An official definition of the word "gamer"

Out of curiosity, how old are you? And please note that I don't mean that in a crappy "I must be talking with a child if you don't agree with me" way that people normally imply when they ask that question. It's just that I'm wondering if it's mostly a somewhat youthful audience behind most of the backlash.

I'm in my 30's, and I grew up in a time when magazines like PC Gamer existed, and just about NO ONE marketed to "gamers." All sorts of products were marketed using Mario or Zelda, but nothing targeted to generic video game fans. It just seems really uncomfortable for me to be seeing video game fans divided by such an innocuous word that I grew up with, that literally means "a person who plays games." It especially bothers me when I see the word used to look down on "those video game fans" whoever they might be. It's exclusionary, stupid, and occasionally hurtful.

And so what if Mountain Dew want's to advertise their "gamer fuel" or whatever. Who are they for us to allow them to corrupt such a basic word? Why on earth should anyone go along with that? Nike sells running shoes, but I've never hard anyone say...

I don't call myself a runner because it's a gross-sounding word that, regardless of the dictionary definition, is associated with self-identification tied to the consumption of a commodity.

Lastly, if someone doesn't personally identify with the word because THEY don't personally feel that they fit their own qualifications for the term, that is also fine with me.

"Yeah, I run a bit, but I wouldn't call myself a runner. Yeah, I like The Beatles a little, but I wouldn't really call myself a fan. Yeah, I play video games, but not really enough to consider myself a gamer."

English isn't my native language but I think I have a problem with the verbification of the word "game". Run into Runner, Hunt into Hunter, Read into Reader. Those seem natural to me.

"I game, so I'm a gamer. Hey, let's game" sounds a bit douchebag-y to me. Even if it's grammatically correct, I dunno. Every time I hear Gamer images of Razer logos, energy drinks and headsets with LED-lights flashes through my brain.

I stopped identifying with "gamer" because huge food brands and movies have painted the worst, sweaty, food covered, women-fearing picture around the word.

Maybe I am what they call a gamer. I'd say im a fan of video games, but I do other things much more then I play games. If you run sometimes but you paint all day, you have hobbies. Don't need to title it. But in general, I avoid the word gamer because people who don't play video games immediately relate me to the WoW guy in south park. "Oh so do you have like, a box of tissues and japanese sex pictures in your room or something?" is a very typical response in my side of the world, dont know about everyone else.

I immediately judge anyone who self identifies themselves with any label. It just feels desperate like they're trying to cling to some perceived ideal of what that label is. If you are in fact that thing you say you are then you wouldn't need to proclaim it you would just be it.

I would argue that the media is FAR more responsible for that stereotype than marketing, although you did say movies.

If you run sometimes and paint all day, you're a runner and a painter.

I do things much more than play games as well. I'm a reader, I'm a television watcher, I'm a gamer, I'm a music listener, I'm a writer, I'm a student, I'm an employee, etc. Those labels don't define me, they merely describe various aspects of my interests and affiliations, and none of them are anything to be ashamed of.

But again, it's not a matter of forcing the label on people who don't personally identify with it that is my frustration. It's allowing the word to be co-opted by those who wish for it to have an inherently negative association that pisses me off. And if you play video games and hate the stereotypes that are associated with it, I think it should piss you off as well.

Who cares,,,

Does Hot Topic still sell those 'Labels are for soup cans' shirts?

People still care about this? If you like video games than you are someone that enjoys playing video games.

@spaceinsomniac: Thats kind of.. bad. You shouldn't let things "Piss you off" and you shouldn't tell people that things should piss them off either. You should just live and let live, man. Really, you're wasting energy on people who are using very little to make an effortless assumption. What is being pissed off gonna do? Gonna start a whitehouse.gov petition about it? Make a tumblr account about it? It's not something people should be super offended by. You need to just let it go and move on duder.

We need to get the audio from that Jeff Mixlr rant on this topic from last night. It was great. He explained why he hates the term quite clearly, and his argument was quite reasonable in my opinion.

