Are you a "Gamer"?

The press about the pew study had me asking myself that question and I felt like the answer was NO for me. Despite owning 150+ board games and 5 pieces of arcade equipment and untold vidcons.

Relevant “hyperlink”:

Pew Link

Am I someone who plays games or am I someone who responds to things marketed to gamers?

I’d put it as “am I somebody who plays/am interested in games or am I somebody who defines their identity by my consumption of games?”

(It’s pretty much the same thing, really.)

ETA:

The crux of Infernarl and my reaction is the desire to not be identified by others as being somebody who self-identifies as a “gamer”. There’s a social stigma there, where once that based based on social perception of games, I think it’s changed such that it’s now the social perception of gamers is something to be avoided, rather than the medium itself.

I am a person who would identify their main timesink and luxury income expenditure as being for games, but I’m hesitant to throw any ol’ label on myself because then people start assuming things about you.

I’m also pretty sure my and whatever mainstream perception of “gamer” and the kind of games a gamer plays are not always in sync. Hell, my tastes aren’t even always in line here and no one(openly) calls me out, so :boh:

Current mainstream perception of gamer: teenager, plays CoD or some other online console shootmans. Doritos_Mtn_Dew.jpg

Actual average person who plays games: mid-thirties professional, plays Candy Crush or something similar on their phone.

Most of my free time is spent with games, but I never liked the term “gamer” just because it’s phonetically weird to me. It’s like “moist” to me. Then the whole GG thing happened and I just decided that people who self-identify as gamers are the kind of people I probably don’t want to be around. Even without the advent of GG, gamer culture itself is very unappealing to me, so I guess not feeling like a part of the subculture would define me as “not a gamer.”

It is not surprising to me that so far we are at 0 identified gamers at selectbutton.net 2.0

I’ll break the mold and say “yeah I’m a gamer.” Been meaning to write up a thinkpiece on the term and the surrounding GG nonsense, but I’m gonna focus on finishing this book I’ve been writing for way too long first.

(EDIT: I think if you go to something like PAX or EVO and see the honest and positive communities that have sprung up around games, it’s hard to sneer at the term like some do).

A. SELF-identified
B. Yup, this strider-fanatic (hasn’t even played the new-one) hasn’t even played the '14 version…

i’ve never really felt comfortable identifying as anything tbh

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Esports players like that are arguably more defined as ~athletes~ imo

Please. I’m not even a geek.

Yeah I try not to get grumpy when people call me a gamer. They’re not interested in hearing me try to make the distinction.

To me, I would willingly admit that vidcons are my favorite interest but I’m careful to not become insular about it. I think the reason we’re all hesitant to identify as “gamers” is because we know most “gamers” have little to no desire to engage with other artistic mediums or culture itself.

A long time ago I made a promise that if games were going to become my chief interest, then I had to make an effort to engage with other art forms and not become a disgusting troglodyte.

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i’m already a little bit more of a pretentious douche when it comes to certain videogame related opinons (thanks for that, SB), so i’m not interested in making such a distinction about the word “gamer” when applied to my tastes, because i still make references to certain bits of gaming info on a relatively regular basis

ever since Bioshock Infinite came out, nobody in real life is interested in conversations with me about videogames

I prefer the term “database animal.”

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After recent interests of mine such as high level pokemon play and pinball repair I have started calling myself a Skill Collector, a term I stole from Adam Savage.

Trekkie vs Trekker

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I know none of us are gamers because we haven’t made any shite gags about Pew Studies