Poll: What is a gamer?

[sanquin]

I often see people put this and do they mean like competitive as in a public tournament or playing pvp because I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone who has played publicly yet I have a lot of friends I'd definately count as 'gamers' even if I didn't include myself in there. Maybe one guy who used to play CS.

I have never really had the opportunity to compete besides arcades and LAN's but then again I live in the middle of nowhere.

Competitive play would be any kind of real competition. Between friends, between guild mates, against other guilds, or in WoW, arena/rated battlegrounds yes. It doesn't have to be for a definite prize, but it does have to be to see who's better than the others. So not just some friendly matches.

 

[sanquin]

sniiiiip

-I did say 'playing more than an hour a day on average, if you have more free time than that'. As in, if you have more than an hour a day to spend on games, but aren't using it for that. And no, after class activities, going to the stores, and other such things are not counted as free time to me. From what you're saying, you don't have enough free time to play more than an hour. So that rule wouldn't apply to you.
-You know enough about accessories to know which ones there are apparently. As otherwise you wouldn't know they were crappy. Also, that rule was more aimed at people playing games more on console than on PC. As in, if you're more of a pc gamer rule 1 applies, if you're more of a console gamer, rule 2 applies. You own a gaming pc, so I'm guessing you at least used to game more on PC than console? (I should have been more clear on those first two rules, I guess.)

 

[Mrkillhappy]

I use this as a blanket term. Applying it to any one who enjoys games, their are different levels such as casual and of course hardcore.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Everyone is a gamer nowdays. I don't know anyone who isn't.

 

[Coppernerves]

Everyone is a gamer nowdays. I don't know anyone who isn't.

One of my sisters plays farmville, and the other likes playing Nazi zombies when she visits her friends, and me and my dad are both fans of deus ex, half life and so forth.

A difference between me and Dad is that I also like to play shooters on-line, because I'm kinkier than he is and enjoy my noble sacrifice in the name of truth, justice, freedom, and my opponents' fun as long as I manage one or maybe two kills (or the equivalent in terms of helping my team) per death.

However neither my Grandma or Mother are gamers, they like poetry and classical music and theatre instead.

Same goes for one of my grandparents.

I think it's fair to say that most people between 12 and 30 in the western world are gamers.

 

[Ando85]

I think the term is pretty subjective. Sometimes people have certain criteria to what defines a "true gamer". But, basically it can be anyone who plays a game or anyone who is currently playing a game at the very moment. For example you go to a restaurant and you might call the patrons "diners". This doesn't mean its a hardcore hobby for them or they are fully devoted to dining. It is just simply what someone does.

 

[DioWallachia]

.......


You forgot to put the following:

*The person who looks at Shadow Complex with tears on his eyes because he loves the game, but if he PAYS for it, the developer is going to use the founding on making anti-gay rights propaganda. So the person has to download it ilegaly knowing that the franchize will not move foward if he doesnt pay, but at least some people that he doesnt know will be happy.

*The person that can no longer pick up a game from the store and play it ASAP, nor enjoy games anymore because it HAS to: carefully research the game press, pre-release,how many promises are going to be broken by the developers THEMSELVES and not the marketing department, reviews that ARENT bombarded with a suspicious ammount of the game adverticing, how much of the ACTUAL game is in the disc that it paid and how many DLC he is going to pay next just to get the ending of a story, survive the journey to BUY the game while avoiding religious and feminist protesters because the word "*****" was used on the trailer and one of the Protagonist is a woman taking orders from a man (regardless of the context), and surf the forums detailing the problems that the game has and that whatever innovation was brough here, was already done before..........just for that person to be called "An entitled hedonistic piece of shit, who is the cancer that is destroying games as art"

*The person who withnessed the fall of Bullfrog and the Ultima series and many innocents more in the hands in Electronic Arts. And yet, when its absolutely clear that they see games as products before they are even CONSIDERED art, people STILL think that the Mass Effect 3 ending fiasco its the fault of the gamers and not the executives that pulled the strings AGAIN.

*The person who cant give a honest opinion about the boot babes without being labeled as sexist. Even if the intention was to ilustrate how OBVIOUS it is that the exec of the game are pulling a Turd Polishing tecnique for mass appeal to avoid using that same money on the ACTUAL GAME.

*The person who watches in horror on how the last 10 years of gaming history remain forgotten. Where developers still think that pulling something as magnifiently done as a final boss in Planescape Torment is "so video-gamey", and still being lauded as the ONLY people who bring innovation to the industry even if it was done already.

*The person who sees the "artistic integrity" as a cheap device for future lazy developers to excuse their lack of creativity and humility in admitid that they are just in for the money. Thus with that excuse on the table, developers can never be criticized for their faults because they expect the audience to shut down their brains and enjoy the madness. Because after all its just a game, right? there is no objective analizis because everything is subjective. And for that, you can enjoy our crap along with other mastepieces like Birth of a Nation, Mein Kampf, Twilight and Jack & Jill.
If the audience is too stupid to care about the effort that an artist has to offer, then why they should even TRY to elevate the medium as an art form? Doesnt that hurt the medium even MORE if the audience were the problem? as some people have said?

