bulldog300

" @bulldog300: When I'm here, I'm me. I'm a gamer. When you're here, you're a gamer. No one cares about my gender until it's brought up. "

" No-one ever mentions the hermaphrodites, do they even play games? "

" Stop trying to analyze my gender with my habits. I'm just a gamer. "

" I still don't get why this is being brought up all the time. Either you like games or you don't, what you have between your legs doesn't matter. I can have as much fun playing a game with a woman as I can with a man. "

" You piece of shit, you just copied this from MovieTome. "

What is a gamer? We rarely ask that question because we are usually certain what a gamer is. If you're reading this then chances are you see one in the mirror every morning. Being a gamer, however, is not the same thing anymore. When I say 'what is a gamer?' I mean 'what is a person who's lifestyle involves, or is based around, playing video games?'. How is that differentiated when there's one gaming console or another in the majority of the houses in the U.S. today?

Being a gamer has changed in recent years to mean more than just a person who plays video games. It means more to just exist and play games. A gamer is someone who doesn't just play games for fun, or a sense of superiority when pit against his peers. A gamer is someone who plays because it means something more to him than just that.

Let me explain, because I know right now that I'm going to confuse a lot of people, myself included, without an elaboration. I consider myself a gamer, and I have a friend who plays video games but he wouldn't be classified as a gamer. How I came about this conclusion occurred this weekend. I had purchased a copy of left 4 dead 1 for the 360 with the specific intention of playing it with him, and we did. I myself am an avid L4D fan, and he had wanted to play it for a while now, so it seemed like a good game to play. How we played, however, was entirely different.

His gaming 'methods' was incoherent to say the least, and consisted of running around like a chicken without a head blasting zombies, the Ai survivors and pretty much anything without knowledge of what he was doing. We barely survived the last stand of the no mercy campaign on normal, which is saying much considering that I could probably run it on expert with bots on a good day. I'm not mad at him, but I did learn where the plethora of incompetent gamers comes from; they fall from the tree of casual gamers.

A casual gamer is to regular gamers what C&C4 is to the rest of the C&C universe, an ugly, ugly entity that exists only because something better came before it. Casuals were essentially created as a result of games attempting to reach out to a wider audience. Games like Call of Duty and GTA, games with no inherent tie to fantasy or sci-fi, appealed to people who might enjoy games if they were less 'nerdy'. While good games by most standards (in quality, this isn't a morality topic), they essentially teared a hole in the boundary between gamers and the rest of society. People who never even played games before enjoyed a universe they could identify with, but one that didn't have the same boundaries.

And since then that has been the focus of the gaming industry. It must be remembered that any video game business is still a business, with profit being the number one priority. Instead of cultivating the gamer lifestyle, companies tend to capitalize on it. Games that appeal to the casual breed are often released annually with minute updates to appeal to these gamers. Games that fit outside this basis (shooters, sports games and some adventure games) are often downsized to make room for this demographic since they are the majority.

There are casual gamers, and then there are gamers who live the gaming lifestyle. This group treats games less like a time killer and more like a hobby or lifestyle. This demographic doesn't always differentiate simply by what types of games are meant to be played, but by consistency and ultimate goal of playing games. A casual gamer might play games with friends to pass the time until a party or after class/work to unwind. A gamer would make the game the party, or play for the sake of mastering games. Gamers often favor games that are more challenging, both in terms of mental ability and gaming ability, over games that are more streamlined for popularity.

There would normally be a tenuous to kinship-like peace between these two groups who share a common hobby albeit for different reasons, but recent conditions in the gaming industry are creating a Cain and Abel esc effect.

First and foremost, there is a freezing tension between the two over the favoritism of the gaming industry. As previously mentioned, game developers are businesses with the intention of making money. Their focus is primarily that, which means they will make games that appeal to the majority, which at the time is casual gamers. With that respect there isn't enough in terms of time and energy to go around, which means that if the gaming industry is appealing to the majority, they will make games geared for casual gamers first, and then regular gamers if there is any money left to use. Strategy games, survival horrors and certain rpgs play second fiddle to games such as multiplayer oriented shooters and rhythm games. You can imagine how unhappy a pc gamer who loves rts games will be when rts' stop being made, and the ones that are made are more dungeon crawlers than rts in terms of gameplay.

The second conflict, besides a lack of attention to both parties, is the conflict of identity. The majority of people in the U.S. play games. I remember reading an article in the Washington post that claimed as much as 85% of youth ages 8-18 played games on a regular basis. How many of them, even if the majority are casual gamers, identify themselves as gamers? In all likelihood more often than not a person who plays games calls himself a gamer even if he is not 'into it'. How many general gamers appreciate losing their culture to what is trendy? A person doesn't spend years being called a nerd for gaming in the extreme only to be 'a face in the crowd' when things change and everyone games. It can only be compared to other cultural trends that have gone from a form of expression to what is popular (rap comes to mind).