I think this was well said.

I shouldn't let generalizations and hurtful stereotypes piss me off? I shouldn't suggest that people not generalize or stereotype others?

Because that's the issue that I have here, and it's not a matter of not "letting" it piss me off.

I avoid the word gamer because people who don't play video games immediately relate me to the WoW guy in south park. "Oh so do you have like, a box of tissues and japanese sex pictures in your room or something?"

This is a problem. People who play video games shouldn't be going along with this. They should be discouraging the word's use as a pejorative.

I would like to hear that. I doubt I would agree, but I'd be happy to listen to a reasonable argument.

That's a bit misleading. People are not all the verbs they have ever engaged in. Reading a cereal box doesn't make you a "reader". I have run, but I am not a runner. I have cooked, but I am not a chef. If running was something I put a lot of time and interest into, then I would be a "runner". That would be a word that describes something I am based on the fact that it makes up some meaningful portion of my life or activities. If I cooked professionally or cooking was something I did as a real interest, I might be a "chef". If I enjoyed reading and spent considerable time doing it, I would be a reader.

Likewise, if gaming is something that I engage in enough that it consumes some real amount of my time, I would reasonably be called a "gamer". If I played angry birds on my cell phone and used to play monopoly at the table with my siblings when I was growing up, I would hardly think of myself as a "gamer" any more than I would anything else that I've only occasionally verb'd.

I disliked the term "gamer" before all of this, but seeing how it's being used to be hurtful to others, to generalize and bully people i kinda dig calling myself a gamer again.

Gamers aren't bad people and it's not some poisonous term. It's irresponsible to define someone you don't identify with. The people that spread the message that the word is bad are people that don't want to be identified as gamers. That simple fact holds importance.

They're pushing themselves further away from a label (which is totally okay) while insulting people that still identify with the term (obliviously bringing prejudice to whatever word they define themselves with next).

Gamers aren't bad people and the term isn't a slight. There are bad people that are gamers just like there are fucking dipshit hippies or fart sniffing wasps.

We're not all bad.

Taking all the politics out of it I've always thought that phrases like "gamer", "runner", or "movie buff" are just ways that people use to self identify that they're a bit more into their hobby than most.

As a human being I can choose not to be labeled or agree with being labeled as something.

Absolutely, and that was poorly worded on my part. I meant that to tie into those who reject the word gamer solely to distance themselves from generalizations.

As in, "I'm not one of THOSE people, I just like video games."

But just like people themselves decide if they are a runner or reader based on their own personal view of what that means, they should definitely be the ones to decide if they wish to associate the term "gamer" with themselves. I just feel that determination should be based on time spent and enjoyment of video games, not the desire to separate themselves from stereotypes.

To avoid confusion, I'm going to add this to the original post.

I think this is an excellent post by Ariel Connor regarding the topic and you should read it if you're interested.

You can self-identify as whatever you want to but it won't change the public perception of what gamers are. I don't consider myself to be a demographic that AAA developers target (which is what the term "gamers" is becoming imo); I just want to play stuff that I find to be interesting.

People should read this. The situation is deeply worrying.

That was fantastic. I'd not heard of Ariel Connor before today, but it's wonderful to see someone who is both happy to wear the label feminist, and who is actively fighting against hypocrisy and generalizations on both sides of this issue. Many people who consider themselves on either side of this fence could learn a lot from the level of respect this woman has expressed for the gaming community as a whole.

Thank you for sharing that post.

Yeah that was good.

The more this sophomoric nonsense goes on the less I get into and from gaming. I visit gaming websites less and less, and I am beggining to play games only occasionally with friends because this internet bullshit is so poorly thought out. Yeah, I'd like to be able to visit genericgamingnews.com to find out about some interesting game I haven't heard of, but when I'm apt to run into so much superfluous baggage along the way I just avoid it completely and stick to known quantities or whatever I can find within a couple clicks on Steam. These guys/gals think they are the John Ruskin of games or something, but visiting a lot of websites feels more and more like grading a stack of remedial freshman social anthro papers.

