Worth Reading: 11/03/2014

It is fine if you don't want to let people's associations dictate how you label yourself, but you can't really be surprised then when people interpret that label based on one of its know meanings. I have programmer friends who call themselves hackers because they go to hack-a-thons and because they call it hacking when they code. They all refer to themselves this way, and they know that a hacker, to them, is just a coder or programmer. However, to society at large a hacker is a computer criminal, not a regular programmer. The word hacker means something more than what they use it for and it opens them up to misinterpretation and mislabeling. Within their circle they have an agreed upon meaning for the word hacker, but outside of that circle the meaning is very different. Now are my friends right because they know what they mean and they think that society's definition is outdated? Alternatively is the established meaning far enough away from their own definition that they should just use a less ambiguous word so that they aren't misunderstood? I would say that if you don't want to be misunderstood and misinterpreted it is easier to change your label (or drop your label altogether) than it is to change the meaning of a word. The gamer stereotypes will start to change when gamer stops being an identity and starts being the default mode of life.

I call myself a gamer too. It's absurd to think that such a large swath of the gaming media thinks it is okay to deem an identity dead. Especially one so tied to the very hobby that they promote and make their living from. It's irresponsible and completely insulting and not anyone's right but the individuals, like you said. It's a character smearing campaign.

The Gamers are Dead article that you are implicitly mentioning here argued that the Gamer identity is dead because game appreciation it is now a given among people under 30. No one really self-identifies as a movie lover or music lover anymore because it is a given. You don't need a label for an assumed state of being. To most people the gamer label only holds the stereotypical meanings I mentioned earlier because simply liking games is not a differentiation from the norm. Gamer identity is dying because it is becoming an expected part of the culture. Humans in technologically advanced nations (and increasingly humans on the whole) play video games as an ordinary part of their lives. When everyone is a gamer no one is.

@demokk: Thank you for the thoughtful response.

What I meant by being passionate and knowedgable is that they are willing to learn and they want to dig a little deeper to find the games they like. I certainly am not saying that one needs to have a positive K/D ratio in CoD in order to not be harassed. It is Anita herself who implies that hardcore games are not for women (talking about how the Wii and mobile games brought a female audience), and I'm arguing against that. If you have decided that you are interested in video games, and instead of actually researching for something you'd like you argue that "all" games (aka the 4-5 AAA games that get released every few months) are for men only, I'm not sorry for you. No need to be an expert, but have some respect please.

I feel like there isn't a lot of (reasonable) perspective from gamers out there, just writers who play games and shy away from the label, creating a rift. I know that gamers are not just a bunch of rude teenagers, and it saddens me to see a whole community be generalised that way. I'm not trying to sound elitist, I want gaming to grow artistically, but to disregard everything we have done so far as being sexist and exclusive just seems ignorant.

I'm on my phone and my gf is bugging me so I can't totally articulate what I mean right now, but I hope I'm not coming off as naive.

Okay, you win. I'm not a gamer. Enough people give too much of a shit about what I call myself and now I'm going to stop. Great! This is progress!

@asko25: There is a difference between AAA games being targeted at a male audience and AAA games being for men only. A person outside of the targeted audience can still appreciate a work that is not targeted at them, they just have to overcome some barriers to do so. Just like guys who like My Little Pony have to step outside of the ordinary male comfort zone to find that show. They potentially have to tolerate visuals and language that doesn't really appeal to them directly. They also have to deal with the public perception that they are stepping outside of their gender role. Guys can totally do that, but it is harder than if My Little Pony appealed directly to men. I had a hard time convincing my girlfriend to try games because her exposure to the medium had been that games were a boys club. She actually regularly plays games with me now, but it took convincing on my part to get her to the point where she felt comfortable playing.

Its great that your sister had no issue liking gaming, but that was not my experience with my sister and girlfriend. They both play games a lot more now that they have had more exposure to the breadth that games offer. That is a breadth that the front-facing parts of the gaming industry largely obscure. Women (and humans in general) are simply more likely to see the new COD ad with two guys in jetpacks shooting dudes and daydreaming of scantily clad woman than Beyond Good and Evil. My mom loved Journey, but she sees a lot more ads for stuff like Destiny and COD.

I want to apologize for this response. It's just frustrating because I keep explaining why I want to identify with the term that I identify with and you continue to push the idea that I shouldn't because other people will think less of me. It's not their choice to make.

I really don't think it's a valid argument to say that when everyone is a gamer than no one is and that only touches on a portion of what those articles said. I've said it once and I'll say it again. They reinforced negative stereotypes as truths and allowed their communities to feel okay with bullying these people. They also condemned many gamers as mouth breathing neckbeards that live in their parents basement. Which is not only insulting to gamers that aren't those things but also not inclusive to gamers that are those things. If we want to be an inclusive community we shouldn't be calling each other names. We're going to destroy ourselves from the inside.

The gamer stereotypes will start to change when the gaming media and gaming culture at large stop perpetuating them as realities.

My opinion is that we need to be accepting of everyone within the community, whether you like or agree with them or not. If someone identifies as something, you should believe them and not try to get them to identify as something else.

I don't buy this argument.

Stephen Colbert asked Anita Sarkeesian if he could be a feminist even though he was a man. She asked him if he believed in women being equal to men, and if so, he was a feminist. I personally found that part of the show idiotic, since one can be a feminist and not agree with Anita, like myself. Meanwhile, a lot of people, including women, have been pushing back on being labelled feminists, even though they do believe in equality.