Finally, while not often as big of a problem, there is the problem of the two classes of gamer overlapping in certain games and causing issues. Take left for dead for an example. It is an extremely popular game for both demographics because it appeals to both challenge and popularity. I was a bit annoyed that my friend enjoyed the game only as a novelty when I practically viewed it as an art, so I can only imagine how often strangers meet under similar circumstances and create tension. It's hard to get into and enjoy a game, even one as great as L4D, when the people you rely on don't take things as seriously as you do.

In the end video games mean many different things to different people. They can be art, culture, hobby, time waster and even drug, but when people view games in one light and not the others it creates problems with those who don't share the same beliefs. Games have come a long way, but I believe gamers have changed more over the years than the games they play. While I don't think a civil war will ever break out over games, I do believe that problems will arise over the lifestyle that is video games.

Girl Gamers. Saying the term brings up a plethora of discussion in a social domain with regards to gamers. A blow for equality, an act of indifference and a series of mildly offensive jokes are several way females in the culture of gaming have been viewed. That is to imply by the responses often given that they are a rare site, particularly with regards to dedicated gaming. Yet no matter how many or few gamers are female, they still play an important role in shaping the face of gaming.

Gaming, from its humble beginnings to today, has primarily been geared towards men. It's easy to site the commonly used reasons why, ranging from the idea that games were originally for 'nerds' and most nerds were male in the 70s-90s, to the concept that men are generally more stimulated with visuals while women are more stimulated mentally (often also the argument of porn vs romance novels). There's also the more feminist arguments, such as the idea that industry is a male dominated field, and thus designers will make games more geared towards those they identify with. Of course, what list would be complete without the nature and nurture argument, that men are generally bred and raised to 'bring home the bacon' so they would favor games, particularly violent ones. Whatever the reason, the end results remain the same, that men are the major demographic of video game players right now.

There are various projects at work to change this trend or alter it, such as the inclusion of more females in the gaming industry and an increase in games with strong women roles, but movements such as these take time, and even with vast resources there's no guarantee for such efforts to work. They (the industry) have been at it for years. Mrs. Pacman in arcades is essentially the equivalent of 'ladies night' for the social medium. Attempts so far have had mixed results. While you can show that the industry is more than willing to accommodate diversity, it is often questioned if it will do more than accommodate it. Are women to be another demographic, a sub clause such as strategy gamers and jrpg fans, or are they meant to be equals in the gaming community? The industry already suffers a great deal of backlash by alienating parts of the community in exchange for others by accident; explicit segregation would be economic suicide.

It has been happening, the alteration of the roles of women in games. Making games that have strong female roles, such as Mirror's edge and Resident Evil, have become natural to gaming. They make women with talent, strength, intelligence, and occasionally charisma. And while there is room for Bloodrayne, Lara Croft and Bayonetta, the recent versions of these characters are often parodies of what female characters once were. The question remains though, does this mean there are more female gamers?

Well I don't want to make this a quote contest, but it seems so. Nearly 40% of gamers are female. The problem, the majority of them fall into the category of casual. While it's never a good idea to mock progress, it is unfortunate that women are getting a part time position for a full time job. If there is a silver lining to this, it is that the majority of female gamers use a PC as their gaming platform, which is regarded as the most utilized platform of dedicated gamers (and Farmville, sadly).

What does that mean for gaming, besides more female friendly games? It certainly doesn't mean an end to the games guy gamers have come to know and love. Even games such as gears of war and CoD (dedicated and casual, respectively) have attracted a female following. Gears of War 3 is even including Anya, the female battlefield control some will remember from the first two, as a part of delta squadron. It does mean more representation of the female demographic in games, with an inclusion of games more sought after by female gamers, such as the Sims, which is one of the few games that have a higher female user base than a male one.

With regards to sexuality, it could mean a variety of things. Of course more women will be included in the frame of games, but will there be a decrease in women used as sex symbols in games? Perhaps and perhaps not. Games will still need to appeal to guys, even if in lesser quantities, and while many believe we have entered an age of 'sexual liberation' there is no doubt that there is a high demand for aesthetics, particularly in beauty. In short, many men like to look at women, and even pixilated women can cause aesthetic appeal. If we adhere to the idea that sex sell, then we can only conclude companies will sell sex in video games. I might even be so bold to say that there will be an increase in aesthetically appealing men in games for the appeal for women, yet that has already appeared to be the case. I seldom hear ripples of complaints about the ugliness of men in games from female gamers in online communities.

Women were once barely seen in the gaming community. Now they play an important role in both the community and the games that are produced by the industry. In the few decades games have been around, they have gone from Italian plumbers saving damsels in distress to heroines blasting aliens, zombies and alien zombies alongside male equals. Given enough time, female gamers might even equal men in the category of gaming addiction and dedicated gamers.

This list doesn’t deal with clichés in video games, but general annoyances that are common practice of nearly every game. I write these not to criticize the hard work developers go through to churn out good games, but to remind them that there’s a time for stairs and a time for escalators.

1. The infrequent checkpoint:

So after spending about an hour in FF12 grinding for LP and gil, loving the progress of my characters and almost finishing mapping out the entire area, an elemental appears out of nowhere, silences my party and then proceeds to butcher them. The only reserve characters were asleep, and they were all subsequently butchered after two seconds. Words cannot describe my rage; it is like getting your paycheck stolen by your own boss. As discouraged as I am I do not intend to pick up the controller for a bit, I need some time for all the effort I just lost to sink in.