Honestly, I never defined myself as a gamer because I don't tend to define myself by one activity. I do a lot of other junk too in my free time (like write, watch cartoons, read books, watch movies, etc.) on top of also playing a lot of video games.

After seeing the last few weeks of bile spewed by people who do identify themselves as "gamers," I feel pretty relieved I never did bother to use the term. It's unfortunate, because there are plenty of people who identify themselves as gamers and are either just as disgusted by the aforementioned bile or merely not willing to get into the whole thing (which might not be the best option in my opinion, but I'm not going to shit on someone who's like "woah, this is not something I have the bandwidth to handle right now" or whatever other reason), but because there's such a vocal and toxic subsection using the term, the connotation of the word has changed. It was always a marketing term, of course, but now it's not even a term that marketers are going to want to use because there's a whole bunch of unpleasant shit being attached to it.

Reading this prompted my eureka moment on why the articles bother me so, as discussed gamer tends to be used with qualifiers like "casual gamer", "core gamer" and Mountain Dew's "Gamer Fuel", the latter is a trope that has stuck in many peoples minds. My impression is it was very passé if not an outright fiction to sell such products from their inception, but it's this trope the writers are trying to allude to without getting into specifics (like me here, ironic?) by attacking the most general phrase, "gamer" unqualified, and thus avoid their guilt in the events of the week.

Also this...

I agree with Ian Bogost here:

Out of curiosity, why do you feel that gamer "was always a marketing term," and do you feel the same about reader, runner, writer, etc? If not, why the difference?

"Reader" is not a demographic or a market category. It's a weird, fringe identity grounded in niche media isolationism.

Nope. That just doesn't sound right.

I don't see how the term gamer applies to anything more than someone who enjoys playing video games as a hobby. I don't see how that somehow defines that as their only hobby in life either. If someone says "Hey I'm a movie buff" I don't immediately think "oh my gosh your sole form of entertainment in life is watching movies, that's crazy". Being a gamer is just one of the many aspects of who I am and I'm not sure why I'm supposed to be ashamed of that.

I feel like associating yourself strongly with a hobby can help create an unhealthy obsession where your sense of identity becomes tied to that hobby. Any criticism towards the hobby becomes seen as criticism to yourself, if only unconsciously. I think that explains a some of the toxicity we've seen from some parts of the gaming community, and not just what's happened recently.

It's the same thing we see happen with fanboys of particular console. People become so obsessed with Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft and then their self-worth becomes associated with that company, and any criticism of the company, or any things related to the company, becomes interpreted as a personal attack. This is why we would see such an angry shitstorm when a big game exclusive to a console got a lower than expected score in a review, and people start giving personal insults to the reviewer.

I used to be an obsessive Nintendo fanboy and acted really immaturely. Looking back on it now, I just feel kind of ashamed of how I acted. Calling myself a "gamer" just reminds me of that past, and as such I'm uncomfortable with the term. Not everybody who thinks of themselves as a gamer is like that- in fact I'd imagine it's most likely something that only exists in the minority. But it still feels like tying your identity too strongly to your hobby, and that's why I choose not to call myself that.

If the media didn't portray gamers as everything bad in this world, then calling yourself one won't feel as bad.

Using labels as anything other than a rough shorthand, and attempting to assign meaning and definition to them has always seemed crazy to me. It always seems to lead to bullshit semantic arguments, oversimplifications and obscures meaningful discussion.

Endless entertainment here watching grown people fuss over stupid labels. You can undercut all of this by just not giving a shit what people think of you. I'm a gamer,I'm an Otaku,I'm a nerd. And if you're going to glance with judging eyes at me because of labels that society puts on me because of the media/hobbies I enjoy and identify with well... you're probably also the same kind of person that I want nothing to do with anyways.

Gamers are vitriolic and toxic and are ignorant of what hyperbole is. How dare they!

A gamer is someone who plays games.That's it.

