casual Categories
Social - Social gamers play games for fun and generally aren't overly competitive about them either. They play them in their leisure time with their friends or family.

Occasional - Occasional gamers play games rarely and usually when they're just flat out bored.

Leisure - Many of these gamers, given the time, would be easily considered hardcore gamers. They play games in most, if not all, of their leisure time just like a hardcore gamer does, the only difference is that a leisure gamers doesn't have a lot of free time so they're gaming time is very limited in comparison to a hardcore gamers amount of available time.

Companies are finally beginning to comprehend what type of games the community is looking for, let's hope that leads to better games in the future.