If someone wrote an article claiming that feminism is dead, and included vitriolic language to describe feminism, we would have similar reactions. Some would simply say it was a bad, misguided article not worthy of people's attention. Some would rightfully be offended by it. Some would wage a campaign against that outlet, trying to get sponsors to pull their ads.

People offended by these idiotic gamers are dead pieces have valid reasons to be offended. I find it odd that people who fight for women's opinions to not be dismissed are so eager to dismiss others' feelings on this matter.

(BTW, people do self-identify as movie and music lovers. It is not a given.)

@spraynardtatum: I'm sorry if I come across as more chiding than I intend to. It is hard to deliver tone and intent in pure text without droning on and on. I don't think that there is anything intrinsicly wrong with identifying as a gamer so long as you know that the term has baggage that comes with it. If all you mean when you say it is "I like games" then that is most certainly not the only meaning you are going to express when you say "I'm a gamer." In fact there have been a ton of columns on where the term gamer even comes from and the term has never been an open term for anyone who likes games: here is a Polygon piece on it, a blog on the term by a gaming historian, here is an opinion piece on the marketing angle on Gamasutra. The historical blog is probably the deepest look (but I haven't finished it myself... its long).

I can agree that the gamers are dead article did not do any favors to "mouth breathing neckbeards that live in their parents basement" but that article did not say that that is what people who play games are. It said that the "gamer demographic" was conceived of as solely consisting of teenage, male, white, nerds when the audience that plays games has never been that narrow, especially not now. The article claims what I stated earlier, that so many people play games now that the stereotypes that once were used to pigeonhole game players is invalid. Gamers are dead because the term now applies to so many people that it can no longer be used to single out one demographic.

I don't plan on convincing you to not call yourself a gamer. I want to question why you cling so fiercely to a term that I find dated. I learn very little about someone when they call themselves a gamer because it can mean such different things to different people. It could mean that the person in question identifies with the gamer stereotype or it could mean they like Tetris. If it just means that someone likes games, then the term doesn't mean a whole lot to me because that would be like someone telling me they like music. Duh everyone likes music. Saying what kind of music you like or what kind of games you play says something about you, but just saying you like games doesn't tell me a whole lot.

@thatpinguino: I've explained why I call myself a gamer but I'll elaborate. I'm okay with the possibility of someone asking me a question about games I like and I've noticed that I pretty much like talking about video games if someone converses with me. I dislike marketing just as much as the next guy (probably much more) but sometimes they think of something that just sticks. I like the way it sounds. It's good shorthand. Maybe it's because I didn't know the history of the term when I first heard it, I'd wager most people didn't, but it just feels like a normal way to indicate that I probably like video games more then the next guy or girl.

You are loading up the word. You decide what the word means to you. If that means you add all of those stereotypes that are perpetrated by the authors of those trashy bullying "Gamers are Over and So Can You" articles than you can but I think it's all bullshit and hot air. They were being assholes. They had subjectively good intentions but they royally fucked up the delivery and ended up insulting a large portion of their audience. Most gamers are nice people. Some of them are socially awkward. Less of them are Mountain Dew chugging misogynists.

I find it strange that people could read pieces like Leigh's and get out if it that "gamers have won" like Chris Kluwe did. I saw it as a frustrated tirade at the group of gamers who were perpetuating "thezoepost" harassment and the chasing of Anita Sarkeesian from her home. There's a way of telling people that the market for games is broader than what people perceive to be "Gamers" without resorting to referring to those people as "obtuse shitslingers" which Leigh failed to do.

If she wanted to encourage people to create games for emerging markets, there's no reason to focus on established markets, she should spend that energy describing those people who can make games that try to reach outside of the traditional demographic for video games. She can bring up Nintendo's success with the Wii and the success of mobile games to engage an entirely new audience as examples of how to reach out to people who wouldn't even know they were "gamers".

Instead she relied on old stereotypes in an attempt to weaponize the word "gamer" to mean something that to most people who would use that word, it doesn't. Most who use it, as I do, would probably agree more with Greg Tito's idea that a gamer is one who plays games as a primary hobby and is interested in their history, creation and makers. People might play Journey, but a "gamer" might dig around and find out who Jenova Chen is, that Austin Wintory was nominated for an Academy Award, that Kellee Santiago went to work for Ouya, and that Journey was preceded by Flow and Flower.

I mean, I get that she's frustrated, and she's probably seen more scary shit than most of us can even comprehend, but Leigh did herself a disservice by trying to equate the actions of some sociopaths to a larger group than she realized. Just because her friends don't like to use the word, doesn't mean everyone's like her friends.

@demokk: True, but at the end of the day what I mean is that you can talk about Super Mario World in all of the ecstatic, deep, varied, and meaningful ways that includes the content of the game, your experience with it, its creation, and so on the same way one can speak of the greatness of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. This is simply because both are sublime pieces of work. At the end of the day it is more about the "work" of the artist than trying to find the art (I forgot who said something to that effect.)

At the end of the day it really has nothing to do with saying if Super Mario World, Sister Ray, or this is art in it's truest or greatest form; but really how these things are so meaningful to their field/medium/art form and how fantastic they are just to experience and engage with/what they mean to us personally.

Anyway I really hope Dragon Age is good...what sounds like a slightly more action-y Dragon Age: Origins in a Skyrim type world sounds like it could either knock things out of the park or kind of be a big bummer. Lets hope the Dragon Age games without numbers in their names are the good ones!