I'm not ashamed of being a gamer and I certainly won't let others tell me I'm a evil person for playing games.

Gamer = Cinephile.

I don't think the word needs to disappear. its useful shorthand.

If I was going to change it maybe ludumphile?......yea that's not going to catch on.

I don't like the general image associated with the term. I also just don't like defining myself in that way. I *love* video games. It's my passion and my favorite thing in this world, BUT! If I'm asked to describe myself, I won't say "I'm a gamer". That's not my identity. I like plenty of other things: movies, comics, arts of all sorts, cars, etc. Still, that's only the things I like, not who I am.

I think any type of one-word definition like gamer or geek have just become popular self-identification terms used mostly for marketing and that kind of bullshit.

I don't know. I haven't put that much thought into it.

I remember when I was in elementary school, the school would often distribute cute little "Bookworm" badges for the kids who liked to read a lot of books. I keep getting reminded of stuff like that whenever grown-ass-adults are whining over the term "gamer" like it affects their lives at all what other people like to identify as. People enjoy identifying over anything, for a shit-ton of reasons.

"Gamer" just means a person who plays a lot of games, who would consider themselves an enthusiast of games, an interested party in the games industry. "Movie buff" means you like to watch a lot of movies and probably have favorite directors and passionate feelings about one bad movie series you really like but no one else does and fuck those guys. I will jokingly call myself a bookworm when trying to explain to someone else I really enjoy reading.

These terms mean different things to different people, and those who generalize usually sound pretty dumb for doing so. Demonizing words and labels is some of the laziest bit of social politicking a person can do. The logic doesn't even make sense; you could start having these silly existential debates over what all sorts of words mean. What does "writer" really mean? A person who writes? Am I a writer now that I've typed up this post? Am I a blogger because I submitted a few blogs to this site's audience in the past? No. Colloquially, if we're all being honest with each other, most of us understand why these terms are used in their particular contexts.

Stop caring what other people call you, or even what you call yourself. Focus on actions, not words or mere titles.

In habitually labeling oneself as a 'gamer', you're establishing that as a predominate part of your identity. In my estimation it is this specific, pronounced identity that various writers have been recently dismissing in various outlets, and not simply the population that happens to partake in the activity of playing video games.

Personally, I find no value in making a hobby a core part of my identity. Indeed, I would need to be convinced it is not almost always deleterious to promote something so trivial as playing video games to a level of significance typically reserved for religion, gender, politics, race, nationality, etc.

It's safe to assume everyone on this board is incidentally a gamer, but I would worry about anyone here who would say he is in part or whole essentially a gamer. Because the moment games become that important is the moment critique can become blasphemy, and a video series on demographic representation can become as obscene as someone defacing the visage of your holy prophet.

I think something that speaks to my artistic sensibilities and the cultural influences and iconography that I share with others is anything but trivial when compared to the immutable and haphazard circumstances of my birth. I share more with people who like video games, The Simpsons seasons 3-10, and professional wrestling than I do with people who share my gender, my race, the religion of my parents or the nation I happened to be born in.

To be sure, identity politics make everything stupid and corrupt and necessarily divisive. Identity politics do not necessarily have to make everything hostile and violently brutal, yet that happens most often. But underwriting the thoughts and medium in which people find resonance in favor of factors they had no control of is just tacky and dated. You shouldn't judge anyone based on anything other than their actions, but treating gender or race as significant while treating the interests and ideas that absorb people's intelligences as trivial is simply passe.

@marokai: I cannot believe they let your school hand out smiling, exploding penises.

I hate the term because it's usually used as a marketing tool (BRINGING THE GAME BACK TO THE GAMERS) or as some weird community term (Gamers are just normal people, yo!). It's an awful word because "game" is not really a verb: I don't game games, I play them. Even if it were an appropriate verb, nounifying verbs like that in general make me think of careers and other defining traits: Someone who practices law is a lawyer, someone who drums is a drummer, and someone who designs is a designer. The aspect of playing games is not nearly as defining to me as any of those words. I consider myself an avid fan of movies and music, but I don't have any job with those aside from partaking of them. Therefore, I would call myself a "music snob" or a "film aficionado", or similar words with less dedication. Perhaps if I was, say, a professional player of games I would call myself a gamer, but I am nowhere close. I play guitar, but I'm not nearly good enough to call myself a guitarist.