So, dear gamer, are you happy about you hobby? are you a *happy gamer*?

 

[magicmonkeybars]

I think that being a "gamer" is like being a "foodie".
Everyone eats food (if you're lucky) but not everyone identifies themselves as a Foodie.
In order to be a Foodie you need a certain passion and enthusiasm for food, dining and cooking.
being a Gamer is much the same, anyone and mostly everyone plays games but it is the people who have a passion and enthusiasm for gaming who are gamers.
To be a gamer you have to be almost excessively emotionally invested in gaming.
So playing angry birds in between meeting just to kill time doesn't make you a gamer, it just makes you a person with a phone and poor time management skills. ;D

 

[DioWallachia]

I, who constantly recommend obscure and unconventional stuff as well as play them, am a "hipster douche gamer".

Dude, when the AAA industry sucks so hard that even gamers in their spare time can make better games than them, that its not being a hipster, that is having good taste.

 

[Excedrin]

What makes one a snowboarder? What makes one a reader or a writer? What makes one anything?

Repeated engagement in the behavior. That doesn't necessarily mean they do it "a lot" (a term which is so open to interpretation as to be useless).

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

.......


You forgot to put the following:

*The person who looks at Shadow Complex with tears on his eyes because he loves the game, but if he PAYS for it, the developer is going to use the founding on making anti-gay rights propaganda. So the person has to download it ilegaly knowing that the franchize will not move foward if he doesnt pay, but at least some people that he doesnt know will be happy.

*The person that can no longer pick up a game from the store and play it ASAP, nor enjoy games anymore because it HAS to: carefully research the game press, pre-release,how many promises are going to be broken by the developers THEMSELVES and not the marketing department, reviews that ARENT bombarded with a suspicious ammount of the game adverticing, how much of the ACTUAL game is in the disc that it paid and how many DLC he is going to pay next just to get the ending of a story, survive the journey to BUY the game while avoiding religious and feminist protesters because the word "*****" was used on the trailer and one of the Protagonist is a woman taking orders from a man (regardless of the context), and surf the forums detailing the problems that the game has and that whatever innovation was brough here, was already done before..........just for that person to be called "An entitled hedonistic piece of shit, who is the cancer that is destroying games as art"

*The person who withnessed the fall of Bullfrog and the Ultima series and many innocents more in the hands in Electronic Arts. And yet, when its absolutely clear that they see games as products before they are even CONSIDERED art, people STILL think that the Mass Effect 3 ending fiasco its the fault of the gamers and not the executives that pulled the strings AGAIN.

*The person who cant give a honest opinion about the boot babes without being labeled as sexist. Even if the intention was to ilustrate how OBVIOUS it is that the exec of the game are pulling a Turd Polishing tecnique for mass appeal to avoid using that same money on the ACTUAL GAME.

*The person who watches in horror on how the last 10 years of gaming history remain forgotten. Where developers still think that pulling something as magnifiently done as a final boss in Planescape Torment is "so video-gamey", and still being lauded as the ONLY people who bring innovation to the industry even if it was done already.

*The person who sees the "artistic integrity" as a cheap device for future lazy developers to excuse their lack of creativity and humility in admitid that they are just in for the money. Thus with that excuse on the table, developers can never be criticized for their faults because they expect the audience to shut down their brains and enjoy the madness. Because after all its just a game, right? there is no objective analizis because everything is subjective. And for that, you can enjoy our crap along with other mastepieces like Birth of a Nation, Mein Kampf, Twilight and Jack & Jill.
If the audience is too stupid to care about the effort that an artist has to offer, then why they should even TRY to elevate the medium as an art form? Doesnt that hurt the medium even MORE if the audience were the problem? as some people have said?

So, dear gamer, are you happy about you hobby? are you a *happy gamer*?

I agree with /almost/ everything in this post. The almost being that Birth of a Nation actually /was/ a masterpiece, being one of the most influential films of all time. Sure, it was full of racism and caused the resurgance of the KKK, but it also pioneered pretty much everything about modern film making that wasn't pioneered by either Citizen Kane or Star Wars. Plus, the director felt bad about single handedly reviving the KKK, so he made Intolerance, kind of the anti-Birth of a Nation, to atone.

 

[Lieju]

Someone who plays games. It's not really a word I use all that much, to be honest.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I often see people put this and do they mean like competitive as in a public tournament or playing pvp because I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone who has played publicly yet I have a lot of friends I'd definately count as 'gamers' even if I didn't include myself in there. Maybe one guy who used to play CS.

I have never really had the opportunity to compete besides arcades and LAN's but then again I live in the middle of nowhere.

Competitive play would be any kind of real competition. Between friends, between guild mates, against other guilds, or in WoW, arena/rated battlegrounds yes. It doesn't have to be for a definite prize, but it does have to be to see who's better than the others. So not just some friendly matches.

Oh right that makes more sense then.

