Not sure what the criteria for being hardcore is. In some cases it's about as uncertain as the term 'cool'. As in only other people can promote you to the hardcore level. I guess I'll have to vote hardcore though, because I'm certainly not moderate.
Been playing games all my life. I was born the same year the NES was released (though distrebution was different throughout the world.) and was playing Mario, Kid Icarus and Megaman from the very start. On the PC: Sim city, Police quest, Space Quest and Kings Quest. Then the Snes came out and I discovered Zelda (a link to the past). Not through friends or commercials, but through renting a random game and noticing that it was actually fantastic fun to play. Megaman X came at about the same time and things just started adding up after that.
I'll admit, I am a bit of a Nintendo fan. I own a lot of the major Nintendo consoles (nes, snes, n64, gamecube, gameboy colour, gameboy advance and the DS) and play them on a regular basis. Since my NES died, I've been playing all of my old games through emulators. I play a lot of different games on the PC, though the only one that hasn't really done it for me yet is the MMORPG. In rare cases, there have been good ones, but most are repetitive and boring in my eyes and I will never pay to play them, no matter how fun they are.
Games are an essential part of my day. I check the news, the stores and make games myself. Been an amateur game maker since secondary school. Console games are expensive nowadays, so I don't play as much of them as I would like. Though I see the awful tendency that a lot of the games are unoriginal and boring. Hopefully, I can have a say in this at some point.
Hardcore or not, I likes me some games.