This is number one, the infrequent checkpoint system. It doesn’t matter what type of game it is, on what console or any other factor I can’t imagine at the moment, an annoying checkpoint system that eats away hours of your effort is by far the worst thing a game can have. It is the major drawback of games to lose everything to not only ‘surprises’ from the game, but power outages, forgetting to manually save and lacking a quick save option. An auto save feature or a frequent checkpoint system should be in every modern game, as the only time I want to do the same level over is when I found it that fun the first time around.

1. Tedium, Tedium Everywhere!

Almost as bad as a lack of a checkpoint system has to be when a game is needlessly tedious. This can run the gambit of requiring absolute precision in games to the point where your OCD screams ‘No more!’ to the lack of a macro feature on a pc game, to simply no streamlining a long process that does not demand much of a gamer’s attention. A good example of this is in the Sins of a Solar Empire expansion, entrenchment. Once you have the means and funds to build star bases, you should be able to click a gravity well, and hit some sort of macro of button that says ‘place star base’, and then proceed to queue what you want in the star base as well as what fighters. This would have been preferable to having to manually build every star base ship, ordering them to go to a sector then wait for their hangers to developing before queuing fighter squadrons. Or how about fallout 3 where your cursor has to hover right over the smallest things in order to grab them, and then drop them once you realize you’re over cumbered. I’m not asking for a lot from QA, just the realization that there are some things I’d rather not have to deal with when contending with m own survival in these universes.

1. I have 5 shields, 5 swords, 5 rifles, a tank and a turtle in my pack, so why can’t I hold a cup?

There are few things as annoying, particularly in RPGs and MMOs, as an inventory system that punishes you for farming too much and selling too little. I’ve seen it in guilds wars, Titan quest and Mass Effect 1 just to name a few. Some are only a minor inconvenience to the overall experience (RE5), while some are so bad that I never got past the first hour because I knew the inventory system would cause me to have suicidal thoughts later (Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion). I can understand there is a gap between realism and game play, but can we just pretend that the main character made 12 trips to and fro the place I need to be to sell my stuff, just so I don’t have to take those 12 trips? Some games have tried to address this issue, such as one particular pack mule, a role playing ‘slave’ system where hardcore role players act as pack mules, and even a pet that will sell your stuff for you (thank you torchlight), but treating a wound and healing it aren’t the same. To quote a bobble head ‘the wisest doctor knows that a bandage only hides the wound’.

1. The unskipable

Cut scenes, minigames, overly complicated puzzles. Those things that serve absolutely no purpose to the overall game, or those things that you’ve already mastered, and yet for some cruel reason the game won’t let you just skip them. I can tolerate the mandatory intro cut scene the first time I boot up a game on my PC, but asking me to endure every bad cut scene, every bland attempt for characters to fill in the obvious and every ‘hey look at this’ and you’re asking for me to swallow quite a pill. There comes a point when I want to do nothing more than just play the game, so please for the sake of the $10-60 I just paid for it, let me play. Example wise I’d say the temple puzzles in FFX, or the conversations in half life 2, but these are the only ones I can’ think of off the top of my head.

1. Our economy is just as slow as the one in RL

This should probably have gone into the tedium section, but I think it merits it’s own category. Money makes the world go round, and that is true in most games, so few things are as annoying than making the method of acquiring money so monotonous or tedious that you’d rather just try to beat the game with a bare bones character. This was one of the reasons I didn’t care for Far Cry 2, because diamond hunting was about as much fun as taking a machete to the face for real diamonds. More obscure games such as the Battle for middle earth make gathering resources a pain as well, and even in company of heroes I wished the cash would flow faster so I could get to maneuver my forces around. Sure I can understand that there is a required delay, especially in RTS games so that you aren’t overwhelmed at the start, and that MMOs must make money gathering slow so that dedicated gamers can be differentiated from those that spend 5 minutes on a session, but there’s a reason I preferred wow, guild wars and the updated eve online over the most seemingly pointless pacing of other MMOs. There’s a reason Star craft and Sins of a Solar empire occupy more of my time than say 1602ad or empire earth, because the term is ‘easy come, easy go’, not ‘take 5 hours come, easy go’.

This is in no particular order

1. Best use of zombies
2. Most likely to start another anti-video game movement
3. Character most likely to bleed to death
4. Best use of horror/atmosphere
5. Best use of sci fi
6. Worst use of sci fi
7. Worst movie-based game
8. Best use of food
9. Game most likely used to cause/cure chronic obesity
10. most anticlimactic ending
11. (giantbomb only) best quick look
    

It's kinda funny, because I spent my english 102 class writing about why video games are good for education. Anyone interested in disproving this kid's arguement intellectually should look up the works of James Paul Gee. According to him, Digital media has the potential to be a great method of education, since the 'baby boomer' method of arduously studying doesn't bode well with those who are oriented to learning by experience (Gee What Video games have to teach us about learning and literacy)