I thought you meant playing in big tournaments.

 

[Comocat]

You play games on consoles (including phones and other handheld devices) or PC? Congratulations, you passed the test to qualify as a gamer.

I'm curious, why do you know longer label yourself as a gamer?

Well... I would like to answer that even though the question was not aimed at me:

I don't like being associated with the gaming community. In my real life I tend not to use the term 'gamer' when describing my hobbies or preferences, I just say that I love playing and working with video games - always including my other 'geeky' hobbies. And the reason behind this is... not simple.

Over the last year there were several 'outcries' in the gaming community. ME3, Cross Assault, Sarkeesian... Disregarding my position on those topics one thing I realised is that most gamers tend to feel attacked, insulted or whatever by the slight mention the community surrounding games or games per se might have certain problems. Be it the constant bitching about things without any supporting evidence (Sarkeesian), personal attacks on people or defending - if not encouraging this kind of behaviour (Sarkeesian, Cross Assault). The ME3 spectacle was overblowing it. What I realised after all this is when I say that I am a gamer I have one choice (personally): I embrace this kind of behaviour, start accepting and encouraging people to be assholes, whine and ***** or just threaten anyone who disagrees with them on some topics. Because this is what I associate with the gaming community. Defending sexism, racism and homphobia as part of their culture, ignoring the topic at hand and blaming the victims because they did not use the unsufficiant possibilities at hand (no, mute does jack shit to fight the issue as long as I have to mute them but they still remain heard by anyone who does not know what they have to expect to hear).

A little overblown but yeah, this is my reason for why I don't like to label myself as a gamer.

I think you are being a little harsh on the community overall. These outcries arent really outcries as much as someone with too much time on their hands caring about whether or not a woman is given money to talk about video games on youtube.

Sites like the escapist and other gaming forums tend to amplify the voices of the most opinionated. This happens in every interest. Sports is just as bad if not worse because people get paid 100x more for the same type of analysis. Look at Lebron James (I think)leaving Cleveland for an example of the worst of it. Turn on an AM station after sunday football and people actually get paid money to complain about their local sports team, could you imagine a gaming utopia where people actually paid you money to ***** about games? The ME3 ending is kind of a big deal on a gaming site, but to the rest of the world it's "art" about a sentient murderous space robots. We argue about games here because we care about them, but it is important to realize that opinions about COD or latex clad killer nuns does not represent the totality of world views.

 

[Entitled]

It's still undecided. The term can end up either as a hobbyist designation, like "bookworm", or "cinephile", or a generic participation noun for the average audience,like "reader" or "moviegoer".

Grammatically, it is closer to the latter, but historically, it has been used as the former.

Now, we might change it into the more inclusive usage, but we will need a new term for actual gaming hobbyists, and posibly one that doesn't sound elitist like "hardcore gamer", or "true gamer". Because let's face it; visiting The Escapist every day, playing bad games just for the sake of having an opinion about them, and debating about gaming culture's problems late into the night, is a different kind of identity from "one who plays a game".

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

to me calling someone a gamer is like calling someone a reader.
a person who plays games in other words it is a blanket term. both the person who only plays farmvile once in a while and the hardcore kind that spend many hours playing are gamers. they are just gamers to a different extent.
to see it other wise just seems inclusive.

 

[Excedrin]

An open question to those who define a gamer as one who plays "a lot": are the terms "avid gamer" or "hardcore gamer" redundant to you? If not, what do they mean to you?

 

[mitchell271]

So for me personally:
-If you play games on a pc and don't even know what computer specs you're running, you're not a gamer.
-If you play games on a console and hardly know about the hardware accessories, you're not a gamer.
-If you play only the extremely casual 'app' games, like angry birds or plants vs zombies, or other such games you're not a gamer.
-If you only play maybe one hour or less a day on average, even if you have a lot more free time than that, you're not a gamer.
-If you've never participated in competitive play, you're not a gamer.
-If you know nothing/hardly anything about what's going on in the industry as a whole. What's happening with the more well-known companies, what games are coming out soon, etc.

That's pretty much the same for me, except for the competitive play part. I've never played in a competition because I play games for fun. That being said, I'm definitely a gamer. I meet every single other one of those criteria and I take how gaming is viewed in the media or by the general populace very seriously. When it really comes down to it though, if games are part of your identity, you're a gamer.

OP: Why did they get a warning for "Please justify your choice?"

 

[hermes]

A person that plays games and gets involved into the hobby enough to learn and discuss about it when they are not actively playing. For lack of a better word, its a "games enthusiast".

 

[corneth]

I play games, but I don't label myself a "gamer" because I there's so much baggage that comes with it. Saying I'm a gamer implies everything from misogyny to Doctor Who to drinking mountain dew, and that's something that I can't get down with. I love music, I visit at least five different music blogs a day, follow Billboard charts and own players for every major music medium except 8-tack. Does this make me a musicer? Of course not, I just like music a lot. just like liking movies doesn't make me a movier and watching tv doesn't make me a Televisioner. It's just something I like, and games are no different.