I’ve always been a pretty hardcore gamer. I know that’s a label that gets peoples backs up, but I just see it as a fitting descriptor. Off the back of the amount of time I put into my hobby, I may be guilty of being a little snobbish, but then who isn’t? Heck, I used to look down on youngsters that drank a couple alcopops and started exaggerating about how wasted they were. Mother fucker, I drank 15 stella’s last night and woke up covered in my own faeces; don’t presume to know anything about getting wasted. That doesn’t mean I wield the term around like some badge of honour, or title that grants me access to a special club though: I just think it is calling a spade a spade.

I don’t see hardcore as equalling good and casual as equalling bad. I’m about as likely to boast about being a hardcore gamer as I am about being a hardcore wanker (I’m probably more befitting the title “pro” when it comes to that anyway). It is just a fitting term. To substantiate my point, I’ve come to realise I’m probably now a casual gamer; or at least become a lot more casual in my gaming habits. The amount of time I spent playing and talking about games (in fact, me even writing this blog) kind of makes it hard to truly argue the “casual gamer” label, but I’ve seen a noticeable change in my gaming habits.

I don’t have the time, or maybe it’s the inclination, to invest in deep games any more. I find this quite peculiar, as it’s that depth that used to hold all the value for me. I don’t think it was ever really snobbery as such, but casual games just looked shallow to me. I liked games with complexity and some meat on their bones. I actually found myself getting annoying at what I saw as a trend of “streamlining” games to make them more casual. Mass Effect, to pick one example, went from an RPG to little more than a cover shooter. In fact, those are still very logical standpoints to me, which is how I know this is all about how I’ve changed, and not about how I think games need to.

My most played game these days is Clash of Clans (CoC), on my mobile phone. Even as I read that sentence back to myself, and acknowledge the truth of it, I still struggle to swallow it. It’s like when an alcoholic has to say the words out loud; it may help combat the denial, but you’re still left wondering how you got there. In this case it was a friend that introduced me, and before I knew it, I found myself favouring CoC in the evenings over my console games.

Clash of clans has enough depth to allow for some degree of skill, but not so much that you get bogged down in complicated details. It’s got a good social aspect to it, where you clan up with people and wage war on rivals, which also requires a degree of team work. All this is done in a little and often fashion, where you’re constantly dipping in and out throughout the day. For me, this provides a consistent gaming hit over the course of the day, which may actually be why I don’t feel the need to game every night now. I often compare my gaming habits to that of an addiction, so it actually feeds into the analogy; that a weaker prolonged hit would reduce the need for an more intense one every evening.

Of course it could be argued that “causal” games are now just another string to my bow, on top of all the other gaming I partake in. I do still play those “Hardcore” games – just not as much – so maybe I’ve merely expanded and diversified my gaming. Maybe, rather that dial back, I’ve rounded out my gaming repertoire. Maybe I’m now a hardcore and a casual gamer. Maybe I’m an UBER-GAMER!

They see me trolling, they hatin’…. or not, as it would so happen if you were indeed a decent troll. See the true meaning of the internet troll has, somewhere along the line, been lost. With the rise of social media, and in particular online harassment, it is a term that has been picked up by the out of touch mainstream media and applied incorrectly.

Due to this failure, if you were to ask someone what an internet troll is, chances are they would define it as someone that harasses people online. Someone that calls you a cunt, issues death or rape threats, or generally behaves in a very offence way towards others is, they’d have you believe, an internet troll. The irony is, had the media of done this on purpose, rather than incompetence, they would of actually successfully trolled you.

The act of trolling is slightly nuanced, which is probably where the confusion crept in, and its origins are slightly up for debate. There is however one key element –  an element that has seemingly escaped the media – that is always present when referring to trolling: deception. To troll someone, there has to be some deception at play. You can’t just openly annoy someone or say nasty things to them. That would simply be annoying and harassing them, not trolling them.

In gaming, where the term trolling is well established, an example would be getting people to commit suicide in game by convincing them of a lie. For example, telling people you know of a secret area, then having them walk off the side of a cliff to their death, would be an act of trolling. It is often confused with another gaming term, griefing. Griefing also generally involves annoying people online, but lacks the nuance of trolling. Open team killing for example, would be greifing, not trolling, as it lacks that key element of deception.

Another common form of trolling in gaming would take place on forums, where platform rivalry is often very heated and arguments are rife. Rather than simply bash rival gaming systems in online debates, trolls would often post new threads claiming to be disgruntled owners of the system they didn’t like. Topics like “After 10 years of PC gaming, I’ve decided to switch to Xbox” would get posted by Xbox owners that had never actually owned a PC. Anyone that bought into this lie and gave the complains more pause for thought due to their apparently unbiased nature, would have effectively been trolled. Again, deception is key.

The exact origin of the term may be up for debate. Some believe it comes from the fishing technique, where as others believe it relates to the creature. One thing is certain though, the common media definition has been simplified to the point it is factually incorrect. This is bad new for actual trolls, and perplexing to the rest of us. If I was to have a punt at a dictionary definition it would go something like this:

Trolling: Gleaning sadistic pleasure from annoying others online via the art of deception.