"Gamer" as a term. Is it dead?

[small]

I used to refer to myself as a gamer because it was simply a descriptive term, i played games as a hobby and interest.

these days however i just say i play games and im not a gamer because it is fast becoming a very negative term which started around the time where some people decided it was the centre of their identity and that death threats and rape threats were valid ways to stop them wimin from taking their games away, where they feel the need to dismissively look down at anyone who doesnt fit into their hardcore gamer cliche and where all females are "fake gamers", yet who jump up and down like a hamster overdosing on caffiene screaming for games and gaming to be taken seriously "its ART and a SPORT!!!"

if you want people to take gaming and games as a serious medium grow the fuck up

 

[Callate]

A few pissed off people hanging an effigy doesn't make for an actual funeral.

No, it isn't dead. It doesn't even mean the squalid, narrow thing the authors would like it to.

A gamer is someone who plays games. Some might want to subdivide that for various reasons- to create an "us" vs. "them" narrative, to hone a marketing pitch, to focus research, to play at futurist.

Let them. We'll be gaming. All races, all sexes, all sexualities, all ways accessing and playing games.

 

[Gatx]

Also the criticism of the word "gamer" being too broad and something unique to the games industry is just plain wrong, other popular forms of media have exactly analogous single noun words to describer their consumers:

TV = Viewer
Books and newspapers = Readers
Computer games = Gamers

Seems eminently sensible and consistent to me.

That's different. No one self-identifies as a "reader" or a "viewer." By including the hobby noun into the title itself apparently implies a deeper involvement than just occasionally doing that activity sometimes.

That isn't to say that there aren't analogues in other media. I think more fitting equivalents would be things like "bookworm," "foodie," and "film buff" despite not being one word.

 

[SilverBullets000]

You know what...I'll let Boogie answer that one for me.


If you didn't watch: no.

 

[bjj hero]

Why is this so hard to grasp?

Gamer: Someone who plays games.

If we were discussing TV it would be viewer. Easy.

 

[Hartland]

The term "Gamer" seems to have to many interpretations. Is it a broad term that includes anyone who has ever played Famville or Angry Birds? Is is a more narrow term for those who enjoy more complicated games on a regular basis? Is it a person who has playing video/computer games as his main hobby/interest? All of these interpretations has some validity.

The problem mostly seems to be differentiating between which of them that is used at any one time and that is probably not going to go away until someone invents a new term to describe their way of viewing "gamers". Until then there will still probably be more debates, like this one, on where to draw the line within any one grouping. There isn't any way we can determine what the word will mean to everyone, but we can perhaps reach a consensus on what we here on the escapist mean with the term.

And on that subject I think that "gamer" is a term that describes someone who is interested in games. This "interest" can take many forms. Some go deep, intensely playing one, or a few games. Others go broad, keeping tabs on the industry as a whole.

With this definition people who play games without being interested in them fall outside the term. And thus your mom probably isn't included, which is what I think most people really are looking for when they get angry at the term "gamer" being used "too broadly".

 

[bjj hero]

Some valid points

You hit the nail on the head when you said gaming is a new medium. Gamers used to be quite narrow as not everyone used to play games. Now most people do. So its changed to a similar term to viewer, movie goer or consumer.

With being new it did go through some teething problems. The escapist tends to be quite inclusive but I doubt the majority of gamers frequent our boards. Even many of those who see games as their primary hobby and central to their identity dont attend. A year or so ago there were some entertaining threads about what the rest of the internet thought of escapists and it was along the lines of pretentious liberal hippies.

Having said that, even here Ive read enough threads on gamer girls who only pretend to like games to be popular and give real gamers a bad name. There has been some friction between those whove played games for years and new comers who take to casual games, motion controls etc. It appears some felt threatened when publishers started looking after people other than them and sometimes it turned nasty. I can see why some would distance themselves from the term because of the behaviour of others.

The hobby is definately changing. Im older now and spend less time playing. I see people at work in their early 20s who would hqve been a gamer when I was their age and they dont "get" streetfighter, cannot throw a dragon punch or sonic boom which was like earning your licence when I was a teen. Things move on.

 

[DOOM GUY]

No, I don't believe so, and a bunch of game "journalists" claiming that it is doesn't make it a fact.

 

[Movitz]

No, I don't believe so, and a bunch of game "journalists" claiming that it is doesn't make it a fact.

Agree, this whole phenomena screams "butthurt". Seems like they want to get some kind of revenge for gamersgate (or gamesgate, not sure which one is correct).

Like "If we're going down, we'll take the whole ship with us!"

 

[vallorn]

Right because a puffed up writer who can't decide between being a "journalist" or "blogger" decides that they can declare gamers as a term is dead?

They're going for the ultimate renegation? Well good luck to them, because I can declare just as arbitrarily that game journalism is dead.

Thanks to Moviebob and Devin Farici trying to label the nicest guy on the internet as their portrayal of a misogynistic neckbeard he got involved in this mess.

https://twitter.com/Boogie2988/status/505654069479112706

I'd say he agrees with your terms of declaring the obsolete game journalism sector as 'dead'

 

[Traviltar]

I nowadays define myself as more of a "gaming enthusiast" because in addition of playing the games themselves, I'm involved in the industry, I'm interested in the industry, I follow the news about gaming and I can say that I play more games than the average casual.
Gaming's a big part of my life, just like something like music or a sport would be.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

It's pretty amazing how those folks, as well as others, have come up with the exact same idea at the same time and are now pushing that particular narrative as though it were true and something that was actually happening...isn't it?

It's almost as if something happened and a bunch of folks began robbing the term of a positive meaning.

Christ alive! And here I thought it was just a group of disingenuous journalists proclaiming something untrue and arbitrary out of spite for a small subset of omnipresent assholes, ironically behaving just as brazenly childish as their targets.

Thank you for setting me straight, anonymous internet dweller.

 

[DoPo]

Did it ever?

Possibly.

Then what was it? Again what did it mean in the past? The two teams "casual" and "hardcore" are both relatively new compared to the term "gamer" so any definition that uses them is bound to be incorrect. What did it mean before that - what's the original meaning. You know, answer the question I asked before.