If the term is as vague as you describe, however, then just saying someone is a "gamer" means very little, in the same sense that saying someone is a "television viewer" or "instrument player" mean very little. It would need to be prefaced with some kind of narrowing adjective like "dedicated", "avid", or *shudder* something like "hardcore" or "casual".

It feels really strange to me that I'm more comfortable describing myself as a "nerd" to people than a "gamer" these days. Mind you it does a better job of encompassing the many things I'm interested in, but boy did that term use to be much worse.

@brodehouse said:

Oh no. This is why I'm gay, isn't it?

It has always seemed like an empty buzzword for marketing purposes to me. That's why it slightly perplexes me that so many people have adopted it as a kind of statement of pride in their hobby. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't hold it against anyone if they openly referred to themselves as a "gamer", but at the same time I might find it a bit odd. Unwavering fandom in such broad categories of things has always confused me a bit. There are good games and bad games like anything else, so why do people feel as though they need to define themselves as being fundamentally interested in an entire medium? What use is there really in that? This is coming from someone who always keeps up on industry news for the most part as well. I'm interested enough in this stuff to regularly check up on it, yet I don't feel some need to identify myself as being all about these video games.

In the same breath, anyone who is talking down to a group they identify as "gamers" is totally unjustified also. That Leigh Alexander article I read recently made me deeply uncomfortable. Generalisations are too easy to throw around passionately in front of others and they completely undermine any point you are trying to make. It's all too easy to assume a vocal minority is representative of a whole group of people. I dunno, the conversations lately have been getting real weird. I doubt there is really any backlash towards the term "gamer" so much as there is just a bunch of very defensive, vocal people shouting things due to understandably heightened emotions given recent events.

Can't we just say people are people and assume some play games and others might not? Is there really much reason to feel such strong ownership over a pretty vague and ultimately meaningless word like "gamer"?

I am torn regarding the term "gamer", in part because of how many people, including some here, have used it in a misguided and destructive way. It is not a matter of how some gaming news writers have criticized it, but how companies and many fans of videogames have abused it over the years.

I, for one, think there is still value in a "gamer" concept. Obviously, there is the textbook definition which is rather broad and amorphous. Playing videogames doesn't inherently say anything about you besides that you play videogames. What you play and how you play may say something, but all kinds of people play videogames to varying degrees.

Unfortunately, many people have for a long time now used "gamer" as a distinction for a subsection of people who play games. Instead of being the inclusive term it inherently is, it has been abused to mean a kind of person within a sort of club. People identify with "our hobby" to the exclusion of those who play games but don't fit their mold. We've seen enduring derision toward "casual gamers" and even "girl gamers". The term "gamer" has been misused for years to really mean "male gamer" in practice, and women have been pushed to conform to "male gamer" norms to even be considered a "real gamer".

In the last few years, many have also pushed to limit the topics the gamer community can talk about. People are criticized as not "enough of a gamer" to have a valid opinion, and many have claimed that their gamer communities don't need discussion of social issues or any topic surrounding gaming they disapprove of. People "just want gaming to be fun", and in turn, fellow gamers can only do or say things that protect their personal sense of fun. So, when others express problems they see that hinder their own fun, they're treated as spoil sports who aren't acting "as a gamer should". "Ugh, can't we talk about anything else?" or "this isn't gaming related" at every turn. Thread after thread, article after article. This claim of ownership of "our hobby" as gamers continues to be used as a means to limit who is allowed in and what can be discussed.

Ultimately, I believe the term "gamer" has value now as a potential avenue for standing up to such intolerance amongst a subsection of gaming fans. Gamer is an inherently inclusive term, dealing with a broad range of people who play and enjoy videogames. And people should strongly use it in that way.

