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1	L337 Soccer Moms: Conceptions of "Hardcore" and "Casual" in the Digital Games Medium Boyer, Steven Andrew 15 July 2009 (has links) As digital games have become increasingly significant in the entertainment media landscape, the terms “casual” and “hardcore” have become the primary ways to describe gaming audiences, genres, and gameplay. However, these terms are saturated with outdated stereotypes involving gender, age, and class. Focusing on industrial discourse, this thesis examines this dichotomy, emphasizing areas of discontinuity and overlap to question why these terms have become so ubiquitous in gaming discourse and what functions they fulfill for a variety of groups including the industry, advertisers, and audience members. Ultimately, I suggest that these terms need to be replaced in order to move beyond restrictive stereotypes, proposing a new framework for digital games that takes into consideration user motivation, personal investment, and historical specificity. Online gaming portals Shareware Audience Industry discourse PopCap Games Gameplay Demographics Genre Hardcore Digital games Casual Pierre Bourdieu Gears of War 2 Digital distribution Gender Nerds Satisfaction and feedback Control schemes Difficulty Hardcasual