Do you
consider yourself a gamer? If so, then what would you say makes you, or anyone
for that matter, a gamer? Most people would say it is because someone plays
games, but how many or how frequently must you play in order to be labelled a
gamer? More importantly, why must somebody who plays games be labelled in the
first place? Does playing games somehow make you different from those who
don’t? That’s a lot of questions to open with, so allow me to make some
statements on the subject.
The term Gamer, along with its ugly cousins; Causal Gamer and Hardcore Gamer need to
stop being used. They are as out-dated as a walkman at this point, these terms
were used in the early days of gaming to describe what kind of games a person
(or gamer if you will) played. More to the point, these terms were never really
valid; it is the ways in which a person plays a game that determines which of
those groups they would fall into. These terms stereotype people in a very
negative way and need to stop being used, people that watch a lot of films
aren’t put into hardcore and casual groups and neither are people who read a
lot. People that play games do not need a label to gratify or justify their
hobby.
The only
reason gaming still carries a unique term for its audience, is simply because
the medium itself it still young and nowhere near as established as film,
literature or theatre are. Games are just a new form of entertainment, a means
in which a story can be told or an experience realised. Games are arguably the
best way to do both of these, because they are an interactive experience, the
chain of events isn’t delivered to you; they are experienced by you, the
player. By generalising fans of a medium, you generalise the medium itself, everybody
knows what the typical connotations are for the word gamer and they are not
good to say the least.
These are literally two of the three very first images upon typing the word "gamer" into google.
Go ahead, try it and see.
These
connotations are important because unlike most things associated with the
gaming industry; they are something that we, the consumer have the power to
change. Basically what I’m saying is that if you have ever thought that playing
games makes you better than people that don’t, you are not helping. Of course
there are the ones that we can’t do much about, like the basement dwelling
fifty year old that still lives off their parents but that’s sort of beside the
point I’m trying to make here. That being that somebody who plays games is not
a gamer, nor or is a girl that plays games a girl-gamer. They are simply people
with a hobby, in the exact same way as someone who plays golf or hockey. The
term gamer is only given meaning by the stereotype that accompanies it.
Eliminate that and we eliminate the term.
Above all
else, playing games is normal, there doesn’t need to be a name given to the
people that play games. Due to the way
gaming has been treated, people that play them have been isolated and set apart
from others, which is ludicrously ironic when you think about it. As long as
gaming is seen as abnormal, people that play games will be seen as abnormal and
as we all know, anything that is considered abnormal must be given a label. For
gaming, it is the word gamer, which carries all those negative stereotypes.
So do your
part to not isolate gaming from everything else, don’t talk trash online, be
capable of talking about something other than games with people that don’t play
them and more importantly, don’t act like you’re different from everyone else
because you happen to play games. Treat the medium with the respect it
deserves, and then maybe just maybe at least some of the negativity associated
with the term gamer, will go away.