I am a gamer, and I have as much a right as anyone else to impact gaming. Male, female, gay, straight, black, white, whatever you are, if you play games, you can be part of this gaming community, and you should be able to have fun in it. Gaming is a source of joy, empowerment, and community for a wide range of people, and we cannot allow some vocal fans still stubbornly clinging to an exclusive club mentality to keep this community from being a safe and fun place for the diverse crowd that loves games.

@brodehouse:

Going forward, I think it would be useful here to distinguish both the sincere & earnest engagement & exchange of ideas from the mere consumption of media & stimulation through entertainment, and the parts of our identity we'd truly consider core from the elements we'd dismiss if push ever came to shove.

But if I may indulge a tangent for a moment, I find it interesting that we as a society at least seem to be moving towards this disposition that what religious belief one possesses is a purely genetic inclination, where his or her preference in media and pop culture is certainly only the product of an abstract, isolated individual's preference. So far as I could be religious, it would be because I must have 'inherited' it from my parents, but my appreciation for Lady Gaga and Air Force Gator would be exclusively because I am an abstract, idealized individual, free from outside influence or bias, having preferences almost platonic in their purity. Setting aside the sarcasm, with apologies if I offended there with, I mean only to here suggest that it is not a little disingenuous to dismiss religion and politics as something so predetermined and immutable for us as to render them factors over which we have no control while at the same time heralding pop culture as our one true expression of radical freedom. Indeed, let me remind you we are discussing a medium and its associated industry which drops millions and millions of dollars on advertising as readily as one does the metaphorical hat, and every one of those dollars directed towards effecting an interest in individuals like ourselves. Why do you think the #jointheconversation buzzword is so prominent? These industries have made billion dollar businesses of manufacturing this passion and resonance and the community which that passion creates and the identity which that resonance instills.

Now understand that I do not mean to delegitimize the sincerity of our appreciation for media. But don't for a moment suppose it is meaningfully less genetically fallible than the tacky old immutable identities you may or may not be inclined to dismiss. In the end, I am still left convinced there are things more worthy than others of being elevated to the core of our identity. I seem to have given the impression that resonant ideas and moving mediums of expression are not worthy of being considered significant. I apologize for my failure in communication. Let me clarify my thoughts on identity.

There are some elements of our experience which I would argue are so central that to remove them would compromise our very conception of ourselves. That is to say, X is so important to me that I would have a enormously hard time recognizing myself as the same person without X. It is very easy to see how race could fit this sort of quality, since altering one's race would so transmogrify their life experience thitherto—in America, at least. You might dispute how well nationality fits this bill, but I would caution against mistaking any identity as insubstantial sheerly for being difficult to articulate. I was reading George Orwell's essay England Your England recently. He's writing in the middle of the blitz, perhaps at a time where England has never been more struck by nationalistic fervor, and still he struggles enormously to articulate this general sense of Englishness:

Then the vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Are there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six million individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos! The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pin-tables in the Soho pubs, the old maids hiking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning – all these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene. How can one make a pattern out of this muddle?

But talk to foreigners, read foreign books or newspapers, and you are brought back to the same thought. Yes, there is something distinctive and recognizable in English civilization. It is a culture as individual as that of Spain. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. It has a flavour of its own. Moreover it is continuous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature. What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.

Anyhow, I suppose what I mean is to question just what it looks like for a hobby or medium to legitimately overtake someone's identity to the degree a lot of these historic institutions have in the past. I will not call Socrates irrational for being so devoted to a resonant idea, nor will I ridicule Renoir for finding a medium of expression so compelling. But I do not think we have yet seen what the gamer equivalent of these sorts would be; the kind of person so transfixed by the medium that he could not have existed at any point prior in all of history, or at the very least it would have been a tragedy had he been so prematurely born. At the very least, the demographic of hostile and abusive 'gamers' of which we see these many writers decrying and dismissing as toxic do not constitute any such example. They have not found what there is to find sacred in video games, and instead they have sanctified their mundane and vulgar qualities.

