I'm in a serious ranting mood right now, so I'm going to rant.
The word 'gaming' or 'gamer' is the worst generalization to describe someone who enjoys a particular type of media, ever.
I'm sick of having to be cautious about the use of the word in certain company because of it's connotations. The term 'gamer' is so nebulous at this point that it would be just as correct to call someone who primarily reads magazines and someone who reads novels 'readers'.
Gaming is such a huge medium that spans over countless genres, most of which provide their own worth in some way or another. RPGS or games with RPG elements pride themselves on their narrative focus which alone provides a more indpeth experience than most novels or movies could hope to achieve. So many amazing stories and universes so fleshed out and immersive. Action games provide the fast paced intensity you know from action movies, except -you're- the main character. Platformers rewrite your perception of the world into a playground that you can explore. Puzzle games will challenge your mind in ways you've never thought of, the list goes on.
A lot of this will never be experienced by someone who would have had read the same material in a book or watched a movie depicting the same actions because it's in a 'game' which to many people is registered as a dirty word - missing out on an entire medium of entertainment, one that is completely interactive and filled with so much amazing content and it is quite simply a travesty that people are missing out on the best of it.
I've been playing games for a long time now, they are the most enjoyable activity I know of. Most games take the narrative structure of books and movies and translate the trials and tribulations that you read about into ones that you actually -experience-. Not only are you still experiencing all the story you'd get from a book, you're also being rewarded for accomplishing challenges that have been set in front of you. The resolution of the story holds so much more weight when its -you- who's progressing the story firsthand.
But all that is obvious, the issue is that the people who don't know this are the ones naysaying the entire medium based on a few games and gamers that have given gaming a "bad" name. Considering the amount of absolute crap out there that masquerade as games, I can understand why games are being depicted as such, but at the same time I don't see books being judged on the basis that they share similarities with "zines" or movies having the same technical structure as infomercials.
One may think those analogies are an embellishment of the issue but the truth is that is exactly how games are being judged. When I say the words "Game of Thrones" and "Woman's Day", a vast majority of people will instantly make the distinction between those 2 types of reading material. One is a series of epic fantasy novels that people will gladly sink hours into reading and the other is a "zine", a time wasting device with pointless information and constant advertising to buy products that you don't really need.
If I were to say "Deus Ex" and "Farmville" I doubt many non-gamers would have heard of the former title in a gaming context. However, one is a 14 to 15 hour long adventure in world set in the distant future where every conspiracy theory is true, a narrative masterpiece with superb interactive mechanics and the other is a game where you plant virtual crops in your virtual barn until you use up your ability to plant virtual crops for that day and are prompted to spend money before you can continue planting your virtual crops. One is an extremely good way to spend your time as you're treated to a story that is beyond fantastic and gameplay where your choices matter and form the identity of the character you're playing, the other is a terrible time wasting device akin to a skinner box.
This is definitely not where the distinctions end, but that is one of the more severe ones in my mind. A world where Deus Ex can be compared to Farmville in any way is a world that is blatantly ignorant of a wealth of entertainment that has been painstakingly crafted over many many years to provide the pinnacle of quality interactive media.
Another major distinction that needs to be made is the difference between a 'game' and a 'sport' - this is the most important distinction in my opinion. Any activity where you face against another team with equal chance to achieve a common goal, with the objective of achieving said goal more than the the other team is a sport.
That means that every single multiplayer competitive game out there - are sports. FPS's like Call of Duty and Battlefield, RTS's like Age of Empires and Starcraft and more recently MOBAS like DOTA and LoL - are not games. They are sports and should be considered as such.
A game, to quote Wikipedia, is structured playing. Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. To quote a friend of mine who is also an avid gamer - "Games are made of the things that obstruct you from getting to the end." They're the interactive representation of of the scenes or chapters depicting people in trying situations that build their character, however, with a mostly false sense of danger. This is where games excel, where the sense of danger is very real - your skills and determination are the fight scenes authors write about. You're creating the tension from your pure instinctual drive to succeed. That is something you will never experience in a movie or book.
Unfortunately all this ranting is for naught, nothing's going to change. Gaming is going to continue being poisoned and I don't doubt that one day that medium will die. It's too corrupted, too nebulous, but noone out there wants to do a thing about it. It's just a tool for self proclaimed 'publishers' to make developers lives hell and milk us, the money conduits, for all the cash they can get. At least there's a backlog of literally hundreds of thousands of games that cling to old ideals that promote actual entertainment and interactive narrative structure.
