Say it’s an average of around 5 games for every year I’ve been gaming (and most of them bought on budget).

I suppose it’s more in comparison to what is generally considered a casual gamer but judging by “how big is your game collection” threads on various forums it seems rather small compared to other gamers.

Then there’s the number of games, I just don’t have that many. Only about 40 or 50 games

Bloody hell. What are we calling “a lot of games?” I think the number of games that I own can be counted on one hand. Does Solitaire and OS X’s Chess game count?

The terms are just too wishy washy and massively generalise gaming habits.

A quick glance at the amount I play games would scream CASUAL GAMER, at the most I’ll squeeze in about 10 hours in a week.

Then there’s the number of games, I just don’t have that many. Only about 40 or 50 games, which pales in comparison to the numbers of CDs and books I have lying about the house.

But actually looking at the titles reveals something else:

They are not the kind of titles associated with the stereotypical casual gamer. There’s no FIFA, no rubbish liscenced titles.

Instead there are games that may be associated with the so called HARDCORE FPS player; Serious Sam, Half Life, Deus Ex, Raven Shield, Unreal Tournament, Halo.

Then there’s some third person games like MAx Payne, Jedi Knight games (mainly third person so I’m calling them such) Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell.

But then there is my favourite part of my games collection - where I believe the best of the quality lies. Old Lucas Arts adventures. Little Big Adventure 2. The Broken Sword series. The criminally overlooked Outcast.

Then there’s more recent gems; Psychonauts, and the criminally overlooked Darwinia (a superb strategy action game with retro graphics, new ideas and a great story lovingly crafted by Introversion software - check it out - it beat of tough competition to win the peoples choice award at the Edinburhg festival - somewhat amazing considering how few people have heard of it).

Casual and hardcore and other such terms are utterly pointless - what matters is quality, inovation and above all fun.

I totally agree that gamers should do more to praise undervalued games, word of mouth has power, shown by the fact that as soon as I know my adress at Uni I’m going to buy Beyond Good and Evil.

As gamers we should save our plaudits for the truly great games and spread the word to everyone.