P.S. Apologies in advance for issues in spelling, grammar, and word choice. It's midnight here, and I have 5% battery left.

I'm a gamer. I play video games and know more about them than an average person. I consider it a hobby, a form of entertainment I enjoy.

I'm a person who plays video games.

This guy I know noticed I knew a lot about comic books and said "Are you like a comic buff or something?"

So I said to him "Fuck you Karl, I don't define myself by my interests or the way I spend my time, that's just childish. Just shut your stupid mouth and stop using that stupid term, don't you even know that it perpetuates an exclusionary club mentality? What's the difference between me and my aunt who reads the funnies in the newspaper? That's right dickhead, nothing, we both read comics and no meaningful distinction can be made between us. Get a clue, asshole."

I think I helped him understand but I'm not sure because he hasn't talked to me since then.

You're a sentence in and I'm prepared to hear you distinguish between real art, which conforms to upper class sensibilities, and 'entertainment', which makes those mindless proles happy.

90 years ago, middle class snoots would say jazz was just "consumption and stimulation" while their music was "sincere and earnest engagement". I bet you a lot of people would say that today about AAA action versus indie first person walkers. I care about folk art. I care about industrial art. I care about genre fiction and pulp and Harlequin and rasslin and everything else that upper middle class vanguards of the avant garde want discarded in favor of their specific cultural attachments.

seem to be moving towards this disposition that what religious belief one possesses is a purely genetic inclination

The majority of people worldwide share the religion of their parents. It is not for no reason.

where his or her preference in media and pop culture is certainly only the product of an abstract, isolated individual's preference. So far as I could be religious, it would be because I must have 'inherited' it from my parents, but my appreciation for Lady Gaga and Air Force Gator would be exclusively because I am an abstract, idealized individual, free from outside influence or bias, having preferences almost platonic in their purity.

You're creating a hyperbolic strawman. To say that artistic sensibility or enthusiasm for a medium creates more in common between two people than the circumstances of their birth does not necessitate this egregious gulf in effect that you've created. It merely means what it means. You want these interpersonal connections based on shared cultural experience seen as "trivial" next to things people have comparatively fewer choices regarding. I don't think that holds. I think you and I being on this specific video game website that does things its specific way is far less trivial when it comes to who we are than the fact we may share race or gender or orientation or religion or anything else. I'd suggest that us sharing a race is trivial, but us sharing enthusiasm for Giant Bomb is meaningful.

Setting aside the sarcasm, with apologies if I offended there with, I mean only to here suggest that it is not a little disingenuous to dismiss religion and politics as something so predetermined and immutable for us as to render them factors over which we have no control

Did not happen. I didn't include politics because you do make choices about politics. It is worth mentioning that what the nation you happen to be born into does cast a great deal of influence over your politics, as much as it does the nature of the artistic sensibilities and cultural attachments.

Indeed, let me remind you we are discussing a medium and its associated industry which drops millions and millions of dollars on advertising as readily as one does the metaphorical hat, and every one of those dollars directed towards effecting an interest in individuals like ourselves.

... thus indie gaming is a sham..! What? There are people making art in this medium. There are people making art for money in this medium. Michaelangelo got paid for what he painted, and what he painted was what he was told to. The Catholic Church wanted Michaelangelo to paint exactly what they wanted him to paint, and he did. And clearly the Catholics thought it was best for business. You're not ready to discard the works of Michaelangelo because a lot of florins were involved in the construction of the Sistine, I'm not ready to discard the work of some artist, or some studio of artists, because they sell their art for food and shelter.

Jen Zee is an artist. She makes graphic art for games for money. There's no reason for me to treat her work any different because Warner Bros marketed Bastion and maybe the marketing made me think Bastion's art was pretty...