Welp, that was fun. Please feel free to comment.
The word 'gaming' or 'gamer' is the worst generalization to describe someone who enjoys a particular type of media, ever.
I'm sick of having to be cautious about the use of the word in certain company because of it's connotations. The term 'gamer' is so nebulous at this point that it would be just as correct to call someone who primarily reads magazines and someone who reads novels 'readers'.
Gaming is such a huge medium that spans over countless genres, most of which provide their own worth in some way or another. RPGS or games with RPG elements pride themselves on their narrative focus which alone provides a more indpeth experience than most novels or movies could hope to achieve. So many amazing stories and universes so fleshed out and immersive. Action games provide the fast paced intensity you know from action movies, except -you're- the main character. Platformers rewrite your perception of the world into a playground that you can explore. Puzzle games will challenge your mind in ways you've never thought of, the list goes on.
A lot of this will never be experienced by someone who would have had read the same material in a book or watched a movie depicting the same actions because it's in a 'game' which to many people is registered as a dirty word - missing out on an entire medium of entertainment, one that is completely interactive and filled with so much amazing content and it is quite simply a travesty that people are missing out on the best of it.
I've been playing games for a long time now, they are the most enjoyable activity I know of. Most games take the narrative structure of books and movies and translate the trials and tribulations that you read about into ones that you actually -experience-. Not only are you still experiencing all the story you'd get from a book, you're also being rewarded for accomplishing challenges that have been set in front of you. The resolution of the story holds so much more weight when its -you- who's progressing the story firsthand.
But all that is obvious, the issue is that the people who don't know this are the ones naysaying the entire medium based on a few games and gamers that have given gaming a "bad" name. Considering the amount of absolute crap out there that masquerade as games, I can understand why games are being depicted as such, but at the same time I don't see books being judged on the basis that they share similarities with "zines" or movies having the same technical structure as infomercials.
One may think those analogies are an embellishment of the issue but the truth is that is exactly how games are being judged. When I say the words "Game of Thrones" and "Woman's Day", a vast majority of people will instantly make the distinction between those 2 types of reading material. One is a series of epic fantasy novels that people will gladly sink hours into reading and the other is a "zine", a time wasting device with pointless information and constant advertising to buy products that you don't really need.
If I were to say "Deus Ex" and "Farmville" I doubt many non-gamers would have heard of the former title in a gaming context. However, one is a 14 to 15 hour long adventure in world set in the distant future where every conspiracy theory is true, a narrative masterpiece with superb interactive mechanics and the other is a game where you plant virtual crops in your virtual barn until you use up your ability to plant virtual crops for that day and are prompted to spend money before you can continue planting your virtual crops. One is an extremely good way to spend your time as you're treated to a story that is beyond fantastic and gameplay where your choices matter and form the identity of the character you're playing, the other is a terrible time wasting device akin to a skinner box.
This is definitely not where the distinctions end, but that is one of the more severe ones in my mind. A world where Deus Ex can be compared to Farmville in any way is a world that is blatantly ignorant of a wealth of entertainment that has been painstakingly crafted over many many years to provide the pinnacle of quality interactive media.
Another major distinction that needs to be made is the difference between a 'game' and a 'sport' - this is the most important distinction in my opinion. Any activity where you face against another team with equal chance to achieve a common goal, with the objective of achieving said goal more than the the other team is a sport.
That means that every single multiplayer competitive game out there - are sports. FPS's like Call of Duty and Battlefield, RTS's like Age of Empires and Starcraft and more recently MOBAS like DOTA and LoL - are not games. They are sports and should be considered as such.
A game, to quote Wikipedia, is structured playing. Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. To quote a friend of mine who is also an avid gamer - "Games are made of the things that obstruct you from getting to the end." They're the interactive representation of of the scenes or chapters depicting people in trying situations that build their character, however, with a mostly false sense of danger. This is where games excel, where the sense of danger is very real - your skills and determination are the fight scenes authors write about. You're creating the tension from your pure instinctual drive to succeed. That is something you will never experience in a movie or book.
Unfortunately all this ranting is for naught, nothing's going to change. Gaming is going to continue being poisoned and I don't doubt that one day that medium will die. It's too corrupted, too nebulous, but noone out there wants to do a thing about it. It's just a tool for self proclaimed 'publishers' to make developers lives hell and milk us, the money conduits, for all the cash they can get. At least there's a backlog of literally hundreds of thousands of games that cling to old ideals that promote actual entertainment and interactive narrative structure.
Welp, that was fun. Please feel free to comment.