Poll: When did you start to call yourself a gamer?

[Atmos Duality]

Technically 2005, though that was a largely intrinsic label for being a part of (and founder) of my community college's "Gamer Club". We did all sorts of fun things; ran sales for charter and charity, did a lock-in and demonstrations every semester (the board games were especially neat)...good times.

*sigh* And that's kinda why I hate others co-opting the label for their own shit-slinging agendas.

 

[SweetShark]

Being in Greece, it is very difficult to find someone to call you a gamer...
Because this word in Greece doesn't exist...
So I don't care really. I am just playing MANY games.

 

[Doom972]

I always liked game in general and video games in particular. I adopted the term as soon as I saw it for the first time.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Been gaming since Atari playing Centipede as a kid so its always been a part of my life. The term "gamer" is fairly new and been around since gaming was deemed cool.

 

[the December King]

I call myself a Role-Player, because D&D has been a part of my life since I was seven. I have a character that is over 30 years old in real time. Me and my current group have been playing every week for the last fifteen years (more or less, you know- there have been breaks and small hiatuses, of course). I can't be that blind to the facts!

Having said that, I have called myself a 'Gamer' on occasion, too. I play some games as often as I can. But I don't hold the label to any strict degree.

I don't really have any comments to make on GamerGate as it would relate to the label 'Gamer'- I just haven't been following the stories close enough. To generalize: I do get frustrated when coverage of stories is biased or wildly inaccurate, but I am not interested in crusading against journalism. I don't approve of harassment or misogyny in real life, but I am also not interested in women's issues in gaming and am not interested in female protagonists in my escapism.

 

[Pete Oddly]

Basically, I started to call myself a gamer when the term was coined (or, at least, when it became part of general North American lingo). One day, I discovered people calling folks who play and love videogames gamers, and so I said to myself, "Well then, I guess I'm a gamer".

 

[Lightknight]

When I reached an age where it made sense for people to ask me what my hobbies were and gaming consistently stayed at the top of the list. Because of the regularity and persistence of the hobby, it stopped being something I merely did in my spare time and started being something I was an enthusiast of. At that point, gamer was appropriate to use in the same way someone may call themselves any other such term to denote that something has a deeper level of enjoyment for them than mere repetitiveness.

 

[ugeine]

I never have. Even during university and school when I had more time to play video games than I do now I never called myself a gamer.