Want to know something else that might blow your mind? There's tons of meaningful artistic design in the marketing that surrounds video games. Even the bad examples reveal the process that goes into artistic design. The construction of those little E3 demos have as much meaningful artistic design as short films; they're designed to "merely stimulate" an audience to a desired place within 90 seconds. The process of putting those together is as much an art as the game itself.

But don't for a moment suppose it is meaningfully less genetically fallible than the tacky old immutable identities you may or may not be inclined to dismiss. In the end, I am still left convinced there are things more worthy than others of being elevated to the core of our identity.

I will take 'gamer', as a simple way to communicate to others the nature of what moves me, over a lot of other things. I'll take 'gamer' before my race, gender, orientation, or any circumstance of my birth. I live in a country full of Canadians, and I wager that I have more shared cultural experiences with people of all ages shopping in a retro game store than I do with Canadians in general.

I seem to have given the impression that resonant ideas and moving mediums of expression are not worthy of being considered significant. I apologize for my failure in communication. Let me clarify my thoughts on identity.

Aha well. Should I put a big strikethrough over my irk with them being called 'trivial'?

There are some elements of our experience which I would argue are so central that to remove them would compromise our very conception of ourselves. That is to say, X is so important to me that I would have a enormously hard time recognizing myself as the same person without X. It is very easy to see how race could fit this sort of quality, since altering one's race would so transmogrify their life experience thitherto—in America, at least. You might dispute how well nationality fits this bill, but I would caution against mistaking any identity as insubstantial sheerly for being difficult to articulate.

I think the nature of what you're talking about is a little removed from my comment. There was no point where I talked about the circumstances of one's birth having nothing to do with their personality. My position was merely that you are ranking shared experiences outside of one's control as being superior to those experiences people have themselves. That sounds too deterministic to me. I feel it's in fact reversed.

My race and gender are a matter of physical evidence, my opinion on an idea or a cultural icon is entirely emblematic of the personality I have formed. It would be impossible to know my opinion until I form the opinion; my race and gender can be known through observation. Yes, there are a myriad of influences on that personality, but what that personality understands about itself (ie; its opinions) should trump that which we can merely obtain from observing it. Even if someone only likes jazz because they're a big poser, I bet you they'll find more in common with other jazz posers than they will merely because the genetic lottery works the way it does.

Anyhow, I suppose what I mean is to question just what it looks like for a hobby or medium to legitimately overtake someone's identity to the degree a lot of these historic institutions have in the past.

That essay is interesting and I might like to read that in full tomorrow.

I think it's worth noting that his reference to shared cultural experience being handed down generations; I don't think that's much different from the majority of art disciplines that people resonate with and identify with. I'm afraid I feel that Romantics have a deeper shared experience with other Romantics (and likewise for Expressionists) than Germans will with other Germans. An agnostic vaporwave producer will have a deeper shared experience with a Buddhist vaporwave producer than they will an agnostic gardener. Etc. (I feel as if I've repeated this specific argument form too much in this post, so I apologize)

But I do not think we have yet seen what the gamer equivalent of these sorts would be; the kind of person so transfixed by the medium that he could not have existed at any point prior in all of history, or at the very least it would have been a tragedy had he been so prematurely born.

Isn't this just Jeff Gerstmann?

THESE ARE WORTH MONEY! THESE ARE WORTH- MONEYYYY!!

At the very least, the demographic of hostile and abusive 'gamers' of which we see these many writers decrying and dismissing as toxic do not constitute any such example. They have not found what there is to find sacred in video games, and instead they have sanctified their mundane and vulgar qualities.

Oh ho! Well, we'd best stop those primitives doing the Charleston before they contaminate the whole community!

Sorry, that one felt a little too hoighty toighty. Focusing on what people do is more important than focusing on what they are. When Ryan Davis wailed with enthusiasm after a crazy fucking explosion, I'd would not suggest he "sanctified the mudane and vulgar qualities" of those video games. I'd also suggest that he wouldn't "dismiss these elements when push comes to shove" either. Some people prefer Frank Frazetta to Claude Monet, and